To be so glad WFH became a thing (and to absolutely hate anyone who tries to curtail its availability)

What would your choice be between a one-to-one with a Dr or a DR and her partner?

Come on now, be honest. If it's not the first, I'm sure you'd be happy to screenshot your medical records and post them here, since it's not an issue, or just share a few work-related emails involving another person? My guess is that you'd not be happy to do that, and I'd not either. It'd probably lead to you getting the sack, depending on your job.

Mishandling sensitive, confidential information has sent people to their graves, but it's okay; my complaint was resolved.

It's the same argument over and over again: you can't pick and choose which parts of a policy we want to uphold.

I know this is a far cry from the initial question about WFH, but it shows that many people just aren't suited to it and are willing to die on the hill to prove a point.

And this is from someone who works from home, hotel rooms, coffee shops across the UK, would I ever conduct a work call in a coffee shop- not a cat in hell's chance - would I do while driving down the motorway on my own?- yep.

I know someone who works full time and wfh during half term week whilst caring for her 2 young children, one of whom is a baby.

I spent a couple of days with my young niece and nephew and didn't manage to finish a full cup of tea.

I have WFH 100% since 2017. Moved to a new job in 2023 also 100% WFH. Until recently I would’ve have 100% supported it….
then I had something happen which got out of control. You could argue company culture is the reason why it couldn’t be tackled.

i managed a team of 9 in a busy department. Most of my team were fantastic.

i had one guy who was never really comfortable being managed by a woman. But we got by. He had an old-fashioned attitude to his job (eg didn't trust excel formulas, he would still add up a row of numbers “just to check”). Getting him to embrace automated tasks was difficult, even when I told him it was to allow him more time to branch out more (which it did - our company was growing massively and he wanted to be part of that growth). I couldn’t keep track of how slow he was being as I couldn’t see him not trusting agreed process. He was lying about how long things were taking and overriding automation. He took on new work and became stressed because he couldn’t manage his time. He wouldn’t let go of the old ways, nor would he let go of the new responsibilities. He was overworked through his own stubbornness and mistrust of excel formulas!!

then things got really nasty. When he was angry he would call women in my team and scream and shout at them. Every time I pulled him up on it he denied it. My word against theirs. HR were useless. My boss was useless. He then claimed all the women collaborated to make up lies about him. I was furious. Still no support from HR. They said it could go either way…, he is relying on the ability to deny it every time and the women are all being shouted at, or the women are all lying in collaboration. HR said there was nothing they could do.

I was sure had we all sat in an office it would be completely impossible for him to continue this behaviour. He definitely had a problem with anger towards women. 121 teams calls were an easy way to continue to shout at women until they cried. I was trying to protect my team with no support from my boss or HR. It was a stressful time. i hated the fact we all WFH as he could bypass all behavioural norms. I was really stuck and I couldn’t believe he was getting away with it.
I mentioned it to a friend who said, next time he does it tell them to record it.

when he finally did it to me, my friends words popped into my head: I recorded him on my iPhone. His language was disgraceful. Swearing, sexiest slurs etc, Massive massive error. Without looking into the implications I reported it to HR thinking I had the key to solving this with the recording. I ended up sacked for recording someone without their consent.

I worked in a call centre in 1996 and also cut off calls a lot.

Because it was generally people being confused by the system, complete assholes or thick as pigshit.

I was working for 'talking pages' which was supposedly a call centre version of the yellow pages except companies paid for the advertisement on the 'phone.

So if you called wanting the phone 'number of the builder you knew worked down the road. I couldn't give it to you even if you asked for it by name because they hadn't paid to advertise.

So i'd have to give you the numbers of the builders in your area that were paying to advertise. Which could be miles and miles away. And I had to give 2 of those shit options before looking on the non-paid for list. And most of the time, people were being complete abusive twats before that because they thought I was a liar not telling them the number of local John in the first place when I clearly had it.

And I get how frustrating and gas-lighting that was for callers but a lot of people were such nasty, abusive assholes i'd just cut them off because it was so horrible to be a victim of the abuse.

And some people were thick as shit. I remember someone calling and saying he knew the company could be contacted by email so he wanted me to do that for him and when I said you needed a computer to make an email address (late 90s) he called me a thick liar and made various abusive assumptions about me.

