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By Scott Mims | Community Columnist

I was reading the national news lately when I learned that President Trump signed a memorandum requiring federal employees who had been working remotely to return to the physical office on an everyday basis.

There will obviously be divided opinions about this issue, and I’m not here to argue for one side or the other, but to simply discuss some of the reasoning behind both points of view.

I was among many Americans who worked from home in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, which I must say seems like it’s far in the past by now — unless you happen to be one of the workers who has remained at home ever since. I know some of them who either work remotely on a permanent basis or who return to the office once or twice per week to “check in.” In my case, the experience of working remotely lasted for about six months.

I thought working from my home “office” was going to be a dream come true, but I found that trying to work at my computer desk I felt too caged in. My next attempt was to work from the dining room table, and this seemed to work well. The only drawback was I had to purchase a special seat cushion but this made the dining room chair a little more work-friendly.

In hindsight, I will say that working from home is more challenging than it sounds. It can become difficult to draw the line between work life and home life. One must deal with regular interruptions, and other members of the household must also come to differentiate “work time” from “home time.”

I recently had a conversation with a coworker about someone she knew who had a permanent work-from-home job. This person apparently completed all of her work in one or two days, then on other days she merely moved her computer mouse every 45 minutes to make it appear like she was working. Herein lies the problem with remote work in America.

While technology certainly allows for remote work, you simply can’t trust everyone to do what they are supposed to do. Of course, this can be an issue on-site as well, but at least there seems to be more accountability in a physical office. What do you think? Do you agree with the memorandum or not? I would be interested to know your opinion.