To hate the Daily Mail and its anti WFH vendetta

Please stay WfH, it makes my travelling for work much easier.

Well the massive deterioration in customer services for pretty much every company or agency in the whole country is partly due to people WFH. People can’t ask their manager questions, so we’re often being given wrong information. You can hear kids in the background. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told “I’m working from home today so I can’t answer that question, but I will try and get back to you” but they never do.

I think WFH should only be allowed in exceptional circumstances- disabilities, medical problems etc. Generally the reasons people give for liking WFH are all the things that make them less productive - I can walk the dog, I can speak to the washing machine repair man, I can pick up the kids from school, I can help the kids with their homework, I can get tea ready on time, I can get to the shops, I can make domestic admin phone calls etc. So when I’m 25th in a call queue, being told that they’re experiencing high call volumes, I know it’s because the employees are on the school run or in Tesco!

Prepared to be slated of course.

Not a fan of the Daily Mail in general though.

Agreed. It's so important to recognise this as propaganda being put out on behalf of those with financial investments in office buildings.

It is capitalism at its worst. We are in a climate emergency and these people want office workers back in cars for the daily commute to further their own short term financial gains.

Or maybe I'm overthinking it and it is just bitter journalists having to pay a fortune to commute to fleet street and hating every second whilst everyone else can watch netflix whilst getting paid to WFH. It's so unfair..........😭

The waits and the backlog in the Civil Service are not caused by WFH.. it’s caused by an increase in legislation, more tasks post-Brexit (that either didn’t exist pre-Brexit or was light touch), and a decrease in departmental budgets.

Much easier to blame the workers, rather than incompetent Govt leadership

Most banks have had office working mandates but it varies by role, seniority etc. Same for consulting, Civil Service, accounting, professional services in general.

I had a very interesting discussion with a partner at one of the B4 consultancies about WFH and real estate. During the pandemic, he was convinced that WFH would end once restrictions were lifted. More recently he has conceded that WFH is here to stay for Mon and Fri. At one point there were considerations for a reduction in real estate in the London office due to the lack of in-person attendance although that has turned around now, WFH is here to stay.

However, absolute LOL at the low footfall photo on a Friday. Have they seen it on a Friday at any other point, pre-pandemic as well? Friday has always been a WFH/half-day affair.

People are making good points about remote working as a cost saving option and the right wing rags needing to bash local goverment and civil servants as a point of principle.

I wonder if eventually, once there's more societal acceptance that people do not need and are not going to just go back to the office, the criticism might not go the other way. I could see the Mail in say 2028 going with a look at this profligate Labour government spaffing away taxpayers money on plush offices, make the entitled buggers work at their kitchen tables instead and not expect their electricity to be paid for.

I actually worked for the DM for a bit as a temp job (don’t hate me!) The offices have a floor to ceiling atrium up to the top however many storeys it is, with an indoor gold-coloured waterfall. The letters editor used to rock up mid-morning, laugh at a few of the mad missives (lots of green pen on the back of cigarette packets ranting that they were Prince Harry’s love child), hand the best of the bunch to me to type them up, then bugger off for his five-hour piss-up lunch before coming back to sign off on the page. But it’s WFH that’s lazy, obviously.

I assume she means 40% in the office (or 40% at home?)

@Zanatdy

Please could you explain your post:

"Our staff do more work at home, their stats are a bit lower on office days (we do 40% and so do most of government, or more) as they are encouraged to ‘collaborate’. "

What do you mean, we do 40%? 40% of what? That seems very low.

Yes, it's very physically obvious. That's exactly what it is. The knee jerk reaction comes from that specifically.

The worst I've ever known is someone who, over the course of years, spent about 25% of their office hours actually doing anything at all. The examples you give don't necessarily mean the work doesn't get done, although I presume you've mentioned them because it didn't in those instances.

This.

My late father was in hospital for a while. I suspended his Telegraph paper subscription while he was in there. When he came out, I asked him if he wanted to restart. He said to give it a longer break which became permanent (would get his news from BBC or Sky TV and pick up the odd local paper instead).

There was a very noticeable softening of his views over time (he was an essentially kind man) and much less single issue pro-Tory, pro-capitalism ranting. I think he was happier without it too- felt less threatened.

I work for a council and we have no network access abroad. I know this because I, like my equally lazy colleagues, have my work email set up on my personal phone in case something comes up out of hours, and it automatically kicks you out when your phone detects an overseas network.

Don't forget one of the Daily Mail's lesser duties is to bash local government - central government cuts council budgets first and hardest so that when people see their lives getting harder and their communities struggling they blame the council not the government. If readers catch on that council staff are normal, mostly hard working people rather than lazy bureaucrats who hold 6 hour meetings daily to decide whose bin to deliberately miss next, the ruse stops working.

That's true but it's very physically obvious so easier for people to manage.

