To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

And yet you still haven't actually engaged with the fact that your "example" of having it tough was not actually that bad compared to my example

I haven't given any examples of me "having it tough" on this thread @Eleganz , which would explain my lack of engagement with you? I can if you want, although I don't think it's helpful.

I am a very late Boomer on the cusp with Gen X and I do actually think younger people have it tough right now. It is very wrong to treat Boomers as one amorphous blob. I probably have a lot more in common with you than you think, unless you are a Tory Millennial of course. But you carry on with your spite and hate. That's exactly what the likes of the Daily Hate Mail want.

I do find it funny when the "go back to the office" narrative is pushed based on people apparently not working when at home.
In previous roles when I was fully in the office, there were people scrolling the internet all day, watching YouTube or sports on there phones etc. If someone doesn't want to work, they won't work. Be it in the office or at home!

My current role is hybrid but I struggle with the office days as colleagues want to chat all day. The other day one colleague had an hour long rant about how much work she had to do and I couldn't help but think that if she hadn't wasted an hour ranting, she could have got some work done 🤣

I think this is whataboutery.

People are unhappier these days it seems, but when I visit my grandparents I'm faced with a prolonged rant about WFH, climate change, Labour, the council, Corbyn, people on benefits, young people not working hard enough, young people wasting money on phones and holidays, young people spreading covid etc etc. My parents receive this too. And I know others who say the same.

I don't hear the same rants from my peers. There might be some whinging about interest rates or paying 60% of their take home on renting a bedroom in a shared flat, but by and large their blood pressure remains constant.

Why do you still read the Daily Mail?

Why do you expect that rag to be anything other than a vile propaganda machine for rich parasites who live abroad and don't pay any tax but think they can tell us what to do with our lives?

The Daily Mail are doing this to try to protect the interests of landlords who own commercial properties/office spaces and businesses that rely on workers being chained to their office desks and buying their coffees/newspaper/sandwiches on their way to work.

They have zero interest in your wellbeing...

Because the boomers have engaged in and supported an over decade-long campaign against my generation and refused to recognise the hardships we face. This is the outcome of that - that millennials don't have any sympathy for boomers at large and why we are not turning to right-wing politics as we age.

I am fed up of my generation being labelled as lazy, coddled, avocado-toast eating wasters and being labelled as a"bigot" for giving someone a taste of their own medicine.

And yet you still haven't actually engaged with the fact that your "example" of having it tough was not actually that bad compared to my example.

Careful, you'll be accused of ageism.

Even though it largely is retirees complaining about people WFH.

Yes, this, all day long 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼

Ugh, I hate it too and the stupid way they've decided that it's 'woke'.... usually retired people who have no clue how modern work operates. Or out-of-touch autocrats like Jacob Rees-Mogg who think hoi polloi need their 'Betters' breathing down their neck or they won't get anything done.

I'm a knowledge worker and could do my job 100% remote, in fact I worked the harderst 3 months of my life during the pandemic, shifting a hard copy publication to online only with no notice, so no one can tell me people can't be working hard from home. As long as people are meeting their goals, no problem.

I do go in to the office twice a week because it's actually a really nice office, and I think most people do like to go in for some time, but gosh, some people really can't handle change. And are worried about their commercial property investments.

Most of our news media is owned by billionaires and pushes their agenda.

The kind of easily manipulated bloody idiots who parrot the Daily Mail don't know what they think about anything until a billionaire's mouthpiece tells them but they do often have a vague sense of grievance. And point it in all the wrong directions.

Like Silas Wegg in Diickens' Our Mutual Friend. Anyone else being happy or fortunate vaguely disgruntles them.

I think the bubble here is assuming that remote work for a handful of central London firms will have a seismic impact on the UK economy because they aren't sat in overpriced real estate and buying overpriced sandwiches not that a few hundred or so regular commuters from my city to London will have a huge impact on the local economy of a city of several hundred thousand people.

Our economic woes are so much bigger and so much more structural than the fate of a few long distance commuters. It is the myopic view that what goes on in London is the only thing that matters that is why we are lacking in any economic resilience in this country as well as fuelling huge inequalities across the country.

I also think my workload and the general culture and balance has much improved as a result of lockdown.

I remember walking to the office in February 2020 and feeling like I was about to cry and give up.

I was exhausted and burnt out. I'd arrive at work and my manager would start asking me questions before I'd taken my coat off. I'd get hammered from all sides, he would agree to get someone from the team to do something for someone else, and our to do list would snowball. We'd be so tied down with extra ad hoc tasks that we'd finally start to do what we'd planned to that day just before 4pm.

People would come over to your desk and tell you they needed X Y and Z ASAP because it was critical to their whole team's work. And they hadn't thought of requesting it in advance - why should they when they can just waltz over and demand you drop all your deliverables for them?

We'd all regularly work an extra 2 or 3 hours a day just to get through everything. We'd log in every Saturday morning from home.

And then COVID hit, and a few things went pear shaped for a few teams. Not because of a drop in productivity, but because the disorganisation and lack of structure which had plagued their teams couldn't survive WFH.

So things changed, and now things go through the proper channels. Of course there are still ad hoc tasks, queries that arise etc. But these are quantified and requested in writing and funded where funding is required.

Things have improved, the workload has improved and the conditions are much nicer.

The thought of going back to that rat race fills me with dread. Everything is so much more managable now. I don't know if I'm more productive, but I do know my work is of a better quality, I can breathe, that I can freely plan to take on more responsibilities and that its rare now for me to be stuck at my desk at 8pm dealing with something that came in at 4pm that's needed by 10am the next morning.

If you read the article it’s civil servants people who are paid with tax payer money. I agree I’m not paying taxes for people chilling around on the beach! Or in bed!

