To think if you moved out to the countryside during Covid, you can't demand remote working?

It's on a par with the people who got dogs during Covid, thinking they'd never have to go back to work again! Then suddenly they're summoned back to work and have to arrange dog walkers and child care. It wasn't going to be that good forever and people need to realise that employers want their staff back at work, working! Not doing the school run, going to the gym, pegging out the washing, taking the dog out etc etc. I know it seems harsh but did people really think this was life forever now?!

Jealous much

You can find plenty of threads of people doing nothing in an office and dicking about. Threads on a forum are always going to be the extremes “I do my work properly” isn’t a thrilling thread.

I feel that a lot of the country went through something traumatic in Covid, it was private to our homes so the government can kind of pretend everyone is over it now. But that’s not necessarily true. Some people were lucky but many weren’t and they had a horrific time and still carry the health and mental health consequences. The country we have all re-emerged to is basically fucked. Food, energy, housing (rent and mortgage) daily running costs just completely out of control, in relation to wages, even before the pandemic but so much more so.

Employees (and the government) should be encouraging WFH and local hubs to redistribute wealth. London can’t be the be all and end all for wealth generation. Too many areas outside London and the SE don’t generate decently paying jobs. I don’t begrudge anyone living further away and working remotely. I also don’t begrudge people already living outside London and the SE taking London and SE wage jobs now that WFH is a more widespread possibility. It widens the pool of talent.

I find the optics of managers in their 40s-60s who probably have secure housing in cities, telling other employees on lesser wages where to live, is terrible. Workers are being told they either have to either stump up for city centre living again which has become even more exorbitant since the pandemic, or to suffer hours of even more expensive unreliable commuting to come in. It’s a horrible security v precarity powerplay.

Highly complacent as well. Younger employees at our workplace have been able to buy (outside London) whereas they would have been renting for the rest of their lives in London. These people now feel able to start families. This is a good thing. The workplace and the policies of government have to adapt to the financial realities of life. Cheap living and housing and shorter waiting times for NHS treatment are not coming back any time soon.

MN would be a good starting point - there was a thread on here recently with so many posters gleefully sharing how they rigged their laptop to make it look like they were busy working when they weren't.

I'm a Civil Servant & have been for 42 years - most of which have been office based.

Lock-down threw all the balls in the air. When lockdown was announced there was no facility for WFH as we didn't have the IT necessary.

Those who couldn't come into the office were on 'gardening leave' the rest of us worked our socks off for no overtime until the Union negotiated it about 4 weeks into lockdown. I remember claiming 80 hours overtime in April. We were phoning people who were desperate. They would burst into tears when we phoned to sort their claims out, saying 'Thank God you've called'. They were wondering how they would pay their bills until their claims had been sorted.

It suited my Dept to have me working from home for much of lockdown & beyond.

Since then I have changed job to a role when I don't have face to face contact with the public. I've been required to work in my local office for 40% of my time - this will increase of 70% of my time in September. I have been given 3 month's notice of the change in policy and, if (unless there's a health reason or other reason why I can't attend the office) I don't like it I can resign. Personally I have no problem with it. I rather like going into the office & meeting people who I've worked with for more than 30 years & newer colleagues who I've trained.

The long & short is, if your employer has given you due notice of changing your contract & you decide to give up your job as a result & then claim benefits, you could face being sanctioned - this means no Universal Credit for 91 days.

Not really an opinion- if everything got done and the wheels didn’t fall off the company I’d say that’s a fact!

That said, I agree there are wider issues re culture and training up new staff but so often these aren’t properly addressed in the call to get everyone back into the office or they aren’t achieved properly because it’s done so badly.

It depends. I work longer hours on my wfh days as I’m not needing to commute. I’ll sometimes log on in evening or early. Office day I’m tired with commute in bad traffic and have never logged on after.

You can’t demand but by same token employers can’t moan they can’t recruit or retain staff if they aren’t offering wfh and competitors are. I have a friend whose company needs skilled workers (specific type of engineer) and all competitors in the industry offer wfh. They get people asking re policy at interviews (industry standard is wfh so they ask what wfh policy is not if it’s allowed) and then obviously declining offer. So they fill with expensive contractor staff as can’t recruit.
I’m in a mainly wfh role been here 5 years. I’ve never worked in office full time. That is my normal. If they wanted me in 5 days I’d leave. It’s a very hard to recruit to area. My section has some staff based hundreds of miles away full remote as can’t get qualified staff. We also don’t all fit in premises (some sold off, some leased to 3rd party)

My job is local authority and we mainly work from home, with a few site meetings and the occasional office meeting.

The office for me is a 1.5/2 hour drive then a 30 minute bus journey then an 10 minute walk each way. So I have to be up at 5 and out of the house by 5.30 to get to the office for 8am (most of my meeting start between 7.30/8am I do cancel my 7.30 meetings on office days) and then leave at 4.30 and not get home till 7pm on a good day on a Friday the latest I’ve been home is 9pm.

