To enjoy going to the office? I'd hate to WFH forever.

[YesEllis]

Just from the social side, I'd be so isolated working from home everyday. My office is my only interaction with other adults sometimes. I would become such an introvert working from home permanently. Yet everyone I speak to seems to want to forever! I get their arguments, and the environmental ones of course but it's not for me. Does anyone agree with me? Or is everyone pro WFH ongoing after covid?

My office is my only interaction with other adults sometimes.

This is the issue, isn't it?

I found lockdown really difficult and was desperate to be back in the office because I was home alone all day every day and DP was tired when he came home in the evenings and was crap company (NHS front line). I felt so isolated and upset.

However, now that I can see friends and do normal social things, I am enjoying a better quality of life. I don't have to waste hours on commuting, I can nip to my local gym at lunch for exercise (without the £60/month London fee) and socialize with friends at the weekend, sometimes after work too. I can play music out loud. I can potter around the garden, I can make a hot lunch and do the laundry. I can arrange deliveries easily, and I can enjoy the house that I pay a hefty mortgage for! I can wear comfy clothes and I can take calls from my couch. I get more sleep and rest, I'm less sweaty, and I don't have to wear formal clothes all the time. I'm saving money!

I do like my colleagues and we have a great time together when we go out, but on balance I want to stay home and continue to enjoy these benefits.

Yanbu but lol at the idea of 'becoming an introvert'. I think you are born introverted / extroverted and there are very many different versions of each. I'm an introvert and was fighting to be allowed one day at home pre-lockdown, but have hated working from home. I find it incredibly lonely and miss the chats with individuals that you get in the office. Meetings with 3-20 people are awful online, I didn't like them in person but at least I could have a chat before or after with individuals and feel a connection. I'm going in today for the second day this week. None of my direct colleagues will be in, but I'll be able to have conversations with other colleagues as well as getting exercise on my way to and from work.

I love WFH. When I went into the office I just tacked an hour's comment on crowded trains onto each end of the day. The office was always far too hot and I really struggle to think when I am hot. We all communicated by Teams anyway so all I was doing was travelling to sit in front of a computer terminal.

My job involves a lot of thinking and decision making and now I can leap right in and get going first thing in the morning instead of having to dick around travelling and getting stressed. If work ever call me back in I will be looking for a new job.

FFS what does autocorrect have against the word commute?

I started in my first job a complete introvert (after being bullied throughout school).
Met a couple of colleagues a year older who took me under their wing. My social life exploded and for the next few years I was hardly ever home. It was brilliant. Life long friends.
This was years ago, granted but I just think for young people now they might not get those sort of opportunities if they’re WFH alone.

We are social animals and need the interaction, particularly the young and those who live alone or in small, cramped spaces.

It's more abnormal to want to closet yourself away at home for ever.

I would hate my children to think that they will have to wfh - how on earth will they make friends, meet a parter, learn on the job?

*partner obvs

@Grognonne

Before lockdown most people were forced to be in the office, during they were forced to stay home. Some like home, some like office. Where possible (job depending), it should be a personal choice and nobody should feel forced to do something they don’t want to do. So I don’t think anyone is being unreasonable.

No one is ‘forced’ though, are they? Pre-pandemic people sought work in offices/outside the home in full knowledge of what the job entailed. They didn’t apply for a job and then find themselves ‘forced’ to show up in person. Post-pandemic, businesses have a right to expect a return to normal working, unless they wish to offer a compromise. This is not ‘forcing’ people back in to the office, it is a return to normal working.

@HareofEasttown

We are social animals and need the interaction, particularly the young and those who live alone or in small, cramped spaces.

It's more abnormal to want to closet yourself away at home for ever.

I would hate my children to think that they will have to wfh - how on earth will they make friends, meet a parter, learn on the job?

Exactly. They’ve not had much opportunity to do that since Covid hit and they really need to get out there in every way possible and start to live.

"everyone I speak to seems to want to forever!"

The other point of view seems more prevalent on here - including a charming MN pile-on the other day on an OP who didn't want to go back to the office - cue lots of plain nasty 'Just get back to work!' type posts.

Of course YANBU, OP! you like the social interaction and would feel a bit isolated without it.

There are however lots of socially anxious people who would find work easier if there was an option to do it in their own homes, so I think the trend for that will help a good many, maybe even people who haven't been able to work will feel able to if there are in-home options opening up now, but of course many jobs just can't be done from home.

I'd like to see a much better balance coming out of all this - long commutes seem wasteful of time and money and make for a longer working day; so it would be nice to see either option available where it can be done, and much more flexibility now some businesses have seen it can work well either way.

I'm also desperate to get back to work and see zero benefits from working at home.

I've nailed down the bit I'm missing as a hundred short interactions with people face to face every day. You know (from a social persepctive), when you pass someone in a corridor and ask how they are and they tell you a bit about their life. Or (from a work perspective) when you're waiting for a meeting to start and someone tells you something they are currently working on that you didn't know about but turns out to related to something else you are working on.

These 100 small interactions not only enhance my life from a personal and a professional perspective, but simply cannot be duplicated out of work. I find at the end of the working day I'm often too tired to want to socialise (or I need to do stuff with/for the DC). And organising (say) to meet up with a friend is a different sort of socialising to the type you do at work. Replacing one with the other is not the same thing at all.

