I’m in Barcelona right now, visiting the offices of a company I’ve just started working with.

While it is a remote-first company, and only a very small number of the company’s 30-some employees live in Barcelona, and therefore use the office, they do have an office at a co-working space in a large commercial building.

Around 3pm, as a colleague and I were waiting to be “rescued” from the 26th floor emergency exit, which had locked us out of the building, we started reminiscing about things we don’t have to do while working from home, all of which we did today:

• No need to show an ID when you enter the building for the first time
• No need to go through a metal detector to go to work
• No need to wait for an elevator
• No risk of getting trapped on the 21st floor, when for reasons completely unknown, the elevator let you out there, but refused to let you back on without a security code
• No risk of accidentally locking yourself in the fire escape when you try to take the stairs up one level