The Long Afterlife of Remote Work
Six sentences have been removed from the passage. Choose the correct sentence (A–G) for each gap. There is one extra sentence you do not need.
The Long Afterlife of Remote Work
When offices emptied in early 2020, few predicted that the experiment would outlast the circumstances that produced it. Executives who expected a swift return were surprised to discover that many employees, having tasted a different arrangement, were reluctant to surrender it. The negotiation that followed, however, turned out to be more intricate than a simple trade between days in the office and days at home. Middle managers, in particular, found themselves in an unexpectedly difficult position, tasked with cultivating culture and cohesion across distances they had not been trained to bridge. Researchers tracking these arrangements note that outcomes vary not by industry so much as by the quality of a team's rituals — the unglamorous practices of weekly check-ins, written updates, and documented decisions. For now, the most honest summary may be that 'remote work' is less a single phenomenon than a cluster of local compromises, each shaped by the particular history of the organisation that arrived at it.
Choices
A. What had been marketed as a cost-saving measure quietly turned into a question about what offices were actually for.
B. Commuting times, once accepted as a fixed feature of professional life, suddenly looked like a cost that could be refused.
C. Teams that invested in such rituals reported steadier performance; teams that improvised tended to fray.
D. Few of these compromises travel well, which may explain why imported templates so often disappoint.
E. New office furniture sales reached a historic high during this period.
F. The most visible debates focused on real estate and headcount, but the underlying questions concerned trust, visibility, and the shape of a working day.
G. They were expected, often simultaneously, to preserve spontaneity and to produce reliable written artefacts of every conversation.