To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

In most of the companies I've worked for there's been a specific messaging channel for casual chat, incidental info, jokes and gossip (still professional obviously). Several years ago I had to work in an office for a month for a specific contract and everyone used the Slack channel for chat and banter anyway, even though they were sitting in the same room. That suited me fine.

My role depends quite heavily on having ideas and being creative and tbh 90% of my best ideas come when I go for a run. I'm constantly "taking in" what people say, both colleagues and the wider social culture, but it's only when I'm on my own that my thoughts can really crystallise into an idea.

Needless to say WFH is essential to being able to just get away from my desk spontaneously and go for a run in the middle of the day.

For me, it wasn't that I didn't want to talk to colleagues or socialise on a basic level with them. It was that I didn't want to do this for 8 hours straight, spontaneously, in an open plan office, while also trying to work. Or after working in that environment for 8 hours straight.

When I started WFH, I made time to socialise/network with people in my industry whether at events or one-on-one. They were in non-office contexts, I was refreshed and enthusiastic about them and I wasn't trying to meet a deadline simultaneously.

I think people sometimes get the wrong end of the stick when WFH advocates say they enjoy working without people around them. It's often not the people themselves but the sheer overwhelm of all your colleagues and having to constantly shift in and out of "on" social mode and "head down" work mode.

If schools are closed because of the current safety problems there will be a lot of pupils and teachers working from home again.

Yeah that is a bit cowardly, but ultimately it will be down to what is in his contract.

I joined my current workplace in late 2020 when the majority of us were required to WFH full time due to lockdown.

It was made very clear to us that staff were expected to remain within a reasonable commute of an office (we have five across the UK) and once lockdown was over full time WFH was only going to be an option for people who made separate applications, just as they would have done before covid.

We are now required to do at least 60% of our time in the office. It is not rigorously enforced but I can get the sense that those whk do not do this regularly are not regarded favourably by management (excepting people who have formal arrangements for permanent WFH for whatever reason - eg health, caring etc..)

My issue with the push to get people back to the office and this is from my personal experience, my husband moved jobs to a employer further afield on the basis that it was remote working with occasional visits to the office when a "purposeful presence" was needed. They have since decided they want everyone back on a regular basis. When he raised it with his manager and said he would not have taken the job had he known this he was told "well that was because of covid but it was never going to stay like that forever". Perhaps they could have pointed that out when they were recruiting. He works in a team of 5 and all of them were employed in 2020 on the basis of remote working.

@Eleganz I didn't say it was harder but the idea that everyone could easily afford a nice family house on a 3 X salary mortgage is wrong. Some people could but some people can do that now, depends where you live and what you earn.

We were trying to buy from 1970 to 1973 and there was a price boom, at the start we could almost afford a nice 3 bed semi in good condition. We kept saving hard and prices kept going up so by the time we bought in 1973 we bought a run down 2 up 2 down. We had to put new windows in as they were rotten, new joists and floor boards, new kitchen as the kitchen was a victorian sink. We did all that, decorated, carpeted and after 2 years sold it for £1,800 more than we paid for it so we made a loss. There have always been times when people struggled to buy, my parents never owned a house, my grandparents never owned a house. We thought we did well to buy a house but it was a rather expensive venture and when we needed a bigger house we had no more equity than we started off with but we did benefit from buying when the market was low just like this year people are buying cheaper than people did last year.

Houses like my first house are now being sold fully modernised with central heating and double glazing and someone on an average wage could buy it if they have a 15% deposit like we did and even with what has happened to mortgages you'd get a better mortgage deal than we did. We don't all live in the south east.

I hope you are enjoying your professional salary but it doesn't sound like you are but despite your professional status you really didn't read my post as I never said anything about getting the blame just like I didn't say we had it harder but maybe the only way you can make an argument is to literally make things up.

That's interesting @Dolores87 . I am neurotypical and hate Teams meetings as I realised how much I rely on unspoken body language and gestures to read the tone of a meeting!

I haven't got a problem with people working from home and in many situations it can be beneficial but something that is completely over looked sometimes is that it can be very exclusionary. As an autistic person I really struggling with communicating not face to face as I find it very hard to understand tone of voice with out facial features. I get severe anxiety doing video calls and just can't do them and I have difficulty understanding people on the phone. Lots of jobs I previously would have considered going into are now largely remote potions and there is absolutely no way I would be able to work in a team remotely.

This is a problem also with appointments and health care. Alot of health care is now remote and I can't access any of it. I have found the push for remote working and remote appointments disabling really.

The problem with setting up this stance as the default is that one person's beneficial, idea sparking incidental conversation is another person's unhelpful interruption that makes their job harder. Neither of them are wrong.

And this is a real problem with discussions about location of work. In all these threads, there's invariably someone who's determined that because they think something is helpful and beneficial, it's the same for everyone.

@cathyj77 I also read somewhere that for a good number their first friendships with someone a different age or ethnic background from themselves were often made in the workplace.

