Before the pandemic, it wasn't easy for Kristen Parisi to commute to her job at a PR firm in New York.

The cities where the best jobs are are still our most inaccessible cities.

Parisi uses a wheelchair and some days it was impossible to navigate through the city's obstacles.

The bad weather, the heavy doors, unreliable subway station elevators.

And I would have to make those tough calls to make that awful email to my boss saying,

I'm going to have to work from home today. Please understand.

People looked at you as though you were trying to take advantage of a system that just wasn't built for you.

Parisi left that PR firm back in 2018 and began a job search that lasted longer than a year.

Now her luck changed during the pandemic.

Some of my friends said, oh, you're still applying for jobs every day. I said, I'm applying for more now than ever.

Because maybe places are going to be more open to the idea of long-term remote work.

She was right. They were. And she got an offer for a remote marketing job that started in January.

Cindy and El Paso also says her life drastically improved when she shifted to working from home.

So when her employer sent out an email saying all remaining remote employees were to return to the office by June 1st,

I cried. And I'm not usually a cry of this. It's just something I'm particularly sensitive to.

Cindy has health issues that make a day at the office especially painful.

So she really misses her home setup.

I think I'm still very productive and I just need a little more, you know, some, I don't

want to say it's a combination because I think other people who don't have health concerns also benefit.

Consider this as more and more people are vaccinated. This work from home era may be coming to an end.

And that's not welcome news for everyone.

From NPR, I'm Audie Cornish. It's Thursday, June 10th.

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