To think I’ll never be going back to the office again?

[BirdieFriendReturns]

I’m in the civil service and we’ve been told we aren’t going back this year? You CAN go into the office if you can’t work from home but we are meant to be WFH.

I keep reading on here that people are being told they are never going to back to the office.

Is this the end of offices then?

[Ghostlyglow]

Wfh until September. Managers are asking people if they want to do it full time.
Our office was refurbished 2 years ago and moved us all closer together. They'll have to change it for us to go back.

[emmathedilemma]

@BirdieFriendReturns I might have to move somewhere if this lasts much longer so that I can set up a proper office space and regain proper use of my dining table. I'm lucky in a way that I have space for a big table, keyboard, widescreen monitor etc but there's no way I want it sitting in my living room long term. Perhaps they'll offer me a pay rise so I can afford another £100k on my mortgage to move to somewhere with an extra bedroom? ........keeps dreaming.....

[Oblomov20]

WaxOnWaxOff is like me. I work for a printers. I was in the office today.

[Oblomov20]

Homily:

"no kitchen facilities etc."

Errr why?
I think people are just over-reacting and using this as an excuse.

It many offices, with a tiny bit of re-arranging. Of desks. Or bringing in some people one day, one week, others the next.

All totally possible. I think people are totally milking this.

[AgentCooper]

Presumably though you're saying that because you're one of the people for whom office environments were a positive thing, rather than being amongst the cohort who were made ill and miserable by having to work that way for no logical reason?

@user1635482648 Well, yes. I suffer from anxiety and depression, sometimes well managed, sometimes not. Being in the house all day is disastrous for my mental health. Getting back to work was crucial to my recovery from PND. When I go to work I see friends, get a change of scene, I read on the bus, I go to the gym at lunchtime. All of these bolster good mental health for me, and tbh a bit of time being someone other than mummy helps too.

I am sorry office work has been a negative experience for you. You talk about office working as standard being detrimental to the health of some. All I’d ask you to understand is that wfh can be equally detrimental to the health of others.

And I promise I’m not a noisy, pushy person who doesn’t care about other people’s needs. Just a struggling extrovert who does better with a decent amount of contact with the outside world.

[Marriedtoapenguin]

Another civil service peep here. Was wfh before this as a fairly h if h percentage of the week.

Tbh if we can get certain operational elements sorted, then I can see the vast majority wfh full time.

[BirdieFriendReturns]

City centres will be empty then. No universities, no office blocks.

[RandomLondoner]

I wonder if anybody would notice if I moved to Australia for a few months and worked from home there?!

I've just worked out that if you clocked-out at 5pm UK time, it would be 2am local time, if you were in Australia.

[RandomLondoner]

I am slightly worried about home-working becoming more popular. A lot of my pension is invested in commercial property. (Although half of the exposure happened well-after the COVID price drop, so any falls may have been priced in by the time I bought.)

[frasersmummy]

I work in a university. The research staff will be going back in phase 2 so approx a month.

They are going to need lab technicians, maintenance IT support so the uni will fill.up reasonably quickly

[TARSCOUT]

I work in the commercial rental sector - our tenants are desperate to know when they can get back in and can we provide additional space at a slightly lower rent, well of course we can. Sorry folks :)

[BirdieFriendReturns]

Smaller companies might want people back in. The civil service and huge corporates seem a lot more cautious.

[Topsyturvy1]

I'm civil service unable to WFH, had a call earlier saying I'm expected back into work on 8th June, they are staggering the return over 3 weeks. There is usually over 3000 staff on site, not sure what the number will be when I go back as non operational staff can work from home and some staff are still shielding. Apparently health and safety and the union have signed off on the measures that's been put into place so will be interesting to see what it's going to be like.

[maddiemookins16mum]

We’ve been told that from Sept only 25% of current staff will return. Everyone else will WFH.
I shall miss so many people.

