Dear Editor, Dear Editor, I believe Dan Jones’ Dec. 26 commentary regarding state employee remote work conflates physical presence with emotional presence. I strongly disagree with the idea that commitment to public service is rooted in shared place or shared fate. Equating remote work with diminished dedication is a false equivalence. Remote work has no bearing on whether someone is a committed public servant. Service is an attitude, not a location. Anyone who has worked in a service profession understands this. Remote workers have had the privilege of working with people across the country and around the world in nonprofit settings, serving communities they would never meet and whose “shared fate” they did not personally inhabit. Their level of care and dedication was no less real or effective because of distance. READ MORE I worked for the state for a decade and left several years ago, well before the current union dispute, specifically because there was no permanent, standardized remote-work policy. During that time, I worked alongside many state employees who cared deeply about Vermonters and routinely went above and beyond in their work, including those who were remote most of the time. I also worked with people who had spent much of their lives as state employees, lived in the communities they served and yet showed little awareness or concern for how their decisions affected people’s lives unless those people were personally known to them. Physical proximity did not translate into public-service ethic. The suggestion that returning to the office is merely a matter of “discomfort” is dismissive and disrespectful. Yes, this is a work-life balance issue. Someone needing to work remotely in order to be present when their children get home from school is no different from someone leaving early or declining overtime because their child has a game that night. Both are choices that require coworkers to adjust. Neither reflects a lack of dedication to public service. In my experience, forcing employees back into the office rarely produces the improvements promised. More often, productivity declines and turnover increases. When those outcomes occur, management tends to grow quiet rather than reflective. Service is an attitude, not a desk. I would rather rely on a remote colleague who is genuinely invested in helping people than sit face-to-face with someone who performs concern as part of the job but never follows through. It is difficult to think outside the box when you do not recognize that you are in one — or where its boundaries lie. Amy Guala Burlington, Vermont Read the story on VTDigger here: Amy Guala: Commitment to public service can’t be measured by attendance. ...read more read less