to think some people think WFH should be a constant nose to the grindstone?

WFH should be like you would be in the office - no skiving and get on with the job as you’re paid to do. 🤷‍♀️🙄

I work from home a lot, I read lots of threads like this and think most people don’t have a clue.
Even if I stop for a break like I would in the office, I still think about work and how I’m going to get round a problem or what i’m going to say in a meeting. I do exercise at lunch but so what, it’s my lunch break. Nobody ever had an opinion on what I should be doing in my lunch break in the office when I used to put my head phones in and go for a walk. Also, sometimes I call a colleague to just to chat and/or a rant or some advice.
So many things that are apparently ok to do if you’re in an office but not when it’s WFH 🤦🏼‍♀️. I swear people just make up rules even when it has nothing to do with them.

We have a mandatory two days a week in the office. I find I'm more productive in the office and that the time spent chatting to colleagues is important to working well as a team. But I can't physically cope with travel so am glad to have the opportunity to work from home the other days.

The thing that I find objectionable is when people who work from home will happily (and rightfully) take time out to do errands or a gym class or whatever when there's downtime but will refuse to work an extra minute over their working hours when it's busier.

I don’t wfh but do work in a role that ebs and flows. Some shifts I don’t get a break or a chance to have a drink. The last 2 nights I have had very little to do (very rare!) so have caught up on admin, read, had a nap and a gossip with my colleagues.

Even when I worked in an office environment, I wanted my team to be productive and that came with not be a dick about people having some down time. We are humans, not robots

You don't think that maybe there's massive variation in jobs, and your limited experience doesn't qualify you to understand what constitutes shirking in all of them, then?

Its failure to understand jobs are different.

It’s exactly this. And possibly a big dose of jealousy too. It’s fine for people to not understand, but when they talk absolute rubbish and don’t listen to those who explain it to them, they’re really annoying, and best ignored.

I work from home full time, my contract is remote. When I was in an office, when we wanted a cuppa we had to go up three floors, queue for the kettle, refill it, wait for it to boil, wait for our tea to stew, put the teabag in the bin, go back to the lift, go back down three floors. At least ten minutes per cuppa, and we'd go at least 3 times a day.

At home the washer goes on before I start work. An hour in I go downstairs (30 seconds) flick the kettle on-no queue for it in my kitchen. Whilst it boils I empty the washer. I stick stuff on the clothes horse or sort it into piles for the line. Then I pour the hot water into my cup and put the clothes onto the line whilst my tea stews (or press 'go' on my robot vac) Teabag out of cuppa, back to my desk, gone approx 5 minutes (I timed it and when hanging washing out in the summer I was 7 minutes)

I finish at 5:30, but always finish the email I was working on. Sometimes also remember at 8pm that I wanted to message my colleague about her customer, so I nip upstairs and do it so she can read it in the morning.

We also have a whole colleague meeting for the last hour on a Friday. It's effectively a 'here's this weeks news' and we are meant to just sit and watch. I usually put a hair mask on during this, or dust my office room, or do my nails, none of which stop me from watching. Colleagues in the office will play with a fidget toy or have a beer from the office beer fridge whilst watching.

In the office, I used to get my 'steps' every hour, according to my fitbit. At home I get 4 hours of the 12 most days, because I barely stretch my legs. Need to be better at that, really.

My stats are far higher here than they were when I worked in the office. I've had two promotions since WFH due to increased productivity. Oh, and my disablity is vastly improved, too.

It's weird, isn't it. I haven't worked in an office for years, but I and others definitely used to 'waste' time (although I think of it as necessary breaks/decompression time) doing things like deliberately going to a loo miles away, ambling to the canteen, making a round of tea in leisurely fashion, standing in someone's office or in the kitchen shooting the breeze with colleagues for a bit, going on MN… Not to mention those people who smoke going out for however many cig breaks in a day.
'not-working' time definitely doesn't only exist when people are WFH.

@rwalker
Quite.
I worked for two years, never needed
to afterwards.
Very fortunate.
Can't stand WFH and am convinced it's shirking, like that teacher a PP suggested.

I wasted far more time working in an office - chatting to colleagues, getting a coffee, the loo being far away, peoples birthdays and stopping to eat cakes, the Friday butty run, more chatting, more meetings, more distractions.

I get far more done wfh, at times that suit me. Productivity is well up in my industry since Covid and wfh.

And yes I start work approximately 7 minutes after waking up and am on the sofa within 30 seconds of finishing. I bloody love it.

The vast majority of office jobs have never taken 40 hours a week.

There's a few people who are always loudly busy in every office, talking a lot about how they have so many emails and acting flustered all the time.

Then there's 80% of the staff getting their jobs done and then quietly finding ways to fill time and appear busy until they are allowed to leave.

WFH has drawn attention to the fact that most people are perfectly able to get their jobs done in a fraction of the time they are actually paid for, but acknowledging this would cause a massive shift in the way we approach work and the economy, so the people who want things to stay as they are hate it.

I've never had a job which actually took 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

I have to work a set number of hours a week, when I do my hours is entirely up to me. If I’m working with a US team then I start later, Europe teams then I start earlier. The majority of my workload is at the beginning and end of a project so I flex my hours around that.

When I was office based, a colleague would regularly come in 15 minutes late then spend 45 minutes on personal calls and another would blatantly watch programmes on her iPad at her desk. Just because people are in an office it doesn’t mean they are working constantly.

That depends if you paid the painter by the hour, or a fixed price for the whole job

And this is why some employers, press , government and the public think WFH is affecting the economy and everyone's skiving.

WFH, IME, is a complete working revolution. I work in a global role - I do an 8am call every day and often finish up about 7/8pm. . Am I going to go to an exercise class/shopping/whatever midday? Hell yes! Would my organisation have me on hand at those hours if I was in the office? Of course not! I know loads of people that work like this. It is win:win all round.

We are back in the office half the week now.

When I'm in the office, sometimes I stop and chat to a colleague on a different floor, it might be because I'm there to sort a work task but turns into general chat.

Or I might swing round to people behind me while we discuss MAFS, or someone's holiday plans, or what we did on the weekend. We do not usually work while we gossip.

We have 2 sites and one is a 15 minute walk from the other. If staff need to go from the one they are based in, they take that 15 minute walk during their working hours, ie it doesn't count as a break.

So I really don't see how taking 10 minutes to put out washing is so insanely terrible compared to spending 10 minutes chatting with a colleague.

Get a life 🤣😭

I think this is where the understanding falls down. Many people don't have specific contracted working hours anymore.

I am 100% flexitime, as long as I do at least 37hrs a week (I'm always way over, everyone is as the volume of work is high). No one cares if I go to the gym or hang the washing out as long as it's not missing meetings or preventing work happening. This attitude is the norm in my industry.

Meh you get paid to work 8 hours you work those 8 hours in the hours specified in contract eg 9-5. Comfort breaks and the making of a quick cuppa if you can’t last more than a half shift without one.

Fail to see what’s funny if you paid a decorator to paint your house and they fuck off for the afternoon would you still be happy to to pay them for the afternoon

Stepping away and doing other things can be good thinking time. We do it in the office too on a tea break!

Not that you'd think it, to listen to some MNers.

I don't think I've ever had a job, WFH or office-based, that consistently took up all of the allocated working hours. I don't understand the idea that there's something wrong if you're not constantly working. If you have a task-based rather than a time-based job, then good for you if you can finish your tasks in less time. Why not?

It's not like everyone in an office is working the whole time. There's always plenty of non-work related chat, people going to make a cup of tea, or clearly scrolling on their phones IME.