Also it enrages me that so many people transformed their homes into offices in order to successfully do their jobs during covid and keep business running as normally as possible and now they’re trying to retain some work life balance and being call lazy piss takers for not wanting to go back to the office every day for jobs that they have proven can be done remotely.

WFH is so good for diversity and inclusion. But the DM is on the side of the rich office landlords, I suppose. They’re losing money if people don’t need to be in offices. Alan Sugar was awful during Covid, for instance, with regards to his property portfolio.

The world has changed and people's wants and needs and attitudes have changed.

It's not a case anymore that online interaction is bad or inferior to in person interaction. It can be equal or better for some people.

The paradigm has changed.

The owners of the Daily Mail also thought Hitler was a top bloke and that Britain should take a leaf out of his book. Although I understand you can now be threatened for knowing history in the UK. Maybe I should check my thinking.

I’m sure I read somewhere that the owners of the Daily Mail had significant commercial property (office) Interests. Thus have an incentive to keep their asset price high…

When I started my current job pre-COVID, I was given absolutely no training and just left to fend for myself. It was a horrible, cruel experience.

I would ask my colleagues and manager questions and essentially be completely ignored. They'd respond with a sentence or few words and leave it at that, yet I still had to deliver.

The person put "in charge" of me started a secondment to a different team the day I started. I arrived at 8.30, introduced myself and was shown my desk. 20 minutes later, this person left me to it, packed the contents of his desk into a cardboard box and disappeared to another floor in the office.

WFH now means people who need assistance put it in writing - it's much harder to ignore this and there's an audit trail on the back of any negative feedback. There's a fixed plan in place for helping people work remotely and training documents have been produced which people can refer to, as opposed to a half arsed mumble you would have received were you in the office.

So there are benefits to being a new starter and working remotely. I'm not underestimating the positives of sitting around others and being shown the ropes that way, but I think a lot of the benefits are overlooked.

I also think a lot of junior colleagues have an unrealistic view of workplace culture, and I've seen it on this thread.

I've never known Friday after work drinks to be a thing. I have worked with many people who's company I enjoy. We might have a team event once a year or if someone leaves, but in my view these Work Nights Out and heading to the pub at 3pm on a Thursday or Friday were things that were left behind post-2008.

I say this as someone who works hybrid and enjoys my days in the office.

I work mainly from home. On a person level it works for me. However, it's not just about me, I am a manager with a team of people and it's not right for all my team. I think that hybrid is the way forward. I think that there's a massive loss of knowledge and learning when one works entirely from home unless in a very refined role. I have junior staff, on their first and second jobs, who have massive holes in their knowledge which become a much bigger deal than they need to be because they're not picked up until later. They lose a huge amount of informal learning through osmosis and having time in the office picking things up and being able to ask questions spontaneously.

I have no issue with hybrid working but I do feel that 100% remote work might work for the individual but teams / zoom simply can't replace unstructured face to face time of being in the office and learning and collaborating informally on the job.

On the flip side, I'm able to have time to go for a run on the days I'm wfh, but not on the days I'm in the office, because there's no time once you add in the commute. Which is fine, I have no issue going into the office a couple of days a week anyway. But a blanket "it's physically healthier to go into the office" isn't true. I'm fitter now than when I was in the office full time.

Why can't you see or understand that that opinion is only reflective of you and your personal feelings?

It was called "it's all about me" when I worked in strategy.

I think over time, the working world will adapt to the changes in the way we work.

Roles where you can't WFH will likely have to offer a premium to entice people to work there, which will result in more money for people at the lower end.

And wages might increase at a slower rate for those with the privilege of WFH, hybrid working or office location.

Workplaces which can, but won't, offer WFH will likely be left behind and those which don't embrace modernity will likely get what they deserve. Other workplaces which are a little archaic will be motivated to change their culture. I think it's a good thing all around.

I agree with the sentiment that kind, tolerant older relatives have become increasingly bitter and twisted in recent years, and sound like a DM mouthpiece these days

There are many increasingly bitter and twisted people of all generations. It is the classic Tory playbook of getting different sections of the population to resent each other. Sadly, it works. You just have to look at the many racist, ageist, ableist threads on MN as well as some of the comments on this thread.

The problem with the DM/Telegraph coverage is the target demographic being people who don't currently - or never have - work in an office or similar environment.

My grandmother has no idea of what a working culture looks like. She worked in a retail store before she was married and then did some twilight shifts in a local factory in the 80s.

She once asked a male relative "do any women work in your office?" and she assumes every workplace is some sort of factory or plant, where even highflying financial executives go to work.

She phoned me once when I was WFH and she sounded shocked when I answered. I told her that I could take a few moments to answer the phone - which would also be the case in the office.

She said "oh ok" and then proceeded to gossip at me for about 20 minutes. I put her on speakerphone and carried on with some tasks and only managed to get rid of her when I told her I had a work call to attend to.

I work in the private sector, always work in excess of my hours, don't deal with the public and I'm judged on my output before anyone starts on me.

But I think it illustrates just how little these people understand the world of work.

I agree with the sentiment that kind, tolerant older relatives have become increasingly bitter and twisted in recent years, and sound like a DM mouthpiece these days.

Getting people back into the office won't solve staffing or funding issues. In fact, it'd likely exacerbate the issues as people would leave and find employment with employers offering WFH. That's a reality the "back to office," crew refuse to accept.

Yes exactly @CleverLilViper. Particularly in roles that aren't too well paid and where the ability to work remotely is one of the main positives/only positive about the job. The poster before who talked about it being easier to keep call centre staff on less desirable shift times when they can do it remotely made an important point.