To feel sad that the world of work as we knew it has gone forever?

[Youngatheart00]

My work confirmed today we are moving to 100% remote working and will only get together a few times a year for team meetings. I find this so sad. I loved my working life - I know realise so much of that was down to the people. Now all I do all day is stare at screens and give myself a migraine.

They are justifying it by saying ‘most people’ want this despite me never seeing any such survey. It’s a blatant cost cutting exercise.

Anyone else fed up and lonely?

I was chatting to my brother earlier. He has worked from home since March.

They want him back in the office 3 times a week from next week. He's had to bring two computer monitors home. His dining room table is covered. He will to set that up every week now.

Plus he said the main thing he said he will miss is having a window / natural light 🙁

I hate the idea of just working from home. I normally work in the office 3 days a week. I am here to see the kids off to school and home at 6 to check in and look over homework.

The other 4 days I am here in the house and I really appreciated my home and my surrounds then. I miss my commute, the buzz of my city. I miss having lunch out, chatting with other people etc

I now know I never want to fully WFH or indeed be a SAHM. I would go completely mad

My work is going to do a mixture of home working and working in the office, depending what people want to do and the needs of the job.

I think that’s the best compromise. Some days I’ll get a lie in, save the commute and easily be able to do the school runs. Other days I’ll be in the office catching up with colleagues. I think permanent full time working from home would drive me insane.

Most people who found office life unbearable didn't have the option of finding another job.
I’m highly qualified but have spent 20 years in part time and freelance jobs because I couldn’t cope with a full time office environment due to my autism. It’s impacted my earnings and pension massively. I was anticipating having even less options going forward because of childcare problems. Now I feel like there might actually be a future for me.

the nipping to get a drink or wander to the loo and take a break

These are all very important benefits to WFH for me.

As with all things, we probably need this to settle down so that people who want to work from home can, and people who want to work at least part of the week in an office can.

YANBU at all to say you'd rather work from an office. I worked from home before all of this, but when I first started it was very hard to adjust to, especially since the office I'd left was very sociable. If you don't want to work from home, you shouldn't have to. But it sounds like you may want to find a new job with a company that's going back to the office.

@BigBamboo

I agree OP. I know someone who fought tooth and nail to work from home before lockdown. They got their wish and within 2 weeks they were messaging me asking if they can come over a few times a week because they were getting really down being on their own all day. They also said that because there were at home they had meetings back to back all day, every day, and didn't even have time to take a wee.

WFH you don't get the commute but you also don't get the personal interaction, the nipping to get a drink or wander to the loo and take a break, etc. It's not as great as people think.

Interesting, I do nip for a wee and a drink when WFH. I also get to pop the odd load of washing on, or hang it out, empty the dishwasher etc. We are encouraged to take micro breaks from the screen. I suppose it depends on the set up of your employer.

We also have various chat channels open in Teams so I do get quite a lot of interaction with people all day and we have at least 1 social call a day too. It isn't quite the same though I do agree. I'd be pleased if my work will let me WFH home 2 days and in the office 2 days (I work 4 days).

@DedlyMedally

The lockdown weight gain thing seems to suggest mass WFH hasn’t actually been that good for the nation’s health.

I think that has more to do with with gyms. Most office workers I know (myself included) commute in via chain and sit at a desk all day.
I used to spend 2-3 days a week visiting the gym and another 2-3 days engaged in a physical hobby both of which I haven't been able for the best part of a year.
If I didn't reduce my food intake to offset it a bit, I'd probably have ballooned too.

A tiny proportion of the British population go to a gym regularly (a lot more have memberships!). I found that I lost about 5000 steps a day when I started WFH even though I do a desk job because there's still a lot more moving around even just doing things like walking from the car park, walking to the toilets, etc than if you only move between your bed, your kitchen and your table.

Some people would love this way of working, others not so much. A mix of home and office would be ideal. I think you need to change your job.

To preface I am not an essential worker.

Bozo decided that anything to do with construction was automatically immune to covid so my industry didn't really ever shut down. Apart from a few weeks off last March, we have had no time off whatsoever.

I work at a small company (3 of us run it) and we have 15 installers who have to go in and out of peoples houses all day every day. Nothing can be done from home.

I frequently find myself genuinely jealous of people who have been furloughed.

I wish I could have spend the last year at home with my DW and DD's. On the one hand I am grateful I am still able to provide for us all so please don't misunderstand but my god, if I had been home I could have helped with home schooling, cooking, cleaning etc and I would actually feel rested by comparison to the major burn out I have at the moment.

