Three years remote and I finally went back to the office for a day because the client requested an “in-person kickoff.” Here’s what I learned.

My company is fully remote, has been since 2021. I moved out of the city two years ago specifically because of this, I’m about 90 minutes from the office by train. So when my project lead told me the client wanted us all in person for a kickoff meeting I just kind of accepted it and booked a train for 7:40am.

The meeting was two hours. The actual useful part was maybe 35 minutes. The rest was the client’s VP talking about “energy in the room” and “the importance of face time in the early stages of a partnership.” We could have done this on a call. We have done this on a call, multiple times, for other clients who turned out fine. Here’s what actually happened that day:

I spent 3 hours commuting round trip. I wore real shoes for the first time in maybe four months and my feet hurt by noon. The office has an open floor plan and someone near me was on a loud call the whole afternoon so I put in headphones, which is exactly what I do at home except at home I’m comfortable. I ate lunch at my desk because I didn’t know where anything was and didn’t want to ask . I caught a cold, which I’m pretty sure came from the train.

The client seemed happy though. They kept saying things like “it’s so good to finally put faces to names” even though we’d been on video calls with cameras on for two months. I got home at 7pm, fed my cat, and sat on my couch thinking about how I used to do this every single day

I genuinely do not know how I did it. I really don’t.