Clueless Director Calls For A Meeting Over Mass Resignation After Company Cancels WFH, Employee Explains It In A Way He Would Understand
Working from home vs working from the office is a sore topic for plenty of workplaces. It’s also a source of tension and deep-seated resentment between many employees and their bosses. While some companies have found what works for them and have either embraced fully-remote work or a hybrid system that (arguably) picks the best of both worlds (though it’s still a work-in-progress), others demand that their employees show up at the office every single day. Naturally, many workers are resisting this (especially the ones who are getting good results and are more productive with a bit more flexibility).
Some employees are prepared to protect their interests and they don’t mind quitting and finding other, better jobs at competing firms. Instead of grumbling about how things could be better, they’re prepared to put their careers on the line for a better future. And to avoid those darn long commutes. One redditor, a mid-level manager at an IT company, shared what happened when their boss announced that they’ll be abolishing WFH.
Resignation after resignation made the project director very angry. However, the manager, the author of the viral r/antiwork post, took them aside and explained to them why exactly working from home is such a huge deal for many of their employees. Scroll down for the full story in the redditor’s own words. When you’re done, share your thoughts in the comments, and let us know what kind of system your job has embraced, and what works best for you personally, Pandas.
Whatever your personal feelings about working from home, you can’t deny that some employees prefer it and find it better for their productivity
Image credits: Chris Montgomery (not the actual photo)
A manager at a major IT company shared how their coworkers reacted when upper management decided to get rid of WFH and pushed everyone to return to the office
Image credits: Headway (not the actual photo)
What stings the most is the fact that there’s a double standard in play here. ‘Ordinary’ employees are supposed to waste their time commuting to the office while management still has the freedom to work as they like. That kind of injustice really gets people’s blood boiling. Especially when they’ve been delivering good results.
Once you realize how much time you save by not having to drive, bike, or walk to the office, it’s incredibly hard to go back. Many employees feel like they have far more time and energy if they get to work from home at least some of the time. Why bother being stuck in a traffic jam when you could be spending time with your loved ones or working on your hobby?
Recently, Bored Panda analyzed the entire WFH situation with workplace expert Lynn Taylor, the author of ‘Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job.’ She was very open about the fact that working from home has its downsides, not just all the plentiful upsides. Part of effective communication with management entails understanding where they’re coming from, too.
“Employees have had a taste of remote work and for many, it’s hard to go back to a traditional work environment. This has been underscored by the Great Resignation. Employees have seen productivity benefits; better focus; no commute time; and less on-site politics and gossip,” she told Bored Panda during an interview.
“That’s not to mention the fact that they can better attend to family and personal matters. This greater work-life balance and flexibility is a major stress reducer—and for many, is even worth a pay cut, if not a job change.”
Meanwhile, here are some of the downsides of WFH that the workplace expert noticed: “Some managers do need their employees on-site, especially those where required face-to-face interaction with customers or other employees is necessary. In addition, when everything is left to offsite work, there is a loss of spontaneity and the human bond that occurs when you’re physically visible. And a larger human need is to build something impactful together, as a team or ‘community.” She noted that some employees can feel increasingly isolated and depressed when they don’t have these interactions with their coworkers.
“Further, more junior employees don’t get the benefit of observing mentors and managers in action, or solving spur-of-the-moment problems real-time. There is much more to advancing in your career than interfacing with people on a screen. Social skills, diplomacy and other lifelong emotional intelligence abilities are likely being adversely affected for those in the early stages of their career,” the expert shared with Bored Panda.
“All that said, this new work paradigm has revealed just how much can be accomplished digitally, much to the surprise of those at every level. It also demonstrates that much of what corporate America thought was a necessity, is no longer. Many companies are happy to reduce their real estate expenses, as well. The remote work revolution is putting productivity under a microscope. A digital relationship removes virtually all personal aspects good or bad. It removes downtime from a traditional work environment, such as water cooler chit-chat. But some could argue it also removes camaraderie,” she said.
Introducing a hybrid WFH-office system at the company could help balance everything out and give workers access to most of the upsides with fewer downsides. You’d be able to interact with your colleagues while also having the opportunity to work in your home environment where you can (of course, depending on the person) focus more easily.
“Whether it’s a hybrid environment or working from home, employees will need to make an extra effort to communicate often with their managers—and regularly keep them apprised of project status. This is not just good business, it protects job security and means better results,” Lynn explained to us, adding that if you’re good at your job, it’s the best way to maintain job security.
“The downsides of remote work can be mitigated with a hybrid work environment. This allows the best of both worlds. And it appears more advantageous than, say, a four-day workweek, which can result in people working later hours or overtime, regardless. If they end up working on a fifth day to keep pace, it defeats the purpose, such as when clients or vendors need to reach them on that extra day,” she shared.
“Regardless of the state of the economy, the work from home landscape is creating more project workers and consultants. Because of the positive experience working from home, many have now shifted to independent work, especially when employers have insisted they return full-time. Employers may lose valued talent to this alternate option by not offering the flexibility of remote work,” Lynn said that some workers choose to look for employment elsewhere if WFH is no longer an option.
“Of course, any employee that abuses the privilege of working offsite won’t remain long-term at any company,” she once again stressed that good job performance is the key factor when asking management for a more flexible system.
The OP shared some more of their thoughts in the comment section of their r/antiwork post
And here’s what some other internet users said about the pros of working remotely
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In the U.S. pre-covid, so many people had jobs that required 8-10 hours/day in the office, even when there wasn't that much work to fill he time. People would sit at their desks doing online shopping or scrolling through social media for hours on their work computers. Yet these same companies are now worried that their WFH employees might fold some laundry or walk their dog on company time.
I never understood the mindset that *only* work must be done on company time. As long as the work gets done and done well, as it obviously has been, then what's the damn problem? People *cannot* be constantly in motion. There must be time to pause, reflect, and heaven forbid THINK. That may occur during a walk, playing a game of solitaire, or playing with a pet for a couple of minutes. The bosses do it all the time. They're greedy bastards who feel that any employee who takes a moment is 'stealing' from them. This almost makes me happy that I *cannot* work because of several disabilities~~I don't have to deal with those asses.
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my job tried to bring us all back full time to the office, i was absolutely miserable and didn't hide it. a month later, we were told we only needed to come in 1 day week for department meetings, and 1 day a month for a company meeting. plus they gave me a raise and another week of vacation. i have since stopped looking for another job. :)
With us, we've got a blend of people who have to be in the facility and people who can easily do their job totally remotely, plus some who work best splitting things up. I'm in the middle group - when they suggested I should look at returning to the office a few days a week, I tallied up how much time I'm not spending driving every month, plus mileage at federal rates and suggested if they could figure out a way to give me that many dollars and that many hours off for every day I was in the office on a schedule, we'd be able to reach an agreement. That said, if something comes up where I think I could do the job better from the office, I'll go in, I just don't want it to be part of my daily schedule anymore.
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have been working from home since before the pandemic. i regain 3 hour commute time. My employer pays less in electricity, water, coffee, facility management, heck less toilet paper and soap if you really want to get down to it. They gain extra time worked because I don't have to dash out the door to get my train. less time off because I can get to my doctor and back online in a fraction of the time. Win win folks. Those that want you in are so they can justify their office space and watch what you are doing. Easily done without standing over me.
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I worked for a large corporation that allowed WFH for two years. It was wonderful and everyone was happy and productive. When the company made us come back I decided to find work near my home. I found a better job with a short commute and a larger salary. Employees are taking a more active role in their futures and companies need to adapt.
I've worked from home or a hotel room since the '90s. If I'm productive in my job my boss keeps me around. If I'm not he would get rid of me. We have weekly webinar meetings and we're all grown ups. We all know what the job entails. We don't need camaraderie, we have a job to do.
Best manager I ever had used to schedule an appointment in his own calendar for 8.30 - 9.30 every day so that if he wanted to come in late he could. Other than one team who, due to the nature of their work had to work to the clock, he didn't really care what hours we worked as long as we got our work done. That said, he did NOT like us taking work home, he told me off for taking a bunch of job applications home for shortlisting because I didn't have time to do it during hours. That wasn't because he didn't want to pay overtime, he genuinely did not want us eating into time with our families. That was how he worked and it was how he expected us to work. Most of his staff considered him a friend first and a manager second.
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My daughter worked from home during COVID. She is now WFH 2 days per week. Her boss, who WFH from Texas, insisted she come into Manhattan from Brooklyn (1.5 hrs. each way including walking back and forth from the train, on the train. She cannot drive in because it would cost $70 each day for parking and tolls. Of the two days one has to be Wednesday because flies in one Wednesday a month. The reason this is nonsense is because my daughter's team works all over the country so obviously they have been remote since date of hire. Only the staff located in NY are penalized by the end of WFH, productivity has gone up, people are quitting, they are having trouble hiring at the base office because they don't offer WFH.
A lifelong female friend has just moved 1500km away to another midsize city and province. Her current employer (8+ years) is happy to have her continue working from home. This firm hired her before the ink was dry on her diploma, has seen her through 2 maternity leaves, and has no expectation for her to visit the office unless absolutely necessary, and then any travel expenses will be paid for. Graphic designer is somewhere on her CV as is the word computer but that’s all I know about the intricacies of her job. Her husband is self employed in IT and has been working from home for most of his professional life. This young family left behind family and friends but made that sacrifice as they couldn’t afford the down payment on a small home here where “starter” homes are 1million plus. They now have a great newer home, a reasonable mortgage, no commute time, and no outside day care for 2 young children. Besides missing family and friends, I find it really hard to see a downside here.
I don’t understand not needing daycare for young children if both parents are working, even if they work at home. My husband and I both work from home, but we need childcare because we work during the day and can’t take care of our kids while we work.
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My father was the #2 guy at a financial services firm in Houston, TX. He started there in the early '90s. By the very nature of the work, there was a lot of traveling involved. Most of their full-time employees didn't even live in Houston, they lived in other parts of the state. Maybe once or twice a year my father's boss would insist everyone come in for a sit-down in Houston to find out what everyone was up to, but the rest of the year he didn't care where anyone lived, as long as the work got done. The office was based in Houston, but they had employees as far afield as Arlington, Dallas, Waco, etc. If my father's firm could figure that out 30 years ago, it shouldn't be a big leap for companies to figure that out now.
