I have a new remote job offer but I have questions

Hey guys! What I’m about to say might annoy some people, but I really need a little pep talk about a new job offer I received.

I’ve been working for 5 years now and almost all of that has been remote. For the first two years, I worked as a therapist completely remotely – I was working a maximum of 4–5 hours a day. Then I moved into the corporate world. I worked hybrid for 2 years; I was expected to go to the office once a week, sometimes twice, but there were also many weeks when I didn’t go at all. For the past 1.5 years, I’ve been working fully remote again.

My work life has always been flexible. Most of my responsibilities were either easy to complete within the day or there simply weren’t that many urgent tasks. I managed my own workload, always delivered on time and never had any issues with autonomy, time management, communication or meeting my goals. I’ve never had a micromanaging boss; as long as I did my job, no one bothered me.

In a typical month, maybe 7–8 days were actually very busy. So, as you can imagine, during work hours I sometimes went to the gym, doctor, post office, grocery store – even met friends while my laptop was open. The best part was that if I finished my tasks early, I could just close my laptop before the official end of the day.

My current job is almost like a part-time position, because most of the day I’m totally free. When I am doing the actual work, it can be extremely stressful, but outside of those times, it’s mostly small post-hoc tasks.

Now, I’ve received a new offer. It’s also fully remote, 9 hours a day, including a 1 hour lunch break. However, during the interviews, I was repeatedly told that I’ll be very busy, handling multiple tasks at once (even though the responsibilities are all things I’ve done before). They also emphasized that “remote work doesn’t mean going to the mall when you don’t have an active task.” I know that, of course, but it felt a bit micromanagey to me.

The thing is, I’m so used to working flexibly with no micromanagement, full autonomy, and often having free time that these comments during the interviews were a little off-putting. I really need this job and once I accept it, I can’t quit even if the work environment turns out to be stressful.

The HR person I met was super sweet and seemed genuinely happy working there, but the managers gave off a slightly off-putting vibe.

I’m not afraid of the responsibilities themselves, I’m more worried about the work culture, how they’ll treat me and what kind of environment it’ll be. Do you think I’m just anxious about leaving my comfort zone or is this actually a red flag? What are your experiences?