The desk's claims
The big four: carpal tunnel and repetitive strain from keyboard and mouse work; neck and back conditions from posture held eight hours a day for years; eye strain that occasionally masks a compensable condition; and the ordinary-but-real acute injuries — the slip in the break room, the box of paper lifted wrong, the fall on the parking-garage stairs. Offices also generate psychological claims, though states divide sharply on when mental-only injuries are compensable.
"That's not a real injury" — yes, it is
Because there's no accident to point to, insurers argue repetitive injuries came from hobbies, aging, or "anywhere." Two things beat that argument: a doctor's causation opinion that connects your specific work pattern (hours of keyboard time, task mix) to your specific condition, and an honest history — tell the doctor exactly what your workday looks like, in hours and motions. And know the clock: in most states the deadline for a cumulative injury starts when you knew or should have known the condition was work-related — often the day a doctor tells you — not when the pain began. The moment that connection is made, report in writing and date it.
Your home office is a workplace
If you're injured while performing your job at home — during work hours, doing work tasks — that's generally compensable, same as at headquarters. The fight is over the boundary: courts ask whether the injury arose out of the employment (carrying work equipment downstairs: usually yes; a purely personal errand mid-day: usually no; a coffee refill: often yes, under the "personal comfort" idea that short breaks serve the workday). With no witnesses at home, contemporaneous proof carries the claim: report immediately, note the exact task you were doing, and preserve anything that corroborates it — the meeting you were walking toward, the timestamps, the equipment involved.
Restrictions, accommodations, and going back
Office restrictions are usually accommodatable — voice software, split keyboards, schedule changes — which cuts both ways: wage benefits may stop quickly because suitable work exists, and a refusal to provide simple accommodations looks bad for the employer under both comp and the ADA. Get every restriction in writing from the doctor (keystroke limits, break intervals, lifting caps), give a copy to HR, and treat "we can't accommodate that" as a statement to get in writing too. The Return-to-Work Decision Matrix™ maps the scenarios.