Company I work for has quite a large office building and 3 floors of that are renting out to 2 other companies as it's becoming clearer by the day that the large office spaces of yesteryear are no longer needed because of the full WFH or a hybrid model which my company does (2 in office/3 WFH). Plus I'm starting to see quite a few meeting room space rental companies popping up all around
They're beginning to convert them over for housing because of the housing shortage and they make a profit instead of losing money.
Load More Replies... After 31 years at the same company, of which the last 12 years have been mainly WFH, my wife took redundancy (it was a too-good-to-miss offer). So then she took another job, not quite as good, but still WFH.as it was COVID time. She was working as fixed-term initially, and at the end of that term, she was offered an open-ended contract. She was inclined to take it - until they said they wanted her in the office 3 days a week. That'd be around 100/week extra outlay, plus 2 hours traveling. The mad thing is that all her client areas were remote and her boss was WFH from a different city. They couldn't get their heads round why she said no. She now has a home-based job on 60% more.
Hybrid is BS. Many of the benefits of full remote are not possible. You still have to live somewhat close to the office, you still have to endure some coworkers, etc. I'm anyway not interested in water cooler conversations. I only give a closer look to job offers with a full-remote option. Everything else ends up in the trash.
My hubs WFH for two years and he absolutely loved it. I did too. I was an "essential" employee and not able, so I don't know the joy of rolling out of bed and logging on. But we saved so much money with one of us working from home. Now they made him go back and he's miserable and they don't care. I don't get it. It saved them money, morale was better and the employees preformed better. These corporations are stupid.
Came into the office one day since COVID. It was the least productive day of my 30-ish year career, thanks in part to the extrovert sitting right next to me who wanted to talk all day. Gah. And the meetings we had all planned had to be on Zoom calls anyway since the conference rooms were all booked. So that was a huge waste of time. Fortunately my current team lead is in another state, and has said as long as he is remote, I can be too. Hurray.
My best friend works in the IT field and has been WFH for over two years. He says the only way he will go back is if he can dress the way he does at home. While this would be YouTube gold, it would def not be legal. About a year ago his boss said something about them coming back to the office and he said "check my before and after metrics and get back to me on that." Nothing more has been said to him. His company produces software for the medical industry and he is their go to guy when no one else can fix it. He's written productivity scripts that enhance his job significantly. No one has said a word to him about coming back since, and they recently announced his division will be WFH perm. Besides all those hours in traffic the $300 to $500 in gas, and the other headaches, there is one more HUGE expense that is being saved in some cases - child care. Another friend was able to buy a really good used car because her kids can come straight home after school now.
I've been WFH since everything went nuts in 2020. I will soon be going back one day every other week. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but at least it's not every day. The new people are all in office all the time. With enough seniority you can choose either work from home (most of the time) or in office all the time. The people who want in office generally don't have the best set ups for working from home. Loud pets, neighbors, kids, and so on. One coworker wants to be in office because she has a tiny apartment and was feeling the walls closing in. I'm lucky in that I only have about a 15 minute commute each way when I do go in the office, but that's partly due to my shift time as I don't start or end close to peak commuting hours.
I worked in IT at a major university in the midwest. Our IT staff pivoted on a dime for COVID and did a stellar job all while WFH. Now that the university is requesting (some required) to come back to campus, our HR person internally said "WFH is a phase" and the managers are only allowed to approve WFH on a 6-month basis. People have been leaving left and right despite an amazing benefits package the university officers.
I think it’s all about the domino effect. These corporatists are all about validating how essential they and their jobs are. They realize that they must continue to support and uphold the system- however artificial (and whose job is really necessary in the grand scheme of things?). The illusion is aided by an army of worker bees. As long as we show up, they get paid. Consider the repercussions if these companies abandoned their rented offices. From Building owners to the janitorial staff… it all has a domino effect on entire industries. Change is not a bad thing but it instills fear in the elites about the status quo… and their investments.
Those buildings could be housing and everyone keeps their jobs. We have 500,000 less housing stock units than before they pandemic and may be underbuilt by millions units. Win-win. Never going back to the office.
Load More Replies... Some idiots in companies managements are so little related to reality that hurts :D Good job to roast this one :D
Just the real SLEEP made such a huge difference. So much less stress.
Just how many more years are y’all gonna be blaming this s**t on boomers? I’m 67 this year and am supposedly in the middle of that group. (Frankly, I disagree with that, too. My generation, while still considered boomers, had a very different upbringing and life experience from, the one experienced by my siblings - all boomers, and all 10+ years older than I am.) Most boomers, particularly those working in upper /middle management at large companies (IT, perhaps, especially - of which I was one) long ago retired. I know we’ve been a convenient scapegoat for all sorts of things for years, now. I even agree that many of the stereotypes fit the older boomers. But, at some point it’s time to recognize that boomers have been largely supplanted in these management roles by Gen X, and the oldest of them are now 57 - right about the prime age for these senior roles.
It's interesting to me that the comment directly above yours (at the time I am currently responding to it) is someone named Karen not thrilled about the last Redditor's comment using the name Karen as a well-known adjective for a certain type of entitled person. The term Boomer has undergone the same sort of "adjectivification". Just as the Redditor's comment was not meant to call out this specific Karen (the individual person), nor all people who happen to be named Karen, the use of Boomer should be recognized to not be meant to call out everyone born between 1946 and 1964, but rather a certain attitude about "how things have always been/should remain". Someone referred to as "a Karen" might be actually named Phillip or Nancy, and someone referred to as "a Boomer" may well be firmly Gen X or even Millennial in actual age.
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My daughter has been working from home since her boss’s whole family got Covid at a funeral! The boss had been a denier and has since apologized. My daughter hasn’t been sick a day since WFH, she loves it. Her department has just been traded to a larger company out of state and her department will continue to WFH.
Add to fuel, parking, time being able to easily eat healthy and fresh or leftovers easily without having to fight with a disgusting work fridge, super cheap coffee, no dry cleaning. Even without a pay bump wfh saved me $1k a month easy. I ate better, breathed clean fresh air, used the extra time for bike rides. Wfh has great potential for people to not only retire earlier but retire healthier. FYI, in my city it was the downtown businesses who pressured the government to pressure employers to get people back downtown spending money. Screw that, level the buildings and have a vehicle free open air market with local farmers and such and I'd gladly spend my money there.
The workplace expert (Lynn Taylor) you worked with nailed it on the head with the good and bad of WFH vs in-office. There's ups and downs to both, though I think overall the move toward WFH is better than driving to an office where you're going to be glued to a screen for hours anyway. WFH is more efficient for the workers and the company, and in many ways healthier for the employees mentally. (Especially if they're introverts, which tends to be a lot of desk-job people). But, I also feel like the more digital our society becomes, the more distant we are growing from each other. Human interaction is also healthy. And I don't just mean good, happy interaction. Bad experiences and people can also teach us how to handle conflict, to learn patience, and appreciate our good relationships even more. There are some key social skills that are being lost when you don't have to be around people all the time. You might not like being around them, but the development of those skills is crucial.
Part of my problem was I've never been really healthy physically. I wasn't survive my birth and I've been sickly but I always drive myself hard but I don't have an immune system and Covid has played havoc with it! I can't be vaccinated because the risk of death is too great and I don't build antibodies and I've had Covid 5 times so I pretty much self quarantine all the time because whenever I'm around people I end up with Covid or something else.😅
Load More Replies... I think people on WFH are some kind of heroes. For me it would be just impossible to work from home 😅 Fortunately, my work cannot be done remotely. I really need to be at my working place. I am commuting about one hour one way, than one hour back home. And plus getting ready for the duty takes me around 1,5 - 2 hours. And still, even that I cannot work remotely at all, the company is covering our commuting, plus other bonuses. I would never leave my job for WFH offer even if it would be payed more. But even though I can fully understand those workers who are getting mad while forced to return back to offices.
I worked in hospital healthcare before retiring a few years ago. Some professions don't allow for working remotely. If wfh is the new normal, perhaps people whose work requires personal contact should be given (as part of their compensation package) an additional monthly or annual stipend equal to what remote workers save in time, fuel/auto maintenance or transportation cost and general aggravation.
I think you're right. This is a really good time to figure this out. Some other countries guarantee benefits we don't (like childcare, have better public transport than most of our cities, etc). If the way we think about working is evolving we should think about what we want that new landscape to look like. If we let it settle "naturally" that inevitably will mean corporations are going to organize to give the minimal support they can, particularly to employees who need that support most bc their employers know they don't have the flexibility, means, or skills to get a different job. If we legislate changes it doesn't allow companies to make those things "extras/incentives", so people don't have to be able to work for certain companies to get the benefits. Some corporations can straight up afford that literally billions of times over. For smaller businesses, if certain large corporations were made to actually pay their taxes perhaps people could get a write-off on their taxes?
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I've been working from home for 10 years now. I am far more productive working from home. No commute time, less time spent in useless meetings, etc, etc. The only managers who want you back in the office are micromanagement types who feel the need to justify their existence.
I totally agree. If you have the technology and onsite work is not needed, WFH is the best option.
Load More Replies... Great article. Not to detract from that, but I just want to call out the casual bigotry both in the article and the Reddit quotes. Every decade has its socially acceptable bigotry, seems ours is intergenerational sneering.
There is an incalculable loss of serendipitous ideas and discovery when people in certain technical jobs are isolated from one another.
Conveniently, no one is talking about the customers nationwide, perhaps, worldwide who are not getting any help because there's nobody in the offices to help. For some companies and government intities (like the DOL in GA), the pandemic was an excuse to shirk job duties and hide from the public whose taxes pay their bills. I don't care about IT companies, but the government workers need to be in the office to actually help people.
Say what you will, WFH is cool and all, but when you have government agencies and institutions like the DOL, sending you letters but refusing to provide you with answers to your queries, and nobody is in the offices to help, something needs to be done. The tech companies can do as they wish but government workers need to have their asses in the office PERIOD.
Although working remotely improves everyone's life, do you realize that all these WFH jobs can be outsourced to people in other countries?
I teach ESL. Teaching from home wasn't *me* at home, it was the students. I still went in to the school, which was no big deal. Teaching an entire class online is fine (I created a website with interactive stuff, students could write and respond, etc.), and teaching in person is fine. The problem came when the school had a mixed class, SOME in person, and SOME on the computer. Each type of teaching requires different materials, different preparation, different focus, but both require TIME. The school expected me to do mixed home/F2F classes, which meant TWICE the preparation, and HALF the results because I can't give my best effort to two groups at the same time, and then they complain that "the kids aren't learning!" All they cared about was money, not the reality of the situation or the fact that I'm the one who had to deal with it.