I am so conflicted by where I am mentally...

Meghan2018

I think my friend's problem was that she was WFH and her colleagues were all in the office and around the world. Her meetings were just scheduled back to back.

I do think it's horses for courses.

I understand OP that you are not able to get the same feeling of human interaction from online calls and meetings with colleagues, but some of us can and do.

I am really happy that we will be WFH full time from now on, with very occasional group meetings in a regional hub office. It hasn't affected my relationships with colleagues - if anything I would say we are closer. We know more about each other's families and pets for example. The lack of commuting time has made us all more productive so it makes sense for the business to keep things this way.

I do think that if it is making you unhappy you should look for another job where you know you will not be WFH. From my regional group of about 80 staff, only one has said they will leave as they cannot cope with permanent wfh, but we are mostly middle aged so maybe that is a contributory factor.

@freezingmarch

Do companies just assume everyone has the space at home to create a suitable working environment? And one that doesn't impact on the rest of the household?

What if you don't?

And assume that their employees cover the cost of all utilities and WiFi associated with keeping their business running

we had a photocopying engineer out who said they had had redundancies,
not only that, there will be office cleaners
also suppliers of office carpets, as per information from ONS yesterday

@BlueSussex do you not think OP should be made redundant rather than having to quit? It's a substantial change to her contract, and an undesirable one for her. It seems unfair that the employer can just shrug their shoulders on this one.

there's still a lot more moving around even just doing things like walking from the car park, walking to the toilets, etc than if you only move between your bed, your kitchen and your table.

WFH does not prevent you from moving further than that if you want

its good for those who want to live where they want perhaps - so no commute necessary.

Many posters just seem to be posting about themselves without recognising the bigger picture.

Hopefully the new 'era' can accommodate all those that want to work entirely from home, Those that want to work entirely in the office and probably the majority of people who would like a bit of both.

Like Morriszapp points out, the lack of personal training, in the office, for our young teens, and graduates, future accountants etc, is a big issues for needs to be considered.

Plus the wider ramifications of commuters not going into London, less train revenue, less sandwich shops in Canary Wharf, less cleaners cleaning offices. I've Never even worked in central London but I saw all the pictures of the finance area on the news and it looks like a ghost town. how anyone can think this is good for us as a country is questionable.

@tentative3

The employer cannot make OP redundant if her post still exists.....

@gannett I think I the steps are about the fact that if you walking ‘built into’ your day, you don’t have to go out for a walk with no purpose.

In my office days I walked approx 45 mins as part of my commute. That is on top of any ‘walk for the sake of a walk’ I did. It’s hard to get that in when you are WFH. It should be easier but most people I know would struggle.

@BlueSussex fair enough, I don't know enough about redundancy requirements obviously. So what would be the situation if the OP's workplace relocated to the other end of the country and she was required to be physically present, would they just say come or quit? That's a genuine question by the way, I hope it doesn't come across as sarky.

I think a lot of loving/ being happy at work can come from the interaction with colleagues. Prior to WFH I had many lovely coffee breaks/evenings with colleagues who I trusted, liked and would choose to spend time with (in a previous job I worked with people I neither liked or importantly trusted and did not like the job and resigned). I can understand how losing this interaction would affect you to the point of looking for a new job.
At my work I think we may get a choice of going in a few days a week/month if so I may ask colleagues which days they are choosing and try to get them to coincide.

we had a photocopying engineer out who said they had had redundancies
The world changes. One day all photocopying engineers will be out of work because photocopiers will be obsolete. Should we force ourselves into outdated ways of working and living just to save certain jobs? What about all the new jobs that have been created as a result of this shift? I don’t think we can stop progress just because it doesn’t benefit some people. The same as we couldn’t stop cars replacing horses and putting farriers out of work.

I love WFH so much but I have a family with young kids so I can imagine without the need/benefit of balancing family life and work life it could feel a bit lonely.

My biggest gripe is that if you have a problematic colleague or manager then you can actually feel more stuck with them WFH. I appreciate the space but it has been replaced with constant phone calls and nit picking emails and now I have to leave my lovely 30 hour week job for a full time one (if I even get one) because of one person!

@Oblomov21 This phenomenon may be like another industrial revolution. Then people moved from the countryside to cities and support businesses moved with them.
Now we may find that the city centre coffee shops etc are decimated but coffee shops and restaurants in say Chalfont St Giles are rammed.

The ramifications are, as you say, huge but maybe this is just a societal shift that we are going to have to adjust to.