My Unplayable Piano

I am a big fan of Tim Harford, so I have heard the story of Keith Jarrett and the unplayable piano several times. It shows up in his book Messy. It was also featured on his Cautionary Tales podcast, and before that he told the tale in his TED Talk. The story is essentially that Keith Jarrett faced an out of tune, piano with sticky keys and several other things wrong with it and was able to pull out an amazing piece of music that is still played and admired decades later.

I have now been given an unplayable piano in the form of a ridiculous commute. I live in Davis, California. I was given a remote work agreement. Only 3% of Census Bureau staff were granted a remote work agreement, despite many living outside the DC area post 2020. Not only was there a pandemic that caused us to be disconnected from the office, but the office itself was closed for remodeling until early this year (2025). Going from nearly 100% remote for 5 years to 3% was crazy. Now it is 0%, but with some weird cases, like me, reporting to alternate locations.

So, I am now reporting to the Berkeley FSRDC. That is a 1.5 hour commute by car, but I am travelling by train, which will take longer, but is more predictable and less stressful than driving in traffic. I am not allowed to do Census work while on the train. I mostly work with confidential data, and clearly couldn’t do that work on the train, but could potentially have done reading and writing and even meetings that do not involve confidential data. But, I am prohibited from doing any of it, so I am working on personal projects during my commute (including this blog).

When I’m in the FSRDC, I am able to work with the confidential data that composes most of my research, but the environment is not be particularly conducive for having meetings. Collaboration is difficult. I can talk with people and not look at results, or I can look at results and not talk. I will have to come up with systems where I look at things and leave notes, and then we discuss the notes without talking about the specific numbers. It may ultimately mean that I look more closely at results and put my thoughts down more completely. But the adjustment feels like I have been sent to work “in person” only to have myself completely cut off from most of the people I collaborate with.

I also have such better amenities at home. External monitors so I don’t have to work off of the tiny laptop screen, a decent WiFi connection (I am using my phone as a hotspot at the RDC), a teapot that isn’t three stories up in a room I only sometimes have access to. Traveling 2 hours for a much less productive work space is frustrating.

The commute is long, the work environment is not great. I don’t know how long I will be able to handle it. But I’m neither fired nor assigned back to DC (which would essentially force me to quit). I’ll see if I can pound out some tunes on this unplayable piano. And eventually the chaos will pass, we’ll go back to a more normal equilibrium, and maybe I’ll have some new creative habits and connections through the process.