How the hell do I do everything now I no longer WFH

[Persuaderama]

I’m a single parent, my husband left a month before lock down so all my single parenting was done whilst, at first fully WFH and then WFH 3 days a week.

Now my employer has decided we have to be in the office 3 days a week ‘for office culture’ (don’t get me started on office culture) and I’m really struggling to keep on top of the day-to-day jobs.

I work quite a senior level role and I come home exhausted and then have to ferry to hobbies/ tidy/ cook/ wash/ do bedtime, all in the space of a few hours before I fall into bed. When I WFH I could do the little jobs throughout the day - have the dinner cooking in oven, put the bins out on a break etc etc - and I was thinking I was bossing single mum life! Not so much now…..

Plus work feels more stressful as I’m losing 2 hours a day to commute time and the noise of a busy office just isn’t conducive to working for me. So I’m getting less done.

Any tips on how to work in an office as a single parent and have an organised life outside…..

Yes, I have a hybrid set up and this is so true, it is exhausting as I just want to get 'work' done. Equally, if someone sees me it always reminds them of some pointless thing they think concerns me but is actually nothing to do with my job.

Pay people; cleaner, gardener, hello fresh, laundry service... makes all the difference!

@Kennykenkencat pre covid i sat beside my boss. I spent a good bit of my time answering his phone and taking messages. He was never at his desk. always at meetings or being pulled down on the floor. If i needed him to sign stuff or approve stuff before i finished i would have to sit for ages waiting for him to come back, often past my finishing time or would go searching for him. Since WFH i speak to home more during the day then i ever did via teams ( no we don't have work mobile phones), we have docu sign ect so things are moving more productively. Just because you were physically in the office does not mean you are at your desk. Phones can be ignored too -often done when i was in the office. If you looked at my laptop on the days i am in the office, some times you think i did no work, as i am working in-between face to face meetings being pulled in offices for other conversation, mandatory training that has to be done on site for some strange reason, noisy office meaning cant concentrate as well as catching up with work colleagues. When i WFH i get so much more done, have phone conversations in private etc

I find just lowering my expectations helps. It’s fine if the house is a mess. If you find it embarrassing just don’t let folks in. Be as organised as you can be and clean up on non office days. But the biggest thing is expect more mess and lower your expectations. Cut down on your DDs activities. Less running around more time at home.

I know! I never had a mentor or anything like that - I was employed solely because of my academic qualifications and my research. I was mentioning mentoring only because that particular poster mentioned that she was mentoring a junior colleague...

I’m with you OP. Senior role, WFH and just about manage my life as a result. Now likely to be going in three days a week and I am terrified. For the WFH haters - I do the school run, put a wash on etc in ‘work hours’ - but they I work totally flexibly (and I am supported to) including into the night 3/4 times a week and get my work done. Everyone wins.

If you're senior, I expect your current employers probably aren't the only ones who'd be interested in you. Would you consider looking elsewhere? Lots of people are voting with their feet now.

I’m in a less senior role than most here but am 51 and me and most friends a similar age (no kids!) definitely prefer a hybrid working model and get loads more done. We don’t slack over either.

We’re fed up of commuting and the cost and subsidising greedy work landlords and Pret etc. We’ve also done the work socialising in/out of office and at pubs/bars there and for those happy to do it or younger, good for them! How has it benefitted us?! Not at all. So many workers on linked in now looking for a hybrid model. I’m happy to go in 2 days a week though.

I never had the option of wfh as a single parent. All I did was pick the children up from after school clubs, get in, cook a meal, put washing on, supervised homework, wash up (no dishwasher) tidy up then bed. In the morning I ironed uniforms, made breakfasts, then dropped children at different schools and drove very quickly to the office. I also had the children's clubs and sporting things to get them to a few evenings each week. All other housework and shopping was done at the weekend. The children had jobs to do from a young age so they helped out. I couldn't afford to outsource anything. It's doable.

Yes, I agree - a blanket X does/doesn't work misses the nuance. Sorry, I should have said in my post that WFH in context means anything from never go into the office to the occasional WFH day when needed, and everything in between! The key is finding the balance that works for you.

After many years of hardly ever going in, I am quite enjoying my day a week in the office. I am lucky that I have flexibility with my hours to avoid the worst of the commute though.

I can fully relate to this and it is tough. Given you are senior, could one way to handle it to take soundings from your team / colleagues to see if they have similar feelings about the new policy and present this helpful "feedback" on how the change has been received and how it is making people feel, on behalf of the team up the line so it's not just coming from you? Really playing up the employee welfare / work/life balance angle if that's something your company takes seriously? As well as the loss of productivity / focus time / time lost through travelling angle. It's such a big adjustment for everyone after the events of the last few years. I'm sure others will be feeling the same! Could be a win win...! Good luck. Sorry you are finding it so hard... being a working parent never mind a single parent is an exhausting juggle!

^Outsource or prep- most likely a mixture of both.
Can you get foodshop delivered/ batch cook/ hire a cleaner?
if not, it’s a case of never sit down- run the kids a bath and whilst it runs change the beds, hoover the stairs.^

Hilarious. Not a working single mother obviously.

This! I've long had the suspicion that the thing people most 'enjoy' about working from home is the bits 'around' the actual work! Unfortunately, it's not really your boss's problem that you can no longer do your chores in the daytime. I do think there's now a real sense of entitlement re: homeworking. Yes, it's great that people can work remotely - and I say this as someone who does so often. But I quite enjoy my days in the office and, if my company suddenly wanted me in five days a week again, so be it! 🤷🏼‍♀️

Unfortunately, it's not really your boss's problem that you can no longer do your chores in the daytime.