YNBU. Its just me and DD at home so I do like the social aspect of going into the office and interacting with adults! I also started a new role just before the first lockdown and did find that working entirely remotely at first made it difficult for me to really feel part of the team and get to grips with the role fully. Like a pp said, I still feel new 18 months in! I also find that wfh means I have to flip straight from work mode into mum mode so there's no time to decompress. Whereas even my 20 minute journey home just gives me that chance to read/listen to music/just chill and put the days work behind me.

@Pottedpalm
Forced may be the wrong word, but those who preferred to work from home, often couldn’t as their employers weren’t open to wfh. Now most have proved that many jobs can be done from home, so why can’t they if the individual wants to. Not everyone likes being in the office but likes still their job. People now have seen a different approach to working, some like it, some don’t, but people shouldn’t be made to go back to work just so people can have ‘office bangs’, same with those who love the office life, they shouldn’t be made to work in solitude. Our work is giving people the option and it works really well.

Yes the water cooler moments. The quick ‘did you see such and such on the tv’ last night stuff. You get snippets of work info that you wouldn’t know otherwise from the little chats throughout the day.

And of course the sudden impulse decision to all go to the pub after work.

I enjoyed wfh last summer. I could have lunch in the garden and the neighbours were around to chat to. But I was glad to get back to the office. Had another stint wfh over the winter and I hated it. Very glad to be back in the office again full time (since April).

I’m happy to have the option to WFH more but not full time. I like going into the office, but I hate the commute to be honest. So a mix of both here.

I can totally understand people wanting to wfh permanently and not wfh permanently. On our team we have a mix. Which is why it will probably be hybrid working for us.

Some people will be in more than others. As I run the team and live 10 mins away, I will probably be in quite a bit. But we are arranging 2 days a month where we can all be in.

People who do hybrid working, in recent months have been the most happy, at our work. They have had chance to catch up, but their work shows they are more efficient at home. So both is good for them and good for the business.

Had another stint wfh over the winter and I hated it. Very glad to be back in the office again full time (since April).

I think the winter was very difficult to wfh, if you compare it to the summer. I did notice a dip in people's enthusiasm for wfh in about February.

I like a mix of both, WFH and office.
I wouldn't stand working from home all the time, I am more organised at work, I dress better, clean hair...I can be a bit of a disaster working from home all the time!
I work 2 days in the office and two from home now, it is perfect for me!
If I had to chose just one 100% of the time, would be the office

There are some good things about WFH, eg no commute, doing the washing, taking deliveries, etc but it is actually soul destroying. I miss the interaction at work and the general feeling of belonging to a team and a company.
I am planning on bringing my retirement forward now and I absolutely could not imagine 35 + years of working at home.
We are losing so much more as a company than we will be gaining financially by closing a few offices. One or two of our long serving team have got new jobs recently and I think the team bond has been broken.
Hybrid would be best but we won't have big enough offices to go to and unlikely to coincide with each other when we do go in.

It’s all quite individual isn’t it?

My team are all based in another part of the country so I’ve never felt like I belong in my team anyway. There’s a lot of negative morale in my office and I’ve realised it really gets to me. It makes my job so much miserable and I enjoy my work a lot more not being around the misery everyday. I have space to work from home and my commute can take 40 minutes but it can also take upwards of 2 hours depending on traffic. I’m happy with a hybrid mix because seeing my colleagues occasionally I keep the misery at bay but still be aware of the changes in the organisation, those that aren’t shared via comms.

In my old job they moved to a hybrid home working as a cost saving exercise. At the time I didn’t have space to work from home and I liked my colleagues, they provided a lot of support and I learnt a lot from them. But my colleagues wanted to work from home and so even if I wanted to stay in full time that support wouldn’t have been there so it was a key factor in me deciding to leave that organisation.

I guess it all depends on who you work with and how irritating your colleagues are. Mine are very annoying and I couldn't be doing with 40 hours a week in their company ever again.

I prefer WFH, but can understand it doesn't suit everyone. I think I would prefer a mix, if my colleagues weren't as annoying.

YANBU

I’m so much happier and more productive since I went back to the office and I have a better work life balance because I have a more defined end point to my day. I live alone in a small flat and the isolation of wfh got too much.

These 100 small interactions not only enhance my life from a personal and a professional perspective, but simply cannot be duplicated out of work. I find at the end of the working day I'm often too tired to want to socialise (or I need to do stuff with/for the DC). And organising (say) to meet up with a friend is a different sort of socialising to the type you do at work. Replacing one with the other is not the same thing at all.

This! I’m so much more isolated and lonely wfh. I have friends, but we all work and most of us have small children. There’s no meeting up for lunch or a quick drink after work because we’re all busy and/or knackered, and we live in different parts of the city. Before, I would have met a friend who worked in town too for a coffee on our lunch break but now it would take half an hour just to get to each other.

It takes much more effort to get social contact this way and I find myself increasingly not bothering.

Just from the social side, I'd be so isolated working from home everyday...Yet everyone I speak to seems to want to forever!

It may be that the office you return to is completely different to the one you left, if some/most of the other staff prefer WFM. Could be a much sparser staff body.

I love WFM. I'm freelance though and all the travelling wore me down.