I think that humans need a certain amount of social contact to be satisfied with life; some more so than others. If your job is the only place where you get that, we'll, that's the way it is. When I went to part time at my job, I joked that the only reason I was still working was to go out to lunch! If I were working now, I'd be happy to go to the office a couple of days a week. Everyone 's situation is different. If you'd be better off WFH, then you should be allowed to do it.
My theory as to why the upper management seem to be the only people who want people back into the office is, if there aren't people there for them to "manage", there is literally no need for their overpaid jobs.
Ok so first I would like to address the comments directed towards "boomers".. guess what.. they don't want to go back to the offices either !! I love how liberals are so against generalisations and yet think it's ok if they use them. The term "boomers" defines what generation a group of people are from that's a definition of time.. not behavior. Secondly if we are the cause of climate change isn't WFH a first step and easy change to make to lower carbon emissions ? We already did it !! No don't do that.. carbon taxes yeah thats what we need. Let's see how could this work ? Less gas used.. well that helps with pollution and our pocket books especially now.. it practically ensures we could produce our own fuel needs with out relying on foreign oil. Less people die in accidents.. All those office building could be converted into apartment buildings and lower housing costs for our genZ kids that are getting screwed with ridiculously high rents.. happier, healthier stronger families. Win
My husband's company went WFH for all the office people when the pandemic hit--they never went back to in office when they figured out that everyone could do their job from home and they saved having to pay for office space. The warehouse guys still had to come in, and the sales guys (like my husband) were already kind of "WFH" so not much changed for him. So, yeah, if it's possible for your jobs to be done remotely, then that absolutely should happen. All that downtown empty office space can be turned into housing.
Stop giving Republicans positions of power at businesses. Problem solved
There is a big reason for having people working in the office. As a Safety Professional I can not check the home from hazards and make sure that workstations are ergonomically correct. On top of that if someone trips over their dog while working the company is on the hook. All I can say is that people need to look at all sides of the question.
I don't get all the complaints about working from home. You would have no lineman, firemen, police, restaurants...etc if everyone felt the same way. Not to mention stores to get groceries and home repairs.
Unfortunately due the type of work, sys admin 1 for a supercomputer, I did I only got 2 two weeks working from home due to covid. But the first two week period I was down with covid, what luck. But now I'm looking for work after getting terminated.
WFH offers companies many benefits. A reduction in overhead. Less employees standing around the break room complaining about management or lack there of. Employees also not discussing who makes how much, etc, etc. Office gossip mill is a lot less. This is one of the biggest detriments to staff morale. Production can still be tracked. Employees are happier and have the time for work life balance.
With this rave about WFH and people standing up to employers, it won't be long before all the bad managers and CEOs get what's coming to them and we, the new generation, lead the way into better working conditions and environments for all... Hopefully with no more power corruption, but that's a wishful dream
Must be nice to be able to work from home. I think they should give incentives for the workers who do have to work on site and workers whom wfh should pay for it. Offices don't clean themselves. Construction workers who build the offices don't get to do it remotely. Power lines and communication lines aren't strung and repaired remotely to bean counters homes. There are so many jobs that require skill and steel toes instead of pajamas and a laptop. I work in the beverage industry and only got hazard pay for one month during the pandemic while office staff also did while working from home. If all employees work from home the job market for everyone would deteriorate. Sorry, I'm just jealous I can't pet the dog and fold laundry at home because I didn't have the foresight to attain a college level degree which is barely applicable to my wfh job.
I agree that a very large sector of our workforce doesn't get payed nearly enough - including for things like hazard pay. But I don't think WFH employees should pay for that. Companies/corporations are the ones profiting off all of our work. If productivity stays the same companies make the same amount of money off wfh employees (and even save office costs), so why should the employees be penalized? Companies need to start paying a fair wage to all employees. We don't need an attitude of one type of worker vs another, or some workers getting less so others can get more. These companies make enough profit (plus many b/trillions) to pay all their workers fairly, but they're completely happy if we do this worker v worker, "skill and steel toes" v "bean counters", fighting over scraps thing bc then we aren't scrutinizing them. They can spend their time giving themselves bonuses and raises, and figuring out how to get out of paying any taxes.
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I work for a grocery company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. When the pandemic hit, everyone from corporate began working from home, which lasted for two years, while employees risked their lives working. To add insult to injury, our “ hero” pay was canceled as soon as they milked all the P.R. out of it and when communities voted to make them pay their employee's hazard pay, they closed the stores down permanently. Their actions were in direct violation of the company's core values. I also work another job and commute three hours a day and I work seven days a week. I just turn in a vacation I was scheduled to take because there is no one to run my department which takes specialized knowledge. Can you imagine a grocery department that hasn't been touched for seven days? Imagine the mess waiting for you when you come back. That's why I gave back my vacation. So I hope my life puts yours in prospective. If I would be offered your job at Google I would LIVE at the office.
The only issue I see here is where OP painted all "boomer" managers with the same brush as the p***k he worked. My case in point was with my previous job I had before I went into "semi-retirement". It is true enough that most of these managers are "boomers", but that is only because the generations coming up behind have not had a real chance to take the management reins. And yes, I'll admit that a lot of them are boomers hanging on to their (itty bitty) power for dear life. However, at my previous job, the main supervisor was Gen X and her "team lead" was a Millennial. Both of them were raging narcissists who absolutely HATED the fact that we had to WFH during the pandemic. Bothe of them were constantly on the phone to different team members to the point that no one could do any meaningful work because we were always answering the boss and team leader's calls.
Had to continue in the reply section, sorry. I finally told my boss that if she didn't stop calling me over minor details, I was going to stop working for the day and turn my phone off. My words were, "I am not a pirate and you are not a parrot. Get off my shoulder!" She wanted that control and was ecstatic when people were told to come back to the office. However, out of 40 people that were on staff, only 18 returned. I was not one of them. I chose my retirement option. According to people I talked to, everyone who did not come back gave their reason as the boss and her team lead (a** kisser). The team collapsed and the company lost a very lucrative contract because of her ineptitude. All that to say, it's not just boomers who are doing this. It's also the younger ones who are just getting into the management game, and are going about it wrong,, trying to pull the same c**p that boomers are doing, and they are finding out that with options, people are not going for it...AT ALL.
Load More Replies... I had a career change out of IT a year ago (not because of WFH or Pandemic), so I worked in IT through the pandemic and WFH. In fact, I was in the middle of the mess as they sent home a large workforce without resourcing to WFH, as one of my responsibilities was Remote Access Management. Now - my industry is not one that easily works from home. LOTS of direct client contact that cannot be replaced. So we had to get as many people working from home as possible in order to minimise risk to those who could not work from home. I have to say, once the initial chaos settled, for IT staff, I think we got more done. And people were happier not having to commute, or interact all the time - that stereotype about introverted IT people, there is truth in that! I had an acting manager after things started to settle who tried to force us all back into the office... he didn't last long. Now, almost all or IT, and large amounts of the org. work Hybrid.
If a person can work, learn, and shop from home, there is less reason to travel to buildings to do those things. Turn empty offices, schools, and malls into housing. Leave the cafeterias/foodcourts, gyms, etc, and a handful of meeting rooms. Watch how terribly overpriced areas with awful traffic empty out until they are liveable again.
If employers want loyalty they should get some dogs. Particularly stupid dogs at that. Human employees are mercenary, we're only there for the money. As soon as employers recognise that (and some do) conditions usually improve.
Never mix business with pleasure and always be self employed so you dont have to build up a repertoire with anyone else unless you choose to. No one supervises me. They just hang around to be nosy or see what they can get out of me. I rarely feel the need to socialize with people who dont make any effort to socialize with me as all people lead busy lives and I dont want to intrude or disrupt unless necessary but true teamwork understands these things and are always within reach in your social network when applicable.
I think a lot of upper management would lose their jobs they wouldn't be needed. Unless they take demotion. Want employees on site. I hope WFH becomes a norm think of all the offices closed down, huge impact.
We pretty much had the same meeting, WFH is now hybrid, 3 days in / 2 at home. Leadership Team (oxymoron) must go into the office, thankfully I work on my own and decide on where I work depending on the weather.. if it rains I stay home, if it's sunny I stay home, cloudy I go to the office .. no one know where I am as my teams background is always the same.
I retired in 2016 because my job "moved" to Louisiana. I live in the PNW, I had been working from home, successfully, 4 days a week and going in to the office one day a week per company policy. I could have continued to WFH 5 days a week with no problem but the company had a building to fill in LA. It was a state of the art facility, guaranteed to bring jobs to the city and there was a monetary tax bonus for fulfilling this agreement. I didn't want to move so I took early retirement, but if I had to work again, it definitely would have to be WFH, it's the way to go.
Bosses don't feel nearly as connected to the operations of the company when there are no employees there to talk with. It's hard to see what people are doing, and where they are at in a project.
IMHO, the biggest problem with G is that they hired upper level managers from M$, A, and FB who have always micromanaged their IT and don’t trust them to WFH, even though it was working just fine for the past several years. So now G isn’t G any more. It’s just another ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves’ company. The layoffs were to shut up shareholders, one in particular who threatened to sue unless they reduced the workforce. Does he care if it’s keeping thing from running as well? Nope. It didn’t even raise the stock price back up like it was supposed to. There’s more, but I’m going to go take a blood pressure pill, self medicate in other, legal ways and put a hex on him.
One of my former co-workers did so much work that they had to assign three or more people to handle what she was doing single-handedly. Yet when the boss's boss wanted to make small talk with her in his office, he got POed when she left his office to get her work done so that her direct manager wouldn't ding her on evaluations.
confused by overuse and misuse of the word boomer. Is this persons boss actually from the baby boomer generation? No? The it doesn't f8cking apply and come up with a new word.
I work from home and have done for about 4 months, I found ways of doing things differently and saving money on stationery, printing and processing costs, so much so that other entities contact me to ask how I did it. They still go into the office !!
I suddenly understand why people live in the Loop! Ok, I know there were some apartments built down there before Covid but I’ll pretend. Years ago I ended up staying in a funky little hotel in the Loop during the week that actually had everything I needed. It had a pool, generous breakfast, included parking, lake views, easy access … it just seemed strange being there at night. I hope it feels different to be there during the day now. I don’t live anywhere near Illinois anymore so it’s been close to a decade since I’ve been to Chicago. Congratulations on losing the commute though.