And the worst piss taking I have heard of is someone "working" two different full time jobs simultaneously until they got caught out. Or people "working" with toddlers under their feet. That couldn't be done if they had to go into the the office physically

It is such a shame that the generations are being pitted against each other when nobody, for many reasons, had it easy.

My great grandparents had the Great War and 1930s depression
My grandparents had to raised children during the war and the poverty and deprivation of the post war period.
My parents were born of people who lost almost everything and many loved ones during the war. They were frugal to their own detriment and had very little of the employment and H&S law there which protects people now.
My generation started work in a time when there was no Equal Pay Act or legal right to equality at work or in education, housing etc.
Our children's generation face a desperate housing market, covid, war
Our grandchildren's generation are staring at a future blighted by global warming and economic chaos.

The real shame of this is that it is our leaders fault, not the 'boomer' or 'millennial' in the street who is to blame for 90% of our problems.

The DM/Telegraph/Whoever spend their energy and money stirring up intergenerational friction or hatred of the poor, those working from home, working mums, stay at home mums, benefit claimants, junior doctors, posties, nurses, railway workers, old people, the long term sick, single mums and those who crush avocados onto sour dough toast.

They do that to distract us from the key fact that the key issues are something we should all spend our time learning about (not infighting) that we should be angry, protesting and most of all voting.

Daily Mail gets great reviews on glassdoor by its employees for the perks of working from home!
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Benefits/Daily-Mail-and-General-Trust-Work-From-Home-BNFT153_E10837_N2.htm

I agree too. It looks like hybrid working is here to stay, and is to the benefit of everyone, except commercial landlords, TFL and transport companies. Given how exploitative these entities have been over the years, through fare hikes and presumably rent increases for businesses, I don't see much sympathy being aimed in their direction.

From what I can see, employees benefit because they have a better work life balance. I have benefitted in countless ways. I gave birth in May 2020, so was WFH a little just before going on mat leave, and came back to a working world which was so much more accommodating of the needs of a working mother. I simply wouldn't have been able to return to work full time without the flexibility being able to WFH has provided me with, so would have been paying less tax etc.

I also think employers are benefiting through reduced rent/utility bills, and the higher productivity of their staff.

I'd say the Mail etc know they are fighting a losing battle, but have to throw these articles out every so often to appease their stakeholders. Ignore and enjoy your improved quality of life OP.

I do find it very interesting the way piss taking when WFH is often interpreted as a negative of WFH generally and a legitimate reason for people to be brought back to the office, yet the same doesn't apply in reverse. People pissing around taking constant cig breaks, using the office as their social life, distracting others, playing on the internet, nicking stuff... none of this seems to be considered a reason why people who work in offices should go remote instead. People who want to take the piss can use whatever physical location they're doing their work in to enable it.

There was an astonishing thread on here a while back of people boasting about all the stuff they do when they are meant to be working from home
But pisstakers take the piss in the office.

Agree. If I lived in London with great transport and bars maybe I too would work in the office four days a week for the moral good.

Agreed. And I say that as a homeowner. The idea we should prop up the insanely wealthy landowning interests in London is the weakest argument ever for returning to the office.

(I appreciate there will be pension funds owning property too and the picture is more complex, but this argument just isn't going to wash with the many people who work hard just to pay extortionate rent)

When I worked in retail, I had to go in. When I sorted post for Royal Mail, I had to go in. I now work in IT. I don't have to go in. Are you familiar with the phrase "horses for courses"?

It's very "dog in a manger" and "race to the bottom" thinking to demand that no one should benefit from WFH if you can't and we should all aspire to be as miserable at work as you.

I suggest that you take a Computing degree and get an IT job if you don't like your current position, instead of trying to drag others down to your misery level. It's what I did.

Friend WFH for a big bank is delighted to be hybrid working. Some of her teams fell apart WFH during covid and after. Productivity reduced. The bank sacked some which made it even harder. Now she's back to mentoring ftf, she's hoping it will improve.

Graduates need a helping hand especially

I have done both. Worked for a very large FTSE company before WFH was a thing. It worked for middle and senior managers who had the space to work quietly. It didnt work for the more junior members some of whom were living at home with parents and who were trying to work from their beds during the pandemic. There were many many piss takers who were never around after 1500 and when your line manager changes often its not addressed. You could of course blame the company but actually its the person who has seen a little weeze and taken advantage of it.

I worked for many years with government depts and doing the minimum was rife with outdated technology which they refused to change because 'they knew it'. I visited many many central government offices and saw often how little work the back office people did. During the pandemic Land Registry, Passport Agency and HMRC became as slow as snails whilst working at home and are now fighting to stay there. Sod their customers and having to wait weeks and weeks for any response. I have recently gone through Probate. You cannot chase before 16 weeks, but in that time often interest is payable on certain areas. Its ironic that one government dept is holding up releasing the money and another is chasing you for it! They dont make things easy with the many forms to fill in.

Please dont say that they have a backlog. People die all the time. Covid and the wfh actually slowed things down and three years later we are still using Covid as an excuse.