I took this role as it offers me the flexibility I need, however there have been mumbles from the senior leadership team they want us back in the office 2/3 days per week which would be great but they have sold off our office and now we have to hot desk so yeah that fun as there are never any desks to book…

If they do demand a proper return/mandatory 3 days I will be off, there are better paying remote job out there. I’ve regularly contacted for roles within my sector so I am pretty certain I could get another job quickly which would cover the costs of the commute.

I will agree there is a lot of entitlement around working from home, and I can think of several cases of people doing nothing

I think the days of being able to "work" whilst doing childcare, especially babies/toddlers, are well over, and quite right too. We cannot ever expect to thrive as a country again unless productivity increases and this means people take their work seriously and don't take the piss. Unfortunately it's become endemic.

I thought it was obvious that we were talking about jobs that can be done remotely.

There is a difference between you 'being in the house' with your 10 yr old, who is occupying themselves in another room, and a baby or toddler 'crawling round your feet'.
There's a period of (depending on child) perhaps 4 years or so where (most) dc are able to play / read / do homework / watch TV / play in the garden etc without needing close supervision and can get on without interrupting their parent for 90mins or so, but where they are probably too young to be in the house on their own between school and 6 or 6.30 when their parents might get home from office + commute.

It’s wrong to use a sweeping statement though and imply productivity is down everywhere. Eg in my field of project delivery, analysis of our outputs against deadlines etc. including individual appraisals shows no loss at all. In fact if anything wfh has been a big plus as when things really heat up we can choose to log on again in the evening and work late into the night if need be. I have to go in 3 days per week during which they’re definitely less productive days. Have to wake at 5am those days because of traffic and then to ensure I get parking close enough to the train station for safety reasons and because of my hip tear. It’s a roughly a 3 hr round trip. I’m utterly shattered (being peri probably doesn’t help) when I get back home and am good for nothing much just dinner then bed. The most hilarious thing is my project division has people scattered all over the country and in my office there’s currently 0 people on my project team. So all that just to sit alone at a desk except I’ve lost 3hrs to travel and contributed a bit more to polluting the environment and lost approx £10 pd on travel (£120 per month) with no discernible benefit.

Five day wees - hee hee

I think it is unreasonable for employer to demand employees come back into the office if they have been fully remote. With that being said, I think it wrong for people who do not live or work in London to receive London weighting.

Not really. Surely people still do 9-5. If they wfh, they get up at 8.30am, instead of 6.30am. So no actual extra working hours worked.

That’s usually in the context of “I log out at 3 to pick up my kid and then log back in at 4 and work until 6”

Not always for sure, but that’s the common context.

Since this moved on a bit to WFH in general. I really feel bad for the ones who are new in their career. They are the ones who lose the most from not having a full office. So much learning happens from observation and listening in on work related conversations that is hard if not impossible to recreate online.

I spent so much time (with my manager’s encouragement) as a fly on the wall getting exposed to different situations that I would have never encountered if I was WFH. It was a huge component in my early career development.

on mumsnet threads themselves people were saying they could log on and do extra if needed rather than travel etc

But travelling was never included in hours at desk. A 9-5 job never included the hour of commute so doesn't make a difference. Unless you are saying all these people being paid to work 9-5 are now working 8-6 from home and working for those full hours?

I saw this headline/story on MN this week where the civil servants are refusing to return to the office unless they re-open a pool on site and get more money to cover their commute costs! Costs that they had to take into account when they originally took the jobs! Shocking! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/24/snp-civil-servants-swimming-pool-pay-rise-return-office/

So yes, I really do think the level of entitlement to work from home and do what they want when they want is shocking since Covid.

Can't imagine any of the people demanding these rights were happy themselves when doctors/nurses did video appointments instead of in -person or when their dentists refused to see anyone over the same period. And they expect teachers, nurses, doctors, bin collectors and so on to show up to work ... but not themselves.

That can be true. At the same time it can be true that there are more or similar distractions at home.

I think the difference is you aren’t woe-is-meing if the company says no to the remote working.

It’s the people who moved away and are now bitching that their company is making them com in and the people who are far away and are complaining they can’t find a remote job.

I’m close to being in the same position as you. I plan on moving in the next 5ish years and will be looking for a remote position or asking my company if I can move to another US state. *️⃣. I’m not going to complain if my company says no and I won’t take a job that isn’t remote. I know what I’m getting myself into.

*️⃣In the US a company has to be willing to have a tax presence in each state that employees live. It can exponentially increase the complexity of the tax situation and will open a company up to the employment laws of each state which can be different. It’s a similar concept to having employees work in different countries.

For a lot of companies the hassle of having 1 employ in a different state is not worth it.

I’m fortunate that my company operates and has employees in a lot of different states. So when I asked our tax guy on the sly he thought we had what’s called nexus in the state I want to move to.

It's even worse when, during the interview, after confirming their name and the role they've applied for, you say "do you understand that this role requires the roleholder to be onsite 3 days a week?" and they say yes, but then still try to negotiate fully remote at the point of offer.