My last job required me to sit at a desk for 10 hours a day 5 days a week, we were so slammed with work. This meant as a dept. we weren't required to participate in any meetings we just get an email with the needed info. The dept. head had his office across from ours and decided to install two HUGE windows in our walls so he could keep an a literal eye on us (along with every other person walking by). The only interaction we had was through email or phone. The man rarely walked in and talked to us in Person. Please explain why i need to drive 40 mins each way to work? To add to it, our work PC's were unbelievably under powered for Solidworks software while every one in the design dept. had high powered rigs at home. Face it, there's no reason why some position can't be remote. It's a vestige of an older generation that still tells their children to get up early and shake managers hands for job openings.
We just had wfh implemented by law. All employees can request this, and as a company you have to have a good reason to deny the request (for example you with customers in a shop). I work an hour away from home but I try to go twice a week but at least one day. I noticed it is especially important for younger employees to learn and to have these small interactions and discussions you otherwise don't have.
That first reaction threw me. TEN DOLLARS for a lunch? Even sushi would only be €8,49 and that's in the Albert Heijn!
We ran into a similar issue. Although, we required everyone to return to office including managers and officers. HQs only logical reasoning after much debate was not being able to justify our lease and having such a large office space. They suggested the costs with breaking the lease, finding a smaller space, moving and build-out of a new location wasn’t tenable. They also gave some hogwash about us being recognizable by our well-rooted current location. A team of middle managers broke down the cost of hiring & training new employees to replace a large percentage jumping ship for competitors and were able to show it was equal to or higher than moving location. We moved, kept WFH, require zero days per month of in-office. About 45-50% come in a a few days per month and only those necessary on-site have permanent work stations. Even with the technical costs (RAPs, monitors, internet services, home office furniture allowances, etc) it’s still cheaper than requiring in-office.
I'd like to see more of the federal government work from home so people can work from states away.
All my colleagues work from home, I have the longest commute (1.5hr one way) and the lowest salary but I have to go in daily because my boss doesn't want to work from home (he lives 3min away) and hates the sound of a ringing phone so someone has to answer ist for him. Im about ready to spit in his smug face any day now.
I was looking for wfh work before the pandemic was a thing, because I had a problem with walking and it would make my commute unpredictable. It was because of the pandemic timing that I got the chance to get to a doctor where I was diagnosed with OCD and Anxiety (honestly didn't know that was my problem). Since lock down was a thing, and I found a WFH job, I was able to get work done, and take care of my health without missing days from work. WFH really helps some employees be better at their jobs by simply aiding in time management.
While I understand some employees prefer the social aspect of working in a group, I cannot understand why parents, in particular, would want to. With the costs of childcare, it is totally uneconomic to have hours of commuting instead.
Hahaha the mindset and entitlement from people who are mad that they can't WFH anymore is amazing. I really can't wait to see what happens 5 years from now.
Link because aparently it is very hard for journalists to cite their sources and milk reddit for ad revenue https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/vww0d5/abolish_wfh_enjoy_mass_resignation/
Evolve or perish Remote work is the way to go. It's good for the individual, good for the family and good for the environment. Surprisingly it's very good for the companies. And if you don't understand it, you will be one of those that will not survive. Human relations exist out of the place of work. Actually you could make the point that relations in the work place are artificial. Look at Amazon, do the people that deliver parcels have to go to some daily meeting point to just to talk to each other and do a good job? No. Now imagine the police, instead of going to their headquarters, building a strong group bondage independent of the community, many times out of pace from the community... imagine them going out of their homes, and do the beat in their communities. Where they would be respected and could really help their community. Not like in the old days of course, but with the help of new technologies. Yes it is possible. Any way, in 15 to 20 years, humans will not need to work.
That must be a damn stupid company. Lot of smart companies are actually seizing the pandemic into huge cost saving measures by putting the whole work force either permanently on WFH or on hybrid mode. Because 1) it clearly shows that 2 years of WFH didn't affect the performance 2) Real estate cost for renting the offices is quite substantial. Hence savings over millions a month in rentals alone, not to mention utilities etc.
WFH is fine as long as you don't depend in others to do parts of your job. For example, creating a pitch deck presentation and then asking someone in the office to print bind and ship out for you because you're WFH and they're onsite. That's BS. That's infringing on other people's time.
These fools had it coming. As soon as web 2.0 was invented, commiting for non-physical labor became obsolete. But the overseer mentality is strong, especially among blowhards whose only purpose was to be physically intimidating, for whom the largely exaggerated pandemic was the first time they were expected to produce tangible results themselves for years, maybe ever. The WFH movement was the real motivation behind overexaggerated pandemic excuses. Workers took their only opportunity to radically change company policy in accordance with the technology we've had for years, that ought to have liberated humanity from the conveyer belt 19th century logic of pre-information age management.
Cool leave your job. Do you not think there aren't people out there who will jump at the chance to have a job? The problem everyone has these days is believing they're not replaceable.
I've been driving to work before and after the pandemic. American workers are just plain spoiled and think everyone owes the something. Get with the program of returning to work like everyone else
WFH has disadvantages, too. I work in tourism and am at the receiving end of people working from home and without access to the traditional office communication (i.e. just quickly asking someone next door how something is done) Being at home also means being isolated and the whole aspect of water cooler talks is gone. And these talks can be very important - for personal connections as well. But in cases where productivity is better and where people are leavong in droves, it just makes no sense
The OP just wanted to feel special by posting a BS story. There is almost no chance that conversation actually occurred. "I took a deep breath coz this boomer is gonna be taught a lesson"... I'm willing to bet that millennial (just an educated guess) just sat there in his entitled little manner and just hoped he wouldn't be fired because they realized how useless he is. What a load of $#!t
I can't wrap my head around this because I've never had the kind of career you can work from home. But I'm beginning to have a better understanding of my dad's rage disorder from what I read about what everyone is talking about the 9 to 5 type of careers. He worked over an hour from home in a fairly high stress job but trying to kill me is still no excuse 😅. He was mentally ill. But I chose the medical and mental health field just for that reason and that's not a job you can work from home. I could just see it on facetime, no John you'll be fine, those are just delusions, no one is trying to kill. Please put the knife down, don't stab your roommate, don't commit suicide, those are not good thoughts, everything will be just fine. Please take your medicine and go to bed. What do you mean you didn't eat? I'm just kidding but these are the real things I dealt with on a daily basis which shows why I couldn't work from home. But I'm gaining more understanding of what my parents battled.
That's funny. When attempting to call Google support during covid, they did NOT have phone support. How was that possible, being everyone was working from home ONLINE! Google can't figure out VoIP? Their support team had to be in the office to answer calls? No wonder they wanted to abolish WFH!
It's honestly really strange since these jobs are basically desk jobs, it's honestly odd Desk jobs = wfh option Line / factory job is required to stay for you know they have to unless there is no work order. Janitor and mechanics have yo stay basically till the end unless every other department leaves. I honestly wonder how Janitor jobs work when you need 40 hours but you might be only at the building for 1 or 2 days, do you still have to go for the other 3 days?
The responsibilities and burden of it and that goes for both management, business and employees. Life is a two-way Street.
Large sums of cash, who I am going to leave my car to in my will as well as the remainder and residue of my estate to, and finally who I want to make medical decisions for me should I become incapable to do so and my wishes regarding life support, pain management and even assisted suicide. Do I really want your intake employee paralegal to have that much flexibility that the others in the background could overhear my conversation and then discusses it with others outside of the conversation and low and behold, someone who is not even my family takes advantage of the privy information and me and my family potentially end up out on the streets and in a homeless shelter. And what worse, what if me or them come down with COVID-19 or any other serious illness. The point, hybrid and happy medium and do not end up having your clientele become the flex arm in an adverse way. The employees want flexibility and they demand you give it to them well then be prepared to bear and shoulder
Being in an office doesnt prevent that and can often make it worse. Most of my job is working directly with our kids (educational nonprofit) but Im also in charge of the data management and when Im home I am able to keep everything private, in the office it is open and anyone - including other families and kids going past my desk (or any of our desks) can hear and see that information on our screens or if we are on the phone with someone. At least on Zoom most people are on headsets so it is only thier half of the conversation that can be heard, our office phones are loud enough that we can generally hear the person on the other end through the handheld phone.
Load More Replies... Hybrid should be the standard of the new normal. Give them flexibility, but not too much flexibility that a client ends up in a homeless shelter or psychiatric ward. Example, the legal profession. Hypothetically, I am a client of yours and I retain your services to do estate planning for in the event I pass. Well, let’s say I have two houses, a very expensive and valuable car and I want to talk to you about my end of life issues. I meet the intake paralegal, however, it’s not in your law office. Instead, I get a call from the intake paralegal and we set up a zoom meeting. Well, what do I see in the screen when I talk to the intake paralegal? A dog and hear it barking, or a little one crying or an adult family member or spouse enter the home. Well, in seeing that, do I really feel comfortable talking with your intake paralegal about how I want to deed my two houses to my family when I pass, whom I am going to make a trust to and its beneficiary and my trustee for my large sums o
The other thing with work from home is that if you have children it cuts your child care expenses too. That's a major budget savings there. Plus you can throw a load of laundry in the wash and dryer and put dinner in the oven too. Multi tasking moms love it.
I've never had a job where WFH was even available (right now it's about data security), but I wish I could. I enjoyed talking with co-workers at my last job, but there were days I'd talk to a co-worker 2 hours, sometimes more. That's 4 hours of lost productivity they wouldn't have lost if we'd had WFH!
I feel like a company like that should have access to the data that would that a gument to rest... But I dunno...
Man, everybody in this thread sounds so spoiled. Some of us have jobs that NEVER allowed us to work from home. Ya know, those guys that pick, package, ship, and deliver your packages? Or the products your company sells? All those truck drivers, machine operators, shippers, forklift drivers, and that's just one industry. There's also all the retail workers, builders, police, fire fighters, doctors, nurses, hospital staff. Millions of people who went into work five, six, seven days a week all through the plandemic. Ya'll should count yourselves lucky you got a year to stay home. Some of us worked every day and got Covid multiple times just to keep a roof over our heads.
I also have to be in person and needed to throughout, as did my wife. We also benefit from more people being WFH, traffic was greatly reduced making getting to and from work much faster. My commute was cut in half timewise, hers about the same saving us both time and gas and even more gas by being able to coast and stay at full speed instead of the stop and go it had been before. We did get lucky/have really good immune systems in that we didnt get sick even with her being a Dr and multiple break outs in both of our workplaces. But Id still rather have more of the city on WFH and off our roads when we need to get to work.