[DontTouchTheMoustache]

@user1635482648 Well, yes. I suffer from anxiety and depression, sometimes well managed, sometimes not. Being in the house all day is disastrous for my mental health. Getting back to work was crucial to my recovery from PND. When I go to work I see friends, get a change of scene, I read on the bus, I go to the gym at lunchtime. All of these bolster good mental health for me, and tbh a bit of time being someone other than mummy helps too.

The thing is for many introverts and people with social anxiety the office environment is also detrimental to mental health. Ideally office working would be a choice as clearly people have strong preferences and reasons for these preferences. We have been living in an extroverts world for some time, it would be nice to finally have some consideration for those of us who dont thrive in those conditions

[pennylane83]

Smaller companies might want people back in. The civil service and huge corporates seem a lot more cautious

Thats probably because a lot of the civil service are in inadequate/old buildings (I've worked in a fair few - delapidated, moldy, small overcrowded rooms) where it will be harder to redistribute the staff into the space available.

[LakieLady]

3rd sector, here, mixture of office and face-2-face with clients in the community.

We're being consulted about the possible return to office working and it's starting to sound as though it'll be up to us to decide what we want to do.

DH and I are both WFH, but need to be in separate rooms for confidentiality. Because he's FT and needs a big monitor, he's got a table in the spare room and I'm at the kitchen table with my laptop. We have no room for a second desk/table (tiny house, lots of furniture), and my back is killing me from sitting on a dining chair. It's only a mile to my office, so commuting's not an issue and I'm looking forward to going back, tbh.

If I have to work like this for another 6 months, I'll have to sort out some better working arrangement or I'll be walking like Quasimodo.

DP, otoh, is vowing never to go back to the office if there's any way of avoiding it.

[LynseyLou1982]

I work in a University science department in the offices. We've been told it will be October at the earliest before we are allowed back. Even them we won't all be in the office at the same time and we'll work on a Rota basis so out of my office of 6 only 3 of us max will be in at any one time with the others WFH one week then we'll switch the next week. I go on maternity leave on 9th October so I doubt I'll be back before next August/September

[ArriettyJones]

I hope so. I’d love to go back to WFHing FT, forever. Occasionally have RL team socials. Absolute heaven.

Some people really hate it, though.

[LaurieMarlow]

Well I'm private sector and we're all chomping at the bit to get back to the office. Our office space is enormous though and social distancing won't be a problem.

[verybritishproblems]

My friend who works in London has been told his office is closing as they can all WFH.

I work in the civil service too in an huge open plan office where there is hot desking, so the whole office is being rearranged. We have been told that to accommodate this the building will be running at 30% capacity until the end of the FY, with those who have a greater need to be in prioritised. I can’t see me being back for months....

[Purpleartichoke]

At least to start, our company is going to only allow some back. Basically those people who feel they must be in an office to work. It’s not official yet, but We have been told the wfh policy is going to be a lot more generous in the future. Plenty of people who were not allowed because the corporation thought their jobs could only effectively come on site will have the option to wfh most or all of the time .

It’s like the world has finally realized that things were set up for extroverts to the detriment of everyone else. Tons of people are more productive without all the anxiety being in an office induces.

[AgentCooper]

@DontTouchTheMoustache I absolutely agree with you. I was asking in the second half of my post for those who find office life anxiety inducing to try to understand how it would be if you found wfh anxiety inducing instead. My DH is an absolute introvert, would gladly wfh forever, but understands how vital it is for me that home is somewhere I look forward to coming back to, not somewhere I have to be all day.

I think this could be a wonderful opportunity to reassess working practices and allow as many people as possible to wfh permanently if that is what they want. But imposition of wfh as standard? No.

[Mnthrowaway20202]

I work in finance and feel the same. Was really looking forward to getting back to the office but my company isn’t in a rush.

[vinoandbrie]

Sorry not RTFT.

In short, we may need less office space because fewer people may be in the office at any given time. But this may be counter balanced by the fact that we’ll all need more space per person, which would get us back up to where we were originally!