Well, depending on how the staff respond to the new requirement, it might very well become his problem...

In this economy, employees views about things like this, particularly those who are very senior, aren't something that employers can assume they don't have to bother about. In that context I think it's a bit pointless talking about entitlement really- the world has changed and people have noticed.

I wonder if all the people who object to WFH people loading the dishwasher whilst their coffee brews, walking the dogs in their lunch breaks etc are the image of workaholic martyrs they suggest they are?

I hope they never loiter at a printer to talk to someone, or take a toilet break longer than 30 seconds, they better not get a drink during the working day either because that's slacking and the boss should demand they remain at their desk, they better not have a lunch break either because that's easily half an hour slacking that could be spent working. Chatting with colleagues also better not happen unless they can 100% verify that each conversation is directly contributing to the company's KPIs.

@LolaSmiles It's 25 years since I last had a job so I'm not claiming any workaholic martyr status. However, I am absolutely sick of ringing up businesses and finding that I'm talking to someone WFH who is also dealing with dogs, toddlers, deliveries etc and is talking on their mobile with a shit signal. That's my experience of WFH.

Lockdown should have taught us - if we didn't already know - that sitting at home all day, even if you are "working", is a route to mental health problems and physical health problems. Far healthier to walk to the bus stop and be involved with the outside world. It's the same with school. Teachers can deliver a perfectly effective online curriculum, but young people need to be with other young people, discovering things, learning things, seeing things. Adults need this, too, if they are to work effectively.

OP, you've got this. You might just need to get organised. Batch cooking so you can just get something out of the freezer to reheat on your office days; loading the washing machine and setting the timer before work so it's ready for drying when you get home; bunging something in the slow cooker before work etc. I love a list so maybe get some kind of organisational chart so you know what jobs to do on what days. Once you're back in the swing of being in the office 3 days, you'll soon get used to it. Good luck

@whatapfaff in the same way, a long commute can be equally stressful and contribute to heart issues, stress problems, high blood pressure etc etc. No one size fits all. Yes some people will feel isolated by WFH but a lot of people have a much better quality of life because of it, and still manage to do a good (or better) job than commuting into the office. Hell, they might even manage more of a social life because they are less exhausted from trudging into the office five days a week and all the time and stress that entails, e.g. train to london twice a day, what a nightmare.

It's like the studies they've done on the four day work week - employees are found to be more productive, have a happier life / work balance, the company thrives better.

Sounds like you're just a bit jealous because you can't work from home. Or at the very least you're wilfully ignoring all the positives so many on this thread are telling you they have achieved. For every person that you've spoken to that WFH that has supposedly inconvenienced you, you can guarantee there are another 20+ plus you haven't even realised were WFH as you received normal regular good service.

I find most younger people don't want to be in the office either, they have friends and a lot of them started their jobs during covid WFH. I hate office life and also have WFH since March 2020. I have no reason to go back nor do I want to. I hate people who assume I'm sitting with my feet up. It's been proven there is less sickness and production is higher whilst WFH not to mention that the company save a fortune. Ours has already started getting rid of buildings. Being as I work for an LGA I'm sure the public would rather I WFH than they pay for a building and all the costs of energy etc

In practical terms the two biggest helps for me are a fortnightly cleaner and using wraparound care where the DC get a proper evening meal on my working days. It saves a huge amount of mental load not to have to plan and cook three meals a week.

As a related point, and I hesitate to say this as I once made a similar comment on MN which was totally misconstrued and I got an absolute flaming: single parenthood, a senior professional role, and commuting are all tiring but an office job shouldn’t leave you so bone-tired that you can’t function. It would be very well worth your while getting your iron levels and thyroid function checked. So many middle-aged women struggle with crippling fatigue thinking that it is normal and very often it is not, and it is treatable.

Some nasty, shitty, judgemental comments on here as usual 🙄. And those who criticise you for putting bins out , getting dinner ready clearly forget that people have breaks at work. People rarely work all through lunch and breaks with no let up. I have seen an awful lot of time wasting at work over the last 35+ years. Sing ‘at work’ doesn’t mean you are working hard.
I hope you can rearrange your hours to make your life better.

Being at work not SING lol

Honestly, your generalisations are getting dafter as the thread progresses. Since when did travelling to work mean people were doing any walking, much less that commuting facilitated them in doing more exercise? A quick google suggests about 2/3 of commutes in 2019 were done by car.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/300710/preferred-transport-for-travelling-to-work-in-the-united-kingdom/

And you must surely know there are people who use the time they save commuting to do exercise, or any number of activities that mean they move more.

In terms of hearing people's home noise in the background now, this comes up often in discussion about wfh, and it's interesting that people never factor in all the things that have changed other than homeworking. The labour market now is very different to what it was before 2020, and wages that used to buy workers who'd be willing to pay for their travel into work, childcare, pet care etc four years ago don't now. It's just the reality of living in a society where we don't have all the workers we'd like. I understand why people don't like it, but the reasons for generally worse customer service go way beyond more people working remotely.

I do my food shop online.
Sort all outfits for the week in my drawer on a Sunday night.
Got another airer so I can do double washing on wfh days
Don't stress about a quick chips and something tea on the middle day

You'll somehow as we all do, find a new routine

If you're senior level, I assume your salary is a lot better than single mother's working at junior level. Outsource what you can afford - nanny, cleaner etc