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You showed the commenters' names but not the OP's. Shame. At leat give them credit when you half-a*s a story based on their post.
The OP's Reddit handle was shown (u/nameless12), which was an obvious throwaway alt, as such an post in such a subreddit could possibly have professional repercussions.
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I guarantee this conversation with the boss didn’t happen and was fabricated for Reddit points.
None of this will matter pretty soon. All you people complaining you have to go back into the office ( because if you really were as productive at home, your employer wouldn’t care; you probably aren’t ) will be replaced with machines. Then all these WFH jobs will vanish.
People need to stop complaining. Be thankful you have a job while others don't. If you are working from home you should get paid less plain and simple. Just like the company is saving money so are you. Being on the clock means you are working. Sorry that being at work means you have to actually work. Supposedly doing your job from a hammock in your backyard is not working and you shouldn't get paid the same as a person who is going in every day. Though COVID is a sad reality what is even sadder is seeing people using it as an excuse to either not work or demand the same pay as those who are making an effort and going into work. Just like having a driver's license-working from home is a privilege, not a right.
Pay should be based on productivity. The big guys make big bucks and many of them are off jet setting. I'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers here, but consider 9/11, unbelievably tragic. If WFH had been available, consider the many lives that would've been saved. Oftentimes commutes are so horrendous that by the time some people get in to the office, they're completely frustrated. Great way to start the day, huh? Should working make you miserable? Yeah, your parents and grandparents may not have had the WFH option, but does that mean you shouldn't get the option either? WFH is here to stay, it absolutely must be available, if possible. Some of us don't have jobs that can be done remotely, it sucks. But those who can WFH should absolutely have that option.
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Ffs, all the "boomer" sh*t is ignorant and unnecessary. If you're in a supposedly professional position, and can't talk without being insulting and disrespectful, you're not a professional and you're doing your employers, society, and yourself, no favors. Fck right off, eat sh*t, and talk like a normal human being, you entitled, narcissistic fcks.
There is no need for class warfare by trying to define any occupation that doesn't involve some sort of direct physical labor as not being real work. I get that you are punching up, but the bitterness clearly evident in your tone smacks of envy/jealousy. There's nothing wrong with any kind of work that pays your bills, puts food on your table, and a roof over your head.
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Tell everyone you're an out of touch entitled idiot without telling everyone that you're an out of touch entitled idiot...
Load More Replies... Tell everyone you have no clue about how economics actually works without telling everyone that you have no clue about how economics actually works.
Load More Replies... In the U.S. pre-covid, so many people had jobs that required 8-10 hours/day in the office, even when there wasn't that much work to fill he time. People would sit at their desks doing online shopping or scrolling through social media for hours on their work computers. Yet these same companies are now worried that their WFH employees might fold some laundry or walk their dog on company time.
I never understood the mindset that *only* work must be done on company time. As long as the work gets done and done well, as it obviously has been, then what's the damn problem? People *cannot* be constantly in motion. There must be time to pause, reflect, and heaven forbid THINK. That may occur during a walk, playing a game of solitaire, or playing with a pet for a couple of minutes. The bosses do it all the time. They're greedy bastards who feel that any employee who takes a moment is 'stealing' from them. This almost makes me happy that I *cannot* work because of several disabilities~~I don't have to deal with those asses.
Load More Replies... my job tried to bring us all back full time to the office, i was absolutely miserable and didn't hide it. a month later, we were told we only needed to come in 1 day week for department meetings, and 1 day a month for a company meeting. plus they gave me a raise and another week of vacation. i have since stopped looking for another job. :)
With us, we've got a blend of people who have to be in the facility and people who can easily do their job totally remotely, plus some who work best splitting things up. I'm in the middle group - when they suggested I should look at returning to the office a few days a week, I tallied up how much time I'm not spending driving every month, plus mileage at federal rates and suggested if they could figure out a way to give me that many dollars and that many hours off for every day I was in the office on a schedule, we'd be able to reach an agreement. That said, if something comes up where I think I could do the job better from the office, I'll go in, I just don't want it to be part of my daily schedule anymore.
Load More Replies... have been working from home since before the pandemic. i regain 3 hour commute time. My employer pays less in electricity, water, coffee, facility management, heck less toilet paper and soap if you really want to get down to it. They gain extra time worked because I don't have to dash out the door to get my train. less time off because I can get to my doctor and back online in a fraction of the time. Win win folks. Those that want you in are so they can justify their office space and watch what you are doing. Easily done without standing over me.
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Load More Replies... I worked for a large corporation that allowed WFH for two years. It was wonderful and everyone was happy and productive. When the company made us come back I decided to find work near my home. I found a better job with a short commute and a larger salary. Employees are taking a more active role in their futures and companies need to adapt.
I've worked from home or a hotel room since the '90s. If I'm productive in my job my boss keeps me around. If I'm not he would get rid of me. We have weekly webinar meetings and we're all grown ups. We all know what the job entails. We don't need camaraderie, we have a job to do.
Best manager I ever had used to schedule an appointment in his own calendar for 8.30 - 9.30 every day so that if he wanted to come in late he could. Other than one team who, due to the nature of their work had to work to the clock, he didn't really care what hours we worked as long as we got our work done. That said, he did NOT like us taking work home, he told me off for taking a bunch of job applications home for shortlisting because I didn't have time to do it during hours. That wasn't because he didn't want to pay overtime, he genuinely did not want us eating into time with our families. That was how he worked and it was how he expected us to work. Most of his staff considered him a friend first and a manager second.
Load More Replies... My daughter worked from home during COVID. She is now WFH 2 days per week. Her boss, who WFH from Texas, insisted she come into Manhattan from Brooklyn (1.5 hrs. each way including walking back and forth from the train, on the train. She cannot drive in because it would cost $70 each day for parking and tolls. Of the two days one has to be Wednesday because flies in one Wednesday a month. The reason this is nonsense is because my daughter's team works all over the country so obviously they have been remote since date of hire. Only the staff located in NY are penalized by the end of WFH, productivity has gone up, people are quitting, they are having trouble hiring at the base office because they don't offer WFH.
A lifelong female friend has just moved 1500km away to another midsize city and province. Her current employer (8+ years) is happy to have her continue working from home. This firm hired her before the ink was dry on her diploma, has seen her through 2 maternity leaves, and has no expectation for her to visit the office unless absolutely necessary, and then any travel expenses will be paid for. Graphic designer is somewhere on her CV as is the word computer but that’s all I know about the intricacies of her job. Her husband is self employed in IT and has been working from home for most of his professional life. This young family left behind family and friends but made that sacrifice as they couldn’t afford the down payment on a small home here where “starter” homes are 1million plus. They now have a great newer home, a reasonable mortgage, no commute time, and no outside day care for 2 young children. Besides missing family and friends, I find it really hard to see a downside here.
I don’t understand not needing daycare for young children if both parents are working, even if they work at home. My husband and I both work from home, but we need childcare because we work during the day and can’t take care of our kids while we work.
Load More Replies... My father was the #2 guy at a financial services firm in Houston, TX. He started there in the early '90s. By the very nature of the work, there was a lot of traveling involved. Most of their full-time employees didn't even live in Houston, they lived in other parts of the state. Maybe once or twice a year my father's boss would insist everyone come in for a sit-down in Houston to find out what everyone was up to, but the rest of the year he didn't care where anyone lived, as long as the work got done. The office was based in Houston, but they had employees as far afield as Arlington, Dallas, Waco, etc. If my father's firm could figure that out 30 years ago, it shouldn't be a big leap for companies to figure that out now.
Company I work for has quite a large office building and 3 floors of that are renting out to 2 other companies as it's becoming clearer by the day that the large office spaces of yesteryear are no longer needed because of the full WFH or a hybrid model which my company does (2 in office/3 WFH). Plus I'm starting to see quite a few meeting room space rental companies popping up all around
They're beginning to convert them over for housing because of the housing shortage and they make a profit instead of losing money.
Load More Replies... After 31 years at the same company, of which the last 12 years have been mainly WFH, my wife took redundancy (it was a too-good-to-miss offer). So then she took another job, not quite as good, but still WFH.as it was COVID time. She was working as fixed-term initially, and at the end of that term, she was offered an open-ended contract. She was inclined to take it - until they said they wanted her in the office 3 days a week. That'd be around 100/week extra outlay, plus 2 hours traveling. The mad thing is that all her client areas were remote and her boss was WFH from a different city. They couldn't get their heads round why she said no. She now has a home-based job on 60% more.
Hybrid is BS. Many of the benefits of full remote are not possible. You still have to live somewhat close to the office, you still have to endure some coworkers, etc. I'm anyway not interested in water cooler conversations. I only give a closer look to job offers with a full-remote option. Everything else ends up in the trash.
My hubs WFH for two years and he absolutely loved it. I did too. I was an "essential" employee and not able, so I don't know the joy of rolling out of bed and logging on. But we saved so much money with one of us working from home. Now they made him go back and he's miserable and they don't care. I don't get it. It saved them money, morale was better and the employees preformed better. These corporations are stupid.
Came into the office one day since COVID. It was the least productive day of my 30-ish year career, thanks in part to the extrovert sitting right next to me who wanted to talk all day. Gah. And the meetings we had all planned had to be on Zoom calls anyway since the conference rooms were all booked. So that was a huge waste of time. Fortunately my current team lead is in another state, and has said as long as he is remote, I can be too. Hurray.
My best friend works in the IT field and has been WFH for over two years. He says the only way he will go back is if he can dress the way he does at home. While this would be YouTube gold, it would def not be legal. About a year ago his boss said something about them coming back to the office and he said "check my before and after metrics and get back to me on that." Nothing more has been said to him. His company produces software for the medical industry and he is their go to guy when no one else can fix it. He's written productivity scripts that enhance his job significantly. No one has said a word to him about coming back since, and they recently announced his division will be WFH perm. Besides all those hours in traffic the $300 to $500 in gas, and the other headaches, there is one more HUGE expense that is being saved in some cases - child care. Another friend was able to buy a really good used car because her kids can come straight home after school now.
I've been WFH since everything went nuts in 2020. I will soon be going back one day every other week. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but at least it's not every day. The new people are all in office all the time. With enough seniority you can choose either work from home (most of the time) or in office all the time. The people who want in office generally don't have the best set ups for working from home. Loud pets, neighbors, kids, and so on. One coworker wants to be in office because she has a tiny apartment and was feeling the walls closing in. I'm lucky in that I only have about a 15 minute commute each way when I do go in the office, but that's partly due to my shift time as I don't start or end close to peak commuting hours.
