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

Very true.
Technically I'm contracted for 37 hours a week but I don't record my hours anywhere.
I just do my job and work the hours that requires.

This is so true. I'm employed to get a specific job done, and I'm judged on my outputs, not the length of time spent at my computer, or whether I'm in the office or WFH.

We've come a long way from clocking in and out.

I think some people also don't understand that many workers aren't employed to put a certain number of hours in - they have skills and experience that are valuable to their employer, even if they aren't actually 'productive' for a certain number of hours a day.

Does not compute, I expect.

Some MNers simply can't cope with the idea that anyone might need to do work with people who don't live within commuting distance of them, let alone in a different country.

What if you are then working outside work hours? So I take a couple of calls at 7am with colleagues in Australia/far east. Then send follow up emails. Then go have a shower at 10am and hang up some laundry. Work for a bit, then make dinner for later. Bit more work the school run. At 8pm i pick up with colleagues in USA and work for a couple of hours. That's a fairly standard day for me.

Yes, that's quite heroically optimistic isn't it!

But also, even without any piss taking, people have different work rates and patterns. Some people do better in bursts with time spent not working in the middle. Some people do better at a more consistent pace throughout. It's poor management to impose the second model on the first group.

I once covered someone on sabbatical leave. It wasn’t a full time job which I worked out after a couple of weeks so I asked if I could do it part time, which was allowed. One of my colleagues said “I always thought X made a meal out of that job”. Something that X’s manager had clearly never noticed.

I am similar in that I realised pretty early on that my job didn’t take 5 days and after a degree of fannying about I got them to agree to me doing 4 days.

My colleague does the same job but in 5 days. That’s up to her, I don’t begrudge her that. I didn’t want to feel tied to my desk for an additional day, I actually found it really mentally draining, she obviously doesn’t mind.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Tell me you're THAT office worker who is always SO BUSY without telling me...

'If you were in the office and sat around not working, most employers would find more work for you to do if they are paying you to work those hours.'

When I was office basedI could see the computer screen of our line manager and she openly spent most of her day openly shopping online and conversing with her boyfriend...

Naive to think that managers don't waste their time too or that time in the office is always used productively.

The difference is that nobody can insist you work or be available outside your part time hours so you have total certainty about your commitments outside working hours.

The full time worker can always be given more work if their days are genuinely not full and they can’t respond with “oh, but I can’t do that regular meeting at 4pm every Thursday because that’s when I collect my child from school/do my Zumba class” (absent a formal flexible working request).

@Yodeloo work on my side business.

Yeah, worked with a guy who did similar. He was instantly dismissed when work found out.

If you were in the office and sat around not working, most employers would find more work for you to do if they are paying you to work those hours.

That's quite the generalisation.

Maybe if people are doing pretty generalised roles. But lots of jobs are very specific. There's actually no guarantee that because someone happens to have an hour without much to do, there'll automatically be a suitable task available for them to fill that time, and it won't more faff than it's worth getting someone else to show them how to do it.

Really, this is just another example of people not understanding how different jobs are different.

I guess because if you are putting less hours in you are essentially doing a part time job and are getting paid for a full time job.
As someone who works part time and works non stop when at work but only gets a part time wage you can see why it would annoy me or other people.
I work part time so I can do all that other stuff on my own time. But I get the part time wage to go with it.

That’s not the fault of the worker, that’s bad management and the manager needs to take responsibility for that. Almost certainly the work was being spun out to fill the hours when both manager and worker were in the office and the manager failed to be aware of this.

As I said upthread, there are lots of jobsworth middle managers on MN and my take is that they’re realising how WFH shows up their failings and so are desperate for that to get covered up again in the culture of office work and presenteeism.

It’s not my job to point out my manager’s or my company’s inefficiencies.

It totally depends on the job.
My employer expects a huge amount of flexibility from me (evenings and weekends) therefore I get flexibility back.
As long as my work is done and I don't miss meetings etc it's not an issue.

It will be different for other jobs though.
However, some people do really fail to understand that wfh actually means I'm working!!

I think it’s just part of the work life balance, I could spend 10 mins in the staff room making a cuppa and having a chat.. at home that equates to me putting a wash on. I get all my work done and still manage to clean my house on a Friday so it’s nice and fresh for the weekend. Everyone’s a winner.

Funnily enough when I worked from home I thought exactly like that which is why I got a lot more work done at home and worked longer hours too logging in long after I would have eft the office and logging in before I would have arrived. I would also feel guilty leaving the house whereas in the office I would always go for a walk at lunch time. I also got interrupted more in the office when people would come round to my desk to chat, sometimes starting about work but carrying on about something else.
I worked from home before the pandemic and my organisation actually encouraged it because it meant they needed less accommodation space and when someone has a particularly complex piece of work to do they were told to work from home away from distractions.

My point stands: it is highly unlikely that everyone on here saying they do their work, their managers are happy, their company's bottom line is happy, is lying or deluded about the standard of their work or the success of the business they work for.

Oh God, absolutely! My field is full of people who have no clue how to manage anyone, in roles that don’t actually give them enough time or support to learn how to manage.

(By the way I have read the whole thread and it was really bad form of you not to apologise to the poster you accused of “making shit up” when you had clearly not read the OP properly).

In which case, I concur - it was a shit analogy!

I know. That’s what I was trying to do. I am not anti-flexibility or WFH, I am anti -shit analogies.

Slight side issue, but why is flexibility about hours allowed when it involves working around school pickup and bedtime, but a gym class in the working day is taking the piss? It's great that they're 'supportive of family life', but how about being supportive of their staff's general health and well-being?

I would suggest that you can spend your designated lunch break (30 mins/60 mins whatever you're work contracted agreement is) doing "life admin" if that's what you choose to do, but otherwise I do think that you should be at your desk working. I would argue that if you have time in your work hours outside of break times to attend to personal tasks then you are effectively being paid full time hours to do part time work. If you were in the office and sat around not working, most employers would find more work for you to do if they are paying you to work those hours.

Why do you think an office has no distractions?

My office has loads. It's open plan, and people are in and out and talking loudly. People walk up and start talking to you, and some of them love a chat. There are colleagues I enjoy talking to. Sometimes I end up helping people with something they can't do on their computer, or if the receptionist is photocopying I might get asked for help by a visitor.

Offices are not sterile cubes with nothing but 4 walls and a computer, we don't work at Lumon.