Remote Work Is Changing Small Towns

The first sign was the Wi-Fi password.

Dot's Diner has been on Main Street since before my dad was born. Same red booths, same pie case with the cracked corner, same sign over the register that says WE DON'T DO SEPARATE CHECKS, ASK YOUR MOTHER. Then about two years ago a new chalkboard went up next to it. Under the specials, in Dot's granddaughter's handwriting: WIFI: PieForBreakfast2. All one word.

My dad saw it and said, "Well. That's it then." I asked him what was it. He just shook his head and went back to his eggs.

I grew up in a town of about three thousand people, a few hours from anywhere you'd have heard of. You leave a place like that. That's the deal. You finish school, you go to the city, you come back for Thanksgiving and funerals. I did exactly that for eleven years. Then my company told everyone we weren't coming back to the office, ever, and the rent on my apartment went up again, and one night I sat on my kitchen floor doing the math on a napkin and realized I could pay off my car in a year if I just went home.

So I went home. And it turns out I wasn't the only one.

There's a guy named Marcus who bought the old Pruitt house on Elm, the yellow one with the porch that sags on the left. He does something with cybersecurity for a bank in Charlotte. I asked him once what exactly and he talked for four minutes and I understood maybe one word, "firewall." He fixed the porch himself, badly, then got Earl Pruitt's nephew to fix it properly, and now the two of them go fishing on Saturdays. Earl's nephew had never talked to anyone from a bank in his life. Now he knows more about phishing emails than I do.

There's a couple from Denver who opened a coffee place in the old shoe repair shop. Oat milk. Little plants on every table. People said it wouldn't last three months. It's been a year and a half. The trick, I think, is they also sell regular coffee in a big styrofoam cup for a dollar, no questions, and the farmers come in at five-thirty for that and then complain about the plants.

And there's Danielle, who was two years behind me in school. She works for a design agency in Austin and never left at all. She told me when she was a teenager everybody acted like staying was failing. Now she gets to stay and nobody can say anything, because she makes more than half the people who left.

The library is busy again. That's the one that gets me. When I was a kid it was the quietest room in town, which is saying something. Now on a Tuesday morning there are six or seven of us in there with laptops, headphones on, nobody talking, and Mrs. Hale at the desk looking at us like we're a weird kind of bird that's started nesting in her building. She told my mom she doesn't mind. She said it's nice to see the lights on. They got the town to pay for faster internet last year, partly because of us. She had to go to three council meetings for that.

I don't want to make it sound perfect, because it isn't.

Houses cost more now. Not city prices, nowhere close, but more than people here are used to. Rob at the hardware store was going to buy his aunt's place and someone from out of state offered cash before he'd even talked to the bank. He doesn't say much about it. He doesn't have to. And you hear things at the diner, people saying "the laptop folks" in a certain voice, like we're a weather system that blew in. Some of that is fair. Some of us show up and want the town to be cute and quiet and also have sushi. I've heard a guy complain about the smell from the feed mill. The feed mill was here a hundred years before him. It's going to win that one.

And the internet still goes out when it rains hard. Everybody knows the best signal in town is in the church parking lot, so if it's stormy you'll see three or four cars sitting out there with people on video calls, nodding at their screens, pretending they're in a normal office. Pastor Jim started leaving the side door open so we can use the bathroom. He put a jar out for donations. I put a five in every time. Most people do.

What I didn't expect was how much it would change me, not the town.

In the city I knew maybe two neighbors by name. Here, if my truck isn't in the driveway by seven, somebody's going to mention it to my mother by eight. That drove me crazy for about a month. Now I sort of like it. When I had the flu last winter Mrs. Hale left soup on my porch, with a note that said LIBRARY BOOK IS OVERDUE, GET BETTER. I'd forgotten I even had a library book.

I go to the diner most mornings before I log in. Dad's usually there, same booth. The other day he was sitting with Marcus, of all people. Marcus was explaining something on his phone and Dad was squinting at it, holding it way too far from his face.

I sat down and asked what they were looking at.

"Marcus is showing me how to block those scam calls," Dad said. Then, without looking up, "What's the password again?"

"PieForBreakfast2," I said.

He nodded like he'd known it all along.