I worked in IT at a major university in the midwest. Our IT staff pivoted on a dime for COVID and did a stellar job all while WFH. Now that the university is requesting (some required) to come back to campus, our HR person internally said "WFH is a phase" and the managers are only allowed to approve WFH on a 6-month basis. People have been leaving left and right despite an amazing benefits package the university officers.
I think it’s all about the domino effect. These corporatists are all about validating how essential they and their jobs are. They realize that they must continue to support and uphold the system- however artificial (and whose job is really necessary in the grand scheme of things?). The illusion is aided by an army of worker bees. As long as we show up, they get paid. Consider the repercussions if these companies abandoned their rented offices. From Building owners to the janitorial staff… it all has a domino effect on entire industries. Change is not a bad thing but it instills fear in the elites about the status quo… and their investments.
Those buildings could be housing and everyone keeps their jobs. We have 500,000 less housing stock units than before they pandemic and may be underbuilt by millions units. Win-win. Never going back to the office.
Load More Replies... Some idiots in companies managements are so little related to reality that hurts :D Good job to roast this one :D
Just the real SLEEP made such a huge difference. So much less stress.
Just how many more years are y’all gonna be blaming this s**t on boomers? I’m 67 this year and am supposedly in the middle of that group. (Frankly, I disagree with that, too. My generation, while still considered boomers, had a very different upbringing and life experience from, the one experienced by my siblings - all boomers, and all 10+ years older than I am.) Most boomers, particularly those working in upper /middle management at large companies (IT, perhaps, especially - of which I was one) long ago retired. I know we’ve been a convenient scapegoat for all sorts of things for years, now. I even agree that many of the stereotypes fit the older boomers. But, at some point it’s time to recognize that boomers have been largely supplanted in these management roles by Gen X, and the oldest of them are now 57 - right about the prime age for these senior roles.
It's interesting to me that the comment directly above yours (at the time I am currently responding to it) is someone named Karen not thrilled about the last Redditor's comment using the name Karen as a well-known adjective for a certain type of entitled person. The term Boomer has undergone the same sort of "adjectivification". Just as the Redditor's comment was not meant to call out this specific Karen (the individual person), nor all people who happen to be named Karen, the use of Boomer should be recognized to not be meant to call out everyone born between 1946 and 1964, but rather a certain attitude about "how things have always been/should remain". Someone referred to as "a Karen" might be actually named Phillip or Nancy, and someone referred to as "a Boomer" may well be firmly Gen X or even Millennial in actual age.
Load More Replies... My daughter has been working from home since her boss’s whole family got Covid at a funeral! The boss had been a denier and has since apologized. My daughter hasn’t been sick a day since WFH, she loves it. Her department has just been traded to a larger company out of state and her department will continue to WFH.
Add to fuel, parking, time being able to easily eat healthy and fresh or leftovers easily without having to fight with a disgusting work fridge, super cheap coffee, no dry cleaning. Even without a pay bump wfh saved me $1k a month easy. I ate better, breathed clean fresh air, used the extra time for bike rides. Wfh has great potential for people to not only retire earlier but retire healthier. FYI, in my city it was the downtown businesses who pressured the government to pressure employers to get people back downtown spending money. Screw that, level the buildings and have a vehicle free open air market with local farmers and such and I'd gladly spend my money there.
The workplace expert (Lynn Taylor) you worked with nailed it on the head with the good and bad of WFH vs in-office. There's ups and downs to both, though I think overall the move toward WFH is better than driving to an office where you're going to be glued to a screen for hours anyway. WFH is more efficient for the workers and the company, and in many ways healthier for the employees mentally. (Especially if they're introverts, which tends to be a lot of desk-job people). But, I also feel like the more digital our society becomes, the more distant we are growing from each other. Human interaction is also healthy. And I don't just mean good, happy interaction. Bad experiences and people can also teach us how to handle conflict, to learn patience, and appreciate our good relationships even more. There are some key social skills that are being lost when you don't have to be around people all the time. You might not like being around them, but the development of those skills is crucial.
Part of my problem was I've never been really healthy physically. I wasn't survive my birth and I've been sickly but I always drive myself hard but I don't have an immune system and Covid has played havoc with it! I can't be vaccinated because the risk of death is too great and I don't build antibodies and I've had Covid 5 times so I pretty much self quarantine all the time because whenever I'm around people I end up with Covid or something else.😅
Load More Replies... I think people on WFH are some kind of heroes. For me it would be just impossible to work from home 😅 Fortunately, my work cannot be done remotely. I really need to be at my working place. I am commuting about one hour one way, than one hour back home. And plus getting ready for the duty takes me around 1,5 - 2 hours. And still, even that I cannot work remotely at all, the company is covering our commuting, plus other bonuses. I would never leave my job for WFH offer even if it would be payed more. But even though I can fully understand those workers who are getting mad while forced to return back to offices.
I worked in hospital healthcare before retiring a few years ago. Some professions don't allow for working remotely. If wfh is the new normal, perhaps people whose work requires personal contact should be given (as part of their compensation package) an additional monthly or annual stipend equal to what remote workers save in time, fuel/auto maintenance or transportation cost and general aggravation.
I think you're right. This is a really good time to figure this out. Some other countries guarantee benefits we don't (like childcare, have better public transport than most of our cities, etc). If the way we think about working is evolving we should think about what we want that new landscape to look like. If we let it settle "naturally" that inevitably will mean corporations are going to organize to give the minimal support they can, particularly to employees who need that support most bc their employers know they don't have the flexibility, means, or skills to get a different job. If we legislate changes it doesn't allow companies to make those things "extras/incentives", so people don't have to be able to work for certain companies to get the benefits. Some corporations can straight up afford that literally billions of times over. For smaller businesses, if certain large corporations were made to actually pay their taxes perhaps people could get a write-off on their taxes?
Load More Replies... I've been working from home for 10 years now. I am far more productive working from home. No commute time, less time spent in useless meetings, etc, etc. The only managers who want you back in the office are micromanagement types who feel the need to justify their existence.
I totally agree. If you have the technology and onsite work is not needed, WFH is the best option.
Load More Replies... Great article. Not to detract from that, but I just want to call out the casual bigotry both in the article and the Reddit quotes. Every decade has its socially acceptable bigotry, seems ours is intergenerational sneering.
There is an incalculable loss of serendipitous ideas and discovery when people in certain technical jobs are isolated from one another.
Conveniently, no one is talking about the customers nationwide, perhaps, worldwide who are not getting any help because there's nobody in the offices to help. For some companies and government intities (like the DOL in GA), the pandemic was an excuse to shirk job duties and hide from the public whose taxes pay their bills. I don't care about IT companies, but the government workers need to be in the office to actually help people.
Say what you will, WFH is cool and all, but when you have government agencies and institutions like the DOL, sending you letters but refusing to provide you with answers to your queries, and nobody is in the offices to help, something needs to be done. The tech companies can do as they wish but government workers need to have their asses in the office PERIOD.
Although working remotely improves everyone's life, do you realize that all these WFH jobs can be outsourced to people in other countries?
I teach ESL. Teaching from home wasn't *me* at home, it was the students. I still went in to the school, which was no big deal. Teaching an entire class online is fine (I created a website with interactive stuff, students could write and respond, etc.), and teaching in person is fine. The problem came when the school had a mixed class, SOME in person, and SOME on the computer. Each type of teaching requires different materials, different preparation, different focus, but both require TIME. The school expected me to do mixed home/F2F classes, which meant TWICE the preparation, and HALF the results because I can't give my best effort to two groups at the same time, and then they complain that "the kids aren't learning!" All they cared about was money, not the reality of the situation or the fact that I'm the one who had to deal with it.
I think that humans need a certain amount of social contact to be satisfied with life; some more so than others. If your job is the only place where you get that, we'll, that's the way it is. When I went to part time at my job, I joked that the only reason I was still working was to go out to lunch! If I were working now, I'd be happy to go to the office a couple of days a week. Everyone 's situation is different. If you'd be better off WFH, then you should be allowed to do it.
My theory as to why the upper management seem to be the only people who want people back into the office is, if there aren't people there for them to "manage", there is literally no need for their overpaid jobs.
Ok so first I would like to address the comments directed towards "boomers".. guess what.. they don't want to go back to the offices either !! I love how liberals are so against generalisations and yet think it's ok if they use them. The term "boomers" defines what generation a group of people are from that's a definition of time.. not behavior. Secondly if we are the cause of climate change isn't WFH a first step and easy change to make to lower carbon emissions ? We already did it !! No don't do that.. carbon taxes yeah thats what we need. Let's see how could this work ? Less gas used.. well that helps with pollution and our pocket books especially now.. it practically ensures we could produce our own fuel needs with out relying on foreign oil. Less people die in accidents.. All those office building could be converted into apartment buildings and lower housing costs for our genZ kids that are getting screwed with ridiculously high rents.. happier, healthier stronger families. Win
My husband's company went WFH for all the office people when the pandemic hit--they never went back to in office when they figured out that everyone could do their job from home and they saved having to pay for office space. The warehouse guys still had to come in, and the sales guys (like my husband) were already kind of "WFH" so not much changed for him. So, yeah, if it's possible for your jobs to be done remotely, then that absolutely should happen. All that downtown empty office space can be turned into housing.
Stop giving Republicans positions of power at businesses. Problem solved
There is a big reason for having people working in the office. As a Safety Professional I can not check the home from hazards and make sure that workstations are ergonomically correct. On top of that if someone trips over their dog while working the company is on the hook. All I can say is that people need to look at all sides of the question.
I don't get all the complaints about working from home. You would have no lineman, firemen, police, restaurants...etc if everyone felt the same way. Not to mention stores to get groceries and home repairs.
Unfortunately due the type of work, sys admin 1 for a supercomputer, I did I only got 2 two weeks working from home due to covid. But the first two week period I was down with covid, what luck. But now I'm looking for work after getting terminated.
WFH offers companies many benefits. A reduction in overhead. Less employees standing around the break room complaining about management or lack there of. Employees also not discussing who makes how much, etc, etc. Office gossip mill is a lot less. This is one of the biggest detriments to staff morale. Production can still be tracked. Employees are happier and have the time for work life balance.
