Welcome to the office, Gen Z. You’re the only one here.
After 18 months of unsatisfying, fully remote work, Isabella finally landed an office job at the end of last year as a production coordinator at a New York advertising agency.
“I was so excited,” she recalls. She wore her smartest business-casual outfit and took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan for the very first work commute of her young career. On the seventh floor, she opened the door and was greeted with ... quiet.
No phones ringing, no office buzz. Fewer than a dozen people sat in an open workspace that could easily accommodate 80.
“I wore heels, which was stupid because there was nobody around,” she says. Those who were there all looked up when she walked by. “The floors are concrete, so all you could hear was me clacking around.”
When she went back the next day, she opted for jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of banged-up Nikes.
Like Isabella, who asked that her last name not be used because she was not authorized to speak by her company, many of America’s youngest workers have started their careers not with a bang but with a barely audible whimper. Employers have pushed them into