@PinkCherryBlossoms The family thing was an analogy - I was not saying it's identical or that I feel the same about colleagues as I do about family, I was saying there are certain aspects of relationships of any sort that can be replicated online and others that cannot. There is nuance and subtlety in human relationships that cannot be replicated via a Teams chat. I could give you several concrete examples of this from my own work if it wouldn't out me, but I'm sure everyone can think of their own examples from their own fields.

Think you tagged the wrong poster there? It wasn't me who said anything to you about families.

Yes exactly that @Ginmonkeyagain - online working during the pandemic got the essential business done, and that's that. No incidental conversations, no ideas sparked by something you heard someone else say or meeting a new person who happened to be in the office that day who you'd never spoken to before. It's impossible to 'prove' - as keeps being demanded on this thread - the value that these things add, because obviously you manage fine without that 'extra' but once it came back, you realised how absent it had been...

I mean I'm not going to waste much of my time being sad about it!

But some of the stuff written about not wanting to listen to colleagues or talk to them seems so miserable. On a different thread there were some interesting points made about lockdown and a lot of the post lockdown landscape reducing "incidental" social interactions and people feeling all the poorer for it.

For example on friday I was in the office and a few of us sat at a table in the canteen and chatted about something and nothing over lunch - are these people goind to be my best friends? No. Do I feel the need to do it every day? No. But it was nice to spend an hour or so chatting about stuff over lunch.

Yes, I can completely see that if you hate your work, your colleagues, and have no desire to build relationships or progress, then of course WFH full-time would be preferable to being in an office.

All of my remarks were coming from the point of view of wanting to thrive and progress at work. I don't socialise with my colleagues much either, except at essential events like a Christmas party.

@PinkCherryBlossoms The family thing was an analogy - I was not saying it's identical or that I feel the same about colleagues as I do about family, I was saying there are certain aspects of relationships of any sort that can be replicated online and others that cannot. There is nuance and subtlety in human relationships that cannot be replicated via a Teams chat. I could give you several concrete examples of this from my own work if it wouldn't out me, but I'm sure everyone can think of their own examples from their own fields.

Even working with extremely difficult and unpleasant people, it can sometimes be necessary to build strong in-person relationships. Sometimes it can be more important when things are difficult, in fact.

I think it's really odd to be sad because other people feel differently about their colleagues than you do.

There's also quite a big middle ground being missed out here. Colleagues can be people you don't need to be in physical proximity to in order to all do your jobs well, and who you wouldn't choose to interact with over other people in your life, whilst not being objects of contempt.

Which isn't to downplay that some people also have very good reason to think badly of their colleagues- I'm not one of them, mine are great actually. But plenty are. Equally there are others for whom, unlike you, their work is actually one big happy family. Which is fine too, and it would also be odd for someone else to be sad about that.

I work 50% at home and 50% in the office. It's a nice balance. I probably work harder at home and spend more time in the office actually managing my team and building relationships.

The contempt is deserved.

it makes me really sad the utter contempt some people seem to hold their colleagues in

That's life as a woman in IT. I'm reliably informed that female construction workers have it still worse.

If you like. It is just online and in person interaction are not like for like replacements. We all have different jobs that may require different levels of human interactions.

My work life is not the be all and end all and my employer is not some sort of happy family - but it makes me really sad the utter contempt some people seem to hold their colleagues in on threads like this.

Yes there are annoying people but the majority of my colleagues are decent, interesting people who I need to work with effectively day to day to get my job done.

But of course, it doesn't follow that in person interactions with colleagues are particularly beneficial in themselves. Nor that working remotely means people are having less interaction. Only that it's not with the same people as it would be if they were working in person.

All of this. I socialise with people I choose, not the ones my employer imposes on me.

The reason why he got written up is because he bullied me over Teams, so I had it all in writing.

That wouldn't have been the case if it was snarky comments at the water cooler.

But of course, it doesn't follow that in person interactions with colleagues are particularly beneficial in themselves. Nor that working remotely means people are having less interaction. Only that it's not with the same people as it would be if they were working in person.

If you want a food based analogy, we cannot assume that an employee who isn't eating the cooked from scratch meal in the work cafeteria is necessarily having a ready meal. There are other healthy eating options available.

Are you actually comparing colleagues to family here? What is wrong with you? Why would I want to build strong relationships with the egotistical brogrammers I work with, one of whom has just been written up by his boss for bullying me? In over twenty years of having a job, I have never met a decent person who doesn't have most of their friends outside of work.

I think that's a better way to put it.

When weighing up the benefits of in person v hybrid v remote, the answer is almost invariably 'it depends'. Can't generalise.

Online interactions add convenience and benefits to our lives but nothing replaces good old in person human interaction, it activates different parts of our brains.

I liken it to the difference between a home cooked from scratch meal and a ready meal. Both will do the job of feeding you and keeping you alive but long term if you only lived off ready meals you would notice the difference