You're missing the point. to (try and) prove a very, very weak argument. Ted, who sits next to me, is part of my business and is covered by my company's policies; they adhere to our company NDA's, ICO, GDPR, etc policies/guidlines. My insurance covers me if Ted goes on a bender. Much like a junior Dr would be in a hospital performing his/her job for that business, they have privileges, need to know information. Your partner does not.

As for cleaners, ours come in every day. She asks if I need my work area cleaned. We have a policy on which information is left out 'in view' in our office and which is locked away, whether paper or laptops. She works for us, so she has a legitimate reason to be in our office. She is bound by our company procedure.

The exact same if we have to use an outside contractor.

This is true.

you weren't the only one- everyone had their tricks, once you did the bare minimume and stats were met you were fine.

This has inspired me to also confess.

I have never admitted this on MN before, but I used to be a fucker for this when I worked in a call centre for a few months in the 00s. When I knew I was leaving, in my final month I stopped even pretending. Any time a phone conversation got complicated I would 'accidentally' lose connection.

So if any of you asked a difficult question on the phone to a certain broadband provider and have suspicions you got hung up on deliberately in summer 2004, that may have been me and I'm very sorry indeed!

That was exactly my point.

Thank you for supporting.

I worked in a call centre many years ago before WFH happened, the amount of calls that were answered were monitored and people rewarded each month based on the amount they answered. It was quiet common to " accidently" loose connection then, would also be done when it was break time or close to going home ect.

We have office cleaners who come in and wipe the desks/dust during working hours. We’ve also currently got workmen in fixing the overheard lights. People are asked to sit and wait in the corner of our office whilst waiting to be called in for a job interviews. Also, when you call a call centre and get the “Your call is monitored for training purposes” - this isn’t just the company arse-covering. There is a very real chance that there is a training group of 40 people who could be live-listening to their peer dealing with your call and taking reflection notes.

They can all easily see/hear client information.

I get that people are concerned that those WFH could be up to anything - but I’ve never heard of anyone WFH being involved in this sort of incident. We did have a girl get sacked because she was caught taking down a customer’s credit card number on her Apple Watch - this happened in the office during her training.

So the choice is visiting my doctor at home with her spouse and a child in the house, or in the average open plan office with 50+ people from multiple different departments all sitting in the room? I pick the first option.

If someone WFH is discussing confidential information verbally WFH within earshot then that could be a breach, as would working on a laptop on a train for lengthy time could result in a breach.

But someone popping in to say bye WFH being a potential GDPR breach because they might catch a glimpse of a screen would be the same as anyone working for the same organisation in the office catching a glimpse of a screen when they approach the worker for any reason but shouldn't be privy to that information.

So..not really a problem.

Absolutely.

I've had staff recalled to the office before because they don't have a suitable WFH set up - it's all set out in their contract. You can't effectively WFH from your only reception room when your kids are at home, regardless of whether another adult is providing the care of the children.

I genuinely had one colleague who was set up on the dining table which was in the open plan lounge/kitchen/diner. His wife was on mat leave and all 3 of their preschool age kids were at home all day. It was untenable. We weren't doing any work of a sensitive nature (nothing GDPR cared about etc) but he just couldn't properly do his job with Bluey on in the back ground and a toddler running around.

Well, it allows me more family time when we're all home and we don't spend half a weekend day doing laundry, food shopping and the like.

Similarly, once I finish work, we're back home spending family time together within 25 minutes as I no longer have a commute.

So it's actually made all the domestic labour much easier due to lack of commuting time.

It's also allowed a career change and significant pay rise, allowing us to have a weekly cleaner.

So I can't get angry about it to be honest!

I think you should look at it another way - it allows women to carry on working and maintaining financial independence when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to due to the restraints of family life:

I finish work at 5:30pm. My train home is at 5:52pm and takes 12 minutes (and this is often delayed). I will then have an 18 minute walk to the nursery - my nursery shuts at 6pm. My partner works 8am-8pm (and no, he can’t request flexible working or WFH as he is a crane driver on a dock and needs to be physically there during the required hours).

The 2 in-office days my workplace insists on suddenly become impossible.

When WFH, I can log-off at 5:30pm and be home with the baby by 6pm.

