![]() ![]() Aboveground on this Thursday afternoon, a lot of white-collar workers seem to be here at work. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Are y'all still coming in tomorrow? So here I am, waiting and hoping the customers come back. But, hey, you got to start sometime if you want to try to make the comeback. ![]() When he reopened, he thought he'd see them all again. That all stopped when Sears shut down his shop for more than a year because of the pandemic. They used to leave their broken soles with Sears in this underground plaza before heading to work aboveground in nearby corporate towers. REZVANI: These shoes mostly belong to lawyers, consultants and financial advisers. SEARS: You know, they were here pre-pandemic, and they've never picked them up. Drawers full of heels, boots, loafers, all dropped off at his shoe repair shop here in downtown Los Angeles back in 2020 and long forgotten. JAMES WALLACE SEARS: These are pandemic shoes.ĪREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: For the last few years, 80-year-old James Wallace Sears has kept a collection of what he calls pandemic shoes. NPR's Arezou Rezvani visited one block of downtown Los Angeles. And while many people, of course, have long since returned to the office, more than half of Americans now work from home either some days or every day, which has left many corporate towers and office spaces empty. ![]() The pandemic intensified a trend of working from home. For some people in this country, the return to the office has not really happened. ![]()
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