With this rave about WFH and people standing up to employers, it won't be long before all the bad managers and CEOs get what's coming to them and we, the new generation, lead the way into better working conditions and environments for all... Hopefully with no more power corruption, but that's a wishful dream
Must be nice to be able to work from home. I think they should give incentives for the workers who do have to work on site and workers whom wfh should pay for it. Offices don't clean themselves. Construction workers who build the offices don't get to do it remotely. Power lines and communication lines aren't strung and repaired remotely to bean counters homes. There are so many jobs that require skill and steel toes instead of pajamas and a laptop. I work in the beverage industry and only got hazard pay for one month during the pandemic while office staff also did while working from home. If all employees work from home the job market for everyone would deteriorate. Sorry, I'm just jealous I can't pet the dog and fold laundry at home because I didn't have the foresight to attain a college level degree which is barely applicable to my wfh job.
I agree that a very large sector of our workforce doesn't get payed nearly enough - including for things like hazard pay. But I don't think WFH employees should pay for that. Companies/corporations are the ones profiting off all of our work. If productivity stays the same companies make the same amount of money off wfh employees (and even save office costs), so why should the employees be penalized? Companies need to start paying a fair wage to all employees. We don't need an attitude of one type of worker vs another, or some workers getting less so others can get more. These companies make enough profit (plus many b/trillions) to pay all their workers fairly, but they're completely happy if we do this worker v worker, "skill and steel toes" v "bean counters", fighting over scraps thing bc then we aren't scrutinizing them. They can spend their time giving themselves bonuses and raises, and figuring out how to get out of paying any taxes.
Load More Replies... I work for a grocery company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. When the pandemic hit, everyone from corporate began working from home, which lasted for two years, while employees risked their lives working. To add insult to injury, our “ hero” pay was canceled as soon as they milked all the P.R. out of it and when communities voted to make them pay their employee's hazard pay, they closed the stores down permanently. Their actions were in direct violation of the company's core values. I also work another job and commute three hours a day and I work seven days a week. I just turn in a vacation I was scheduled to take because there is no one to run my department which takes specialized knowledge. Can you imagine a grocery department that hasn't been touched for seven days? Imagine the mess waiting for you when you come back. That's why I gave back my vacation. So I hope my life puts yours in prospective. If I would be offered your job at Google I would LIVE at the office.
The only issue I see here is where OP painted all "boomer" managers with the same brush as the p***k he worked. My case in point was with my previous job I had before I went into "semi-retirement". It is true enough that most of these managers are "boomers", but that is only because the generations coming up behind have not had a real chance to take the management reins. And yes, I'll admit that a lot of them are boomers hanging on to their (itty bitty) power for dear life. However, at my previous job, the main supervisor was Gen X and her "team lead" was a Millennial. Both of them were raging narcissists who absolutely HATED the fact that we had to WFH during the pandemic. Bothe of them were constantly on the phone to different team members to the point that no one could do any meaningful work because we were always answering the boss and team leader's calls.
Had to continue in the reply section, sorry. I finally told my boss that if she didn't stop calling me over minor details, I was going to stop working for the day and turn my phone off. My words were, "I am not a pirate and you are not a parrot. Get off my shoulder!" She wanted that control and was ecstatic when people were told to come back to the office. However, out of 40 people that were on staff, only 18 returned. I was not one of them. I chose my retirement option. According to people I talked to, everyone who did not come back gave their reason as the boss and her team lead (a** kisser). The team collapsed and the company lost a very lucrative contract because of her ineptitude. All that to say, it's not just boomers who are doing this. It's also the younger ones who are just getting into the management game, and are going about it wrong,, trying to pull the same c**p that boomers are doing, and they are finding out that with options, people are not going for it...AT ALL.
Load More Replies... I had a career change out of IT a year ago (not because of WFH or Pandemic), so I worked in IT through the pandemic and WFH. In fact, I was in the middle of the mess as they sent home a large workforce without resourcing to WFH, as one of my responsibilities was Remote Access Management. Now - my industry is not one that easily works from home. LOTS of direct client contact that cannot be replaced. So we had to get as many people working from home as possible in order to minimise risk to those who could not work from home. I have to say, once the initial chaos settled, for IT staff, I think we got more done. And people were happier not having to commute, or interact all the time - that stereotype about introverted IT people, there is truth in that! I had an acting manager after things started to settle who tried to force us all back into the office... he didn't last long. Now, almost all or IT, and large amounts of the org. work Hybrid.
If a person can work, learn, and shop from home, there is less reason to travel to buildings to do those things. Turn empty offices, schools, and malls into housing. Leave the cafeterias/foodcourts, gyms, etc, and a handful of meeting rooms. Watch how terribly overpriced areas with awful traffic empty out until they are liveable again.
If employers want loyalty they should get some dogs. Particularly stupid dogs at that. Human employees are mercenary, we're only there for the money. As soon as employers recognise that (and some do) conditions usually improve.
Never mix business with pleasure and always be self employed so you dont have to build up a repertoire with anyone else unless you choose to. No one supervises me. They just hang around to be nosy or see what they can get out of me. I rarely feel the need to socialize with people who dont make any effort to socialize with me as all people lead busy lives and I dont want to intrude or disrupt unless necessary but true teamwork understands these things and are always within reach in your social network when applicable.
I think a lot of upper management would lose their jobs they wouldn't be needed. Unless they take demotion. Want employees on site. I hope WFH becomes a norm think of all the offices closed down, huge impact.
We pretty much had the same meeting, WFH is now hybrid, 3 days in / 2 at home. Leadership Team (oxymoron) must go into the office, thankfully I work on my own and decide on where I work depending on the weather.. if it rains I stay home, if it's sunny I stay home, cloudy I go to the office .. no one know where I am as my teams background is always the same.
I retired in 2016 because my job "moved" to Louisiana. I live in the PNW, I had been working from home, successfully, 4 days a week and going in to the office one day a week per company policy. I could have continued to WFH 5 days a week with no problem but the company had a building to fill in LA. It was a state of the art facility, guaranteed to bring jobs to the city and there was a monetary tax bonus for fulfilling this agreement. I didn't want to move so I took early retirement, but if I had to work again, it definitely would have to be WFH, it's the way to go.
Bosses don't feel nearly as connected to the operations of the company when there are no employees there to talk with. It's hard to see what people are doing, and where they are at in a project.
IMHO, the biggest problem with G is that they hired upper level managers from M$, A, and FB who have always micromanaged their IT and don’t trust them to WFH, even though it was working just fine for the past several years. So now G isn’t G any more. It’s just another ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves’ company. The layoffs were to shut up shareholders, one in particular who threatened to sue unless they reduced the workforce. Does he care if it’s keeping thing from running as well? Nope. It didn’t even raise the stock price back up like it was supposed to. There’s more, but I’m going to go take a blood pressure pill, self medicate in other, legal ways and put a hex on him.
One of my former co-workers did so much work that they had to assign three or more people to handle what she was doing single-handedly. Yet when the boss's boss wanted to make small talk with her in his office, he got POed when she left his office to get her work done so that her direct manager wouldn't ding her on evaluations.
confused by overuse and misuse of the word boomer. Is this persons boss actually from the baby boomer generation? No? The it doesn't f8cking apply and come up with a new word.
I work from home and have done for about 4 months, I found ways of doing things differently and saving money on stationery, printing and processing costs, so much so that other entities contact me to ask how I did it. They still go into the office !!
I suddenly understand why people live in the Loop! Ok, I know there were some apartments built down there before Covid but I’ll pretend. Years ago I ended up staying in a funky little hotel in the Loop during the week that actually had everything I needed. It had a pool, generous breakfast, included parking, lake views, easy access … it just seemed strange being there at night. I hope it feels different to be there during the day now. I don’t live anywhere near Illinois anymore so it’s been close to a decade since I’ve been to Chicago. Congratulations on losing the commute though.
My last job required me to sit at a desk for 10 hours a day 5 days a week, we were so slammed with work. This meant as a dept. we weren't required to participate in any meetings we just get an email with the needed info. The dept. head had his office across from ours and decided to install two HUGE windows in our walls so he could keep an a literal eye on us (along with every other person walking by). The only interaction we had was through email or phone. The man rarely walked in and talked to us in Person. Please explain why i need to drive 40 mins each way to work? To add to it, our work PC's were unbelievably under powered for Solidworks software while every one in the design dept. had high powered rigs at home. Face it, there's no reason why some position can't be remote. It's a vestige of an older generation that still tells their children to get up early and shake managers hands for job openings.
We just had wfh implemented by law. All employees can request this, and as a company you have to have a good reason to deny the request (for example you with customers in a shop). I work an hour away from home but I try to go twice a week but at least one day. I noticed it is especially important for younger employees to learn and to have these small interactions and discussions you otherwise don't have.
That first reaction threw me. TEN DOLLARS for a lunch? Even sushi would only be €8,49 and that's in the Albert Heijn!
We ran into a similar issue. Although, we required everyone to return to office including managers and officers. HQs only logical reasoning after much debate was not being able to justify our lease and having such a large office space. They suggested the costs with breaking the lease, finding a smaller space, moving and build-out of a new location wasn’t tenable. They also gave some hogwash about us being recognizable by our well-rooted current location. A team of middle managers broke down the cost of hiring & training new employees to replace a large percentage jumping ship for competitors and were able to show it was equal to or higher than moving location. We moved, kept WFH, require zero days per month of in-office. About 45-50% come in a a few days per month and only those necessary on-site have permanent work stations. Even with the technical costs (RAPs, monitors, internet services, home office furniture allowances, etc) it’s still cheaper than requiring in-office.
I'd like to see more of the federal government work from home so people can work from states away.
All my colleagues work from home, I have the longest commute (1.5hr one way) and the lowest salary but I have to go in daily because my boss doesn't want to work from home (he lives 3min away) and hates the sound of a ringing phone so someone has to answer ist for him. Im about ready to spit in his smug face any day now.
I was looking for wfh work before the pandemic was a thing, because I had a problem with walking and it would make my commute unpredictable. It was because of the pandemic timing that I got the chance to get to a doctor where I was diagnosed with OCD and Anxiety (honestly didn't know that was my problem). Since lock down was a thing, and I found a WFH job, I was able to get work done, and take care of my health without missing days from work. WFH really helps some employees be better at their jobs by simply aiding in time management.
While I understand some employees prefer the social aspect of working in a group, I cannot understand why parents, in particular, would want to. With the costs of childcare, it is totally uneconomic to have hours of commuting instead.