My options are as follows

• Quit and become a SAHM until I can find a job with appropriate hours - this drastically reduces our household income and it may take me months/years to find something, especially in this job market. It would leave a permanent dent in our finances and my pension
• Get a part-time job or request to reduce hours at my current role - this reduces my income, reduces pension contributions and reduces opportunity for career progression
• Request to go fully WFH - I still earn the same income, and the business still has a full-time staff member. Everybody wins

I used to work in a place (pre COVID) where we were given bonuses for the number of calls we got through in a day. It was really really easy to meet the quota if you just hung up on several calls which were going over the average time. I wonder if that still happens?

It had nothing to do with WFH (we were fully office based) but everything to do with daily quotas. They then introduced customer satisfaction surveys after calls and surprise surprise, everyone did fewer calls per day!

Not really, and on one call with a government agency (can't say which one 🤐) I was specifically told that they have 'privacy screens' on their laptops to avoid passersby, wives, husbands, etc., peeking at their PC screens, and they'd had issues with 'auditors' zooming into buildings.

If you visited the Dr's and the doc had their husband/wife sat next to them, or a kid running around, would you be happy with that as a service as long as they gave you a prescription? Or would you expect some level of privacy and confidentiality?

It's brilliant. I used to think, oh, if only working from home was a wide- scale thing. And then it happened.

Unfortunately for me, I've been trying to get a work from home job but I can't get anything. I've no skills apart from warehouse and shop work and stuff like that.

I always get anxiety talking on the phone for work, but maybe I could work on that anxiety. I was thinking about doing some courses to learn how to do payroll and things like that

I think it depends on who you are. I find WFH much more productive because I can get my head down and do a chunk of work. In the office I'm easily and frequently distracted and find the constant context switching really difficult.

Yes I completely agree - some sectors need that regular in person-collaboration.

In my post I was more critiquing companies where WFH full-time has proven to be effective, and yet the company insist we still have “in-office days” for arbitrary reasons such as “team building” (even though during every working moment we are on calls to customers, I barely know my colleagues as we don’t get a chance to talk). Training, welfare meetings, performance reviews etc are all performed over Teams with headsets on, even if the manager is sat next to you in the office. When I had a meeting to announce my pregnancy to the manager, I was WFH and she was in the office (we have differing WFH days) with colleagues sat next to her - it certainly didn’t feel like a confidential meeting with her. The others in the office wouldn’t have heard me but they’d have heard her asking “So when you due, Espertillus?”. I’d have felt much more comfortable if she’d invited me into the office to have the meeting in a private room - but logic seems to have gone from my workplace on how to use the office space appropriately.

My workplace employed people from all over the country during Covid and has kept them employed on permanent WFH contracts. Post-COVID they only hire people in the local city, and we are expected to do 2 days in office. One person ended up with a leg ailment that made commuting hard and had requested to go onto a permanent WFH contract as a reasonable adjustment. The business declined on the basis that it wouldn’t be fair to other office staff, that office days are part of her contract and that they hadn’t had a chance to offer her accommodations in the office yet. She appealed based on the fact that there are 20 people doing her role who are based fully remotely, and she won.

It has a set a precedent, and I’m prepared to fight the same fight when I return from mat leave, as being fully WFH would save me a massive logistical issue with managing a commute and nursery pick-ups.

So basically as well as working full time WFH enables woman to carry on doing all tbe domestic work as well. Thats handy.

Yep, this too!

110%. DH and I were talking about this the other day. It’s enabled him to condense his full time hours into 4 days, and I hope to do the same after being part time (4 days) since our eldest now in Y6 was born.

DH tends to go into the office 2 days a week, me 1 day maximum but sometimes there’ll be a couple of weeks where I don’t go in at all. We can fit so much more in, exercise, dog walking, the odd chore. My job is peaks and troughs and some days I barely leave my desk at home, but at least I’m at home and don’t have the added commute on both ends of the day.

The only thing it hasn’t helped is my waistline! I cook healthy lunches but my snacking habit has grown, I was more disciplined when people in the office would judge me!

Yes, I have been put through to a call centre and I could hear the clacking of keyboards and other agents talking to customers. I guess it all depends on the headsets etc they are using. I seriously doubt they have an old landline phone on their desk anymore.

I remember seeing a video of a man on a Teams call who somehow used some computer magic to show a clone of himself bringing him a cup of tea. Probably confused the hell out of his colleagues 😆