Someone below pointed out the gravity analogy. Another is a spring, where an object can do work on the spring, and then the spring can return the energy by doing work on the object.

As Feynmann's lecture points out, the electrons that are worked by the applied electric field of the photon can be considered to be "fastened" to the atoms of the materials by a "spring". So the incoming photon moves the electron against a "spring", and the spring returns the energy by working on the electron, which produces a new oscillating electric field to add to the field of the incoming photon.