Hahaha the mindset and entitlement from people who are mad that they can't WFH anymore is amazing. I really can't wait to see what happens 5 years from now.
Link because aparently it is very hard for journalists to cite their sources and milk reddit for ad revenue https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/vww0d5/abolish_wfh_enjoy_mass_resignation/
Evolve or perish Remote work is the way to go. It's good for the individual, good for the family and good for the environment. Surprisingly it's very good for the companies. And if you don't understand it, you will be one of those that will not survive. Human relations exist out of the place of work. Actually you could make the point that relations in the work place are artificial. Look at Amazon, do the people that deliver parcels have to go to some daily meeting point to just to talk to each other and do a good job? No. Now imagine the police, instead of going to their headquarters, building a strong group bondage independent of the community, many times out of pace from the community... imagine them going out of their homes, and do the beat in their communities. Where they would be respected and could really help their community. Not like in the old days of course, but with the help of new technologies. Yes it is possible. Any way, in 15 to 20 years, humans will not need to work.
That must be a damn stupid company. Lot of smart companies are actually seizing the pandemic into huge cost saving measures by putting the whole work force either permanently on WFH or on hybrid mode. Because 1) it clearly shows that 2 years of WFH didn't affect the performance 2) Real estate cost for renting the offices is quite substantial. Hence savings over millions a month in rentals alone, not to mention utilities etc.
WFH is fine as long as you don't depend in others to do parts of your job. For example, creating a pitch deck presentation and then asking someone in the office to print bind and ship out for you because you're WFH and they're onsite. That's BS. That's infringing on other people's time.
These fools had it coming. As soon as web 2.0 was invented, commiting for non-physical labor became obsolete. But the overseer mentality is strong, especially among blowhards whose only purpose was to be physically intimidating, for whom the largely exaggerated pandemic was the first time they were expected to produce tangible results themselves for years, maybe ever. The WFH movement was the real motivation behind overexaggerated pandemic excuses. Workers took their only opportunity to radically change company policy in accordance with the technology we've had for years, that ought to have liberated humanity from the conveyer belt 19th century logic of pre-information age management.
Cool leave your job. Do you not think there aren't people out there who will jump at the chance to have a job? The problem everyone has these days is believing they're not replaceable.
I've been driving to work before and after the pandemic. American workers are just plain spoiled and think everyone owes the something. Get with the program of returning to work like everyone else
WFH has disadvantages, too. I work in tourism and am at the receiving end of people working from home and without access to the traditional office communication (i.e. just quickly asking someone next door how something is done) Being at home also means being isolated and the whole aspect of water cooler talks is gone. And these talks can be very important - for personal connections as well. But in cases where productivity is better and where people are leavong in droves, it just makes no sense
The OP just wanted to feel special by posting a BS story. There is almost no chance that conversation actually occurred. "I took a deep breath coz this boomer is gonna be taught a lesson"... I'm willing to bet that millennial (just an educated guess) just sat there in his entitled little manner and just hoped he wouldn't be fired because they realized how useless he is. What a load of $#!t
I can't wrap my head around this because I've never had the kind of career you can work from home. But I'm beginning to have a better understanding of my dad's rage disorder from what I read about what everyone is talking about the 9 to 5 type of careers. He worked over an hour from home in a fairly high stress job but trying to kill me is still no excuse 😅. He was mentally ill. But I chose the medical and mental health field just for that reason and that's not a job you can work from home. I could just see it on facetime, no John you'll be fine, those are just delusions, no one is trying to kill. Please put the knife down, don't stab your roommate, don't commit suicide, those are not good thoughts, everything will be just fine. Please take your medicine and go to bed. What do you mean you didn't eat? I'm just kidding but these are the real things I dealt with on a daily basis which shows why I couldn't work from home. But I'm gaining more understanding of what my parents battled.
That's funny. When attempting to call Google support during covid, they did NOT have phone support. How was that possible, being everyone was working from home ONLINE! Google can't figure out VoIP? Their support team had to be in the office to answer calls? No wonder they wanted to abolish WFH!
It's honestly really strange since these jobs are basically desk jobs, it's honestly odd Desk jobs = wfh option Line / factory job is required to stay for you know they have to unless there is no work order. Janitor and mechanics have yo stay basically till the end unless every other department leaves. I honestly wonder how Janitor jobs work when you need 40 hours but you might be only at the building for 1 or 2 days, do you still have to go for the other 3 days?
The responsibilities and burden of it and that goes for both management, business and employees. Life is a two-way Street.
Large sums of cash, who I am going to leave my car to in my will as well as the remainder and residue of my estate to, and finally who I want to make medical decisions for me should I become incapable to do so and my wishes regarding life support, pain management and even assisted suicide. Do I really want your intake employee paralegal to have that much flexibility that the others in the background could overhear my conversation and then discusses it with others outside of the conversation and low and behold, someone who is not even my family takes advantage of the privy information and me and my family potentially end up out on the streets and in a homeless shelter. And what worse, what if me or them come down with COVID-19 or any other serious illness. The point, hybrid and happy medium and do not end up having your clientele become the flex arm in an adverse way. The employees want flexibility and they demand you give it to them well then be prepared to bear and shoulder
Being in an office doesnt prevent that and can often make it worse. Most of my job is working directly with our kids (educational nonprofit) but Im also in charge of the data management and when Im home I am able to keep everything private, in the office it is open and anyone - including other families and kids going past my desk (or any of our desks) can hear and see that information on our screens or if we are on the phone with someone. At least on Zoom most people are on headsets so it is only thier half of the conversation that can be heard, our office phones are loud enough that we can generally hear the person on the other end through the handheld phone.
Load More Replies... Hybrid should be the standard of the new normal. Give them flexibility, but not too much flexibility that a client ends up in a homeless shelter or psychiatric ward. Example, the legal profession. Hypothetically, I am a client of yours and I retain your services to do estate planning for in the event I pass. Well, let’s say I have two houses, a very expensive and valuable car and I want to talk to you about my end of life issues. I meet the intake paralegal, however, it’s not in your law office. Instead, I get a call from the intake paralegal and we set up a zoom meeting. Well, what do I see in the screen when I talk to the intake paralegal? A dog and hear it barking, or a little one crying or an adult family member or spouse enter the home. Well, in seeing that, do I really feel comfortable talking with your intake paralegal about how I want to deed my two houses to my family when I pass, whom I am going to make a trust to and its beneficiary and my trustee for my large sums o
The other thing with work from home is that if you have children it cuts your child care expenses too. That's a major budget savings there. Plus you can throw a load of laundry in the wash and dryer and put dinner in the oven too. Multi tasking moms love it.
I've never had a job where WFH was even available (right now it's about data security), but I wish I could. I enjoyed talking with co-workers at my last job, but there were days I'd talk to a co-worker 2 hours, sometimes more. That's 4 hours of lost productivity they wouldn't have lost if we'd had WFH!
I feel like a company like that should have access to the data that would that a gument to rest... But I dunno...
Man, everybody in this thread sounds so spoiled. Some of us have jobs that NEVER allowed us to work from home. Ya know, those guys that pick, package, ship, and deliver your packages? Or the products your company sells? All those truck drivers, machine operators, shippers, forklift drivers, and that's just one industry. There's also all the retail workers, builders, police, fire fighters, doctors, nurses, hospital staff. Millions of people who went into work five, six, seven days a week all through the plandemic. Ya'll should count yourselves lucky you got a year to stay home. Some of us worked every day and got Covid multiple times just to keep a roof over our heads.
I also have to be in person and needed to throughout, as did my wife. We also benefit from more people being WFH, traffic was greatly reduced making getting to and from work much faster. My commute was cut in half timewise, hers about the same saving us both time and gas and even more gas by being able to coast and stay at full speed instead of the stop and go it had been before. We did get lucky/have really good immune systems in that we didnt get sick even with her being a Dr and multiple break outs in both of our workplaces. But Id still rather have more of the city on WFH and off our roads when we need to get to work.
Load More Replies... You showed the commenters' names but not the OP's. Shame. At leat give them credit when you half-a*s a story based on their post.
The OP's Reddit handle was shown (u/nameless12), which was an obvious throwaway alt, as such an post in such a subreddit could possibly have professional repercussions.
Load More Replies... I guarantee this conversation with the boss didn’t happen and was fabricated for Reddit points.
None of this will matter pretty soon. All you people complaining you have to go back into the office ( because if you really were as productive at home, your employer wouldn’t care; you probably aren’t ) will be replaced with machines. Then all these WFH jobs will vanish.
People need to stop complaining. Be thankful you have a job while others don't. If you are working from home you should get paid less plain and simple. Just like the company is saving money so are you. Being on the clock means you are working. Sorry that being at work means you have to actually work. Supposedly doing your job from a hammock in your backyard is not working and you shouldn't get paid the same as a person who is going in every day. Though COVID is a sad reality what is even sadder is seeing people using it as an excuse to either not work or demand the same pay as those who are making an effort and going into work. Just like having a driver's license-working from home is a privilege, not a right.
Pay should be based on productivity. The big guys make big bucks and many of them are off jet setting. I'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers here, but consider 9/11, unbelievably tragic. If WFH had been available, consider the many lives that would've been saved. Oftentimes commutes are so horrendous that by the time some people get in to the office, they're completely frustrated. Great way to start the day, huh? Should working make you miserable? Yeah, your parents and grandparents may not have had the WFH option, but does that mean you shouldn't get the option either? WFH is here to stay, it absolutely must be available, if possible. Some of us don't have jobs that can be done remotely, it sucks. But those who can WFH should absolutely have that option.
Load More Replies... Ffs, all the "boomer" sh*t is ignorant and unnecessary. If you're in a supposedly professional position, and can't talk without being insulting and disrespectful, you're not a professional and you're doing your employers, society, and yourself, no favors. Fck right off, eat sh*t, and talk like a normal human being, you entitled, narcissistic fcks.
There is no need for class warfare by trying to define any occupation that doesn't involve some sort of direct physical labor as not being real work. I get that you are punching up, but the bitterness clearly evident in your tone smacks of envy/jealousy. There's nothing wrong with any kind of work that pays your bills, puts food on your table, and a roof over your head.
Load More Replies... Tell everyone you're an out of touch entitled idiot without telling everyone that you're an out of touch entitled idiot...
Load More Replies... Tell everyone you have no clue about how economics actually works without telling everyone that you have no clue about how economics actually works.
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