Boss minimising my wish to stay at home

[Alwaysonarecce]

In short, I work part time and am new to an office. Experienced delays in WFH, wifi issues, waiting for more kit. Boss suggested I come to work and work from there. He will
produce a piece of paper to say my travelling is for essential work. I counteracted, saying we are not key workers and our work isn’t critical to life. Did not go down well. I did say this with thought and empathy, but clearly, a bad move and he probably feels I am being obstructive. Given the circumstances, AIBU? I’m not a work shy sort. I live with my family. My office admittedly only has 4 people, who won’t be together at the same time.

My boss is the same. I can work from home easily, I do it one day a week normally but my boss is putting pressure on everyone to come into the office (we are in Ireland).
She is a coronavirus denier, just will not accept the seriousness of the situation, she is making her 30+ staff come into an office everyday. We can social distance fairly well admittedly but its an unnecessary risk.
I feel for your pain!

You do not need to be an essential worker in order to be allowed to travel to work. The rules are that you need to be have to go to your workplace to be able to do your job (i.e. you cannot do it from home) - which it sounds as though, due to your current tech/wifi/equipment issues you currently need to do.

Perhaps suggest you would prefer to take annual leave or unpaid leave until they have the tech issues sorted if you really don't want to go into the office, and see if they agree to that.

YABU. You can't work from home, so your boss is making alternative arrangements. Other than you taking leave, what do you want him to do? Pay you to stay at home, not working??

I'm most coming down on the side of the employees on these, but you're being asked to do work that you can't do from home in an office with no other people?

What do you need to facilitate home working? Could you use what you already have at home?