Has anyone refused to go back into the office?

[GreenPepperRed]

Just that really. Have a job that can easily be done working from home. Company is now saying compulsory 3 days in the office. Has anyone just not gone in and carried on working from home? How did that turn out?

The majority of my department is insisting they are not going in. Can confirm they are serious because I went in to the office a couple days back and there was probably 10% of the people in.

Intrigued what my company will do. Fire us all?

If people can WFH they should,less commuting is better for the environment. Employers with less flexibility will struggle to find decent staff. I would refuse to go in and see what happens.

Forgot to add my work has let the employees decide if they want to WFHor hybrid

@GoldenOmber

It's deeply sad there are women who are actively campaigning against a new way of working that makes life easier for parents.

They’re not. You just can’t see that, because you are set on everything fitting into your own experiences: either it’s like your current job and it’s flexible and family-friendly, or it’s like your last job and it’s hellish and shit. Anything that doesn’t 100% match your own current job must be like the last one.

So you’ve decided that everyone else’s experience must be like that. You can rock up 20 minutes late for a meeting and it doesn’t matter, so anybody whose job doesn’t allow this just has a cruel inflexible employer. You don’t need lots of meetings, so anyone who does is being cruel to their staff. Everyone you know makes up their hours if they say they will, so anyone claiming it’s not happening in their workplace is wrong, and also doesn’t understand the challenges of being a working parent and probably shouldn’t be on Mumsnet.

But there are many many many of us working parents in jobs which aren’t toxic and inflexible and horrible and yet still don’t allow your current flexibility. Not because they are mean and inflexible and the women in those jobs are a bunch of sniping meanies out to tear you down, but because the requirements of people’s jobs are different.

You aren’t in fact on a quest to help working parents if you aren’t listening to what anybody else has to say about their own jobs, and holing yourself up in a bunker of defensiveness where anybody who even suggests different circumstances to your own is toxic and old-fashioned and out to stop you personally having your personal arrangements that let you pick up your own child.

My experience is more common than you think and I'm really not debating with you because studies have shown time and time again my experience isnt unique....from the amount of depression we have as a society to the falling birth rate with wise people looking at us martyrs and deciding they don't want any of that thank you

I'm no longer engaging with you, you're being completely disingenuous

Flexibility is there for some of us in office working professions, I completely understand if you are customer facing it's different or for example if you work in a hospital. And my crusade is evidently working because I have happy team members, low turn over, I'm off anxiety meds, me and my son have a better relationship and our team are producing work fantastically to the point where we are being offered more budget for 2022 as the proof really has been in the pudding.

Go be miserable in peace babe and I'm sorry you had no one doing this for you as you were coming up x

I just hope @Notyourtypicalvirgo you don’t work in Human Resources. And, judging by the way you talk to other posters, it seems that being at home with minimal colleague contact is just the right role for you!

My experience is more common than you think and I'm really not debating with you because studies have shown time and time again my experience isnt unique

Yes, it is. But - and really, this isn’t too complex an idea - not everybody’s experience fits neatly into what you personally have experienced yourself.

I am glad your current team are happy in a job that allows the kind of flexibility that suits you and them. But other people, many many other people all over the country, are in different jobs with different needs where that specific approach to flexibility just would not work. Laying into the other posters in those jobs because you can’t or won’t understand this does bugger all to advance the cause of working parents.

@GoldenOmber

My experience is more common than you think and I'm really not debating with you because studies have shown time and time again my experience isnt unique

Yes, it is. But - and really, this isn’t too complex an idea - not everybody’s experience fits neatly into what you personally have experienced yourself.

I am glad your current team are happy in a job that allows the kind of flexibility that suits you and them. But other people, many many other people all over the country, are in different jobs with different needs where that specific approach to flexibility just would not work. Laying into the other posters in those jobs because you can’t or won’t understand this does bugger all to advance the cause of working parents.

If the shoe doesn't fit, why are other people trying to lace it up?

The original poster who brought up parents doing the school run mentioned logging back on at night and checking whether parents are making up the hours....suggesting she's not talking about a customer facing pub or hospital environment but rather an environment much more like mine in which I can quite rightly point out don't start ruining flexibility your coworkers are now getting with negative assumptions and see how you can make things easier for these parents if it's causing the much of an issue.

Imagination and a willingness to make things work is a wonderful thing

Go be miserable in peace babe

Where is anyone getting the idea that GoldenOmber is miserable? Just because she doesn't agree 100% with one posters take on the situation? 🤔

@DottyHarmer

I just hope *@Notyourtypicalvirgo* you don’t work in Human Resources. And, judging by the way you talk to other posters, it seems that being at home with minimal colleague contact is just the right role for you!

I always return the energy I'm shown in life 😉

Come sassy at me and you'll get sass back. Oddly enough I have plenty of friends outside of work from hobbies, I couldn't really give a toss about making more from such a forced environment 🤷🏽‍♀️

The original poster who brought up parents doing the school run mentioned logging back on at night and checking whether parents are making up the hours....suggesting she's not talking about a customer facing pub or hospital environment but rather an environment much more like mine

This is going to blow your mind, but: not everyone in a computer-based job has a job exactly like yours.

It seems as though a lot of women on here would rather watch people struggle and do this balancing act just because they had to

I agree there could be some of this going on, but not that posters are "actively campaigning" against WFH
Certainly it's been said that individual circumstances might mean having to go back, but I've not seen anyone argue against the principle of WFH if it works

The trouble sometimes seems to be that this means it working for the employer too, and not just for the person hoping for it

And can we please stop thinking that flexible working is the preserve of those with DC. There are an awful lot of people with elderly/disabled relatives for whom they have caring responsibilities so whoever said people with DC will never understand the pressures clearly has tunnel vision!

@Puzzledandpissedoff

It seems as though a lot of women on here would rather watch people struggle and do this balancing act just because they had to

I agree there could be some of this going on, but not that posters are "actively campaigning" against WFH
Certainly it's been said that individual circumstances might mean having to go back, but I've not seen anyone argue against the principle of WFH if it works

The trouble sometimes seems to be that this means it working for the employer too, and not just for the person hoping for it

Added to this there’s clearly some confusion or disagreement happening around what ‘hybrid’ means. Lots of people assuming that the OP’s situation, where work are asking them to come back 3 days a week, is being ‘forced back to the office’ and she should leave because lots of jobs offer hybrid now. But… the kind of ‘hybrid’ those jobs offer might not look any different to the setup she’s got!

At my work there are people who were really shocked when our work from home policy changed. Some of them had made life changes planned on assuming they’d be working from home forever, like moving far away. But work had always said we’d end up with a hybrid pattern so I can only assume they heard ‘hybrid’ and thought that was compatible with ‘I never have to go in myself if I don’t feel like it.’

If you add up the amount of breaks smokers get on minutes it's more than what the school run would be.

My workplace you have to log out for a smoke break.

Agreed, GoldenOmber, and doubly so about making major life changes

I actually know someone who moved house on the back of a "never having to go in again" assumption, except an assumption is all it was and now she's predictably outraged. I've tried suggesting she looks elsewhere, but apparently her very rural position "makes this difficult", and all those other companies who'd be "happy for her to WFH completely" have turned out to be a mirage in her sector

Pity she didn't check her contract before making major choices, but there you are

@GoldenOmber

The original poster who brought up parents doing the school run mentioned logging back on at night and checking whether parents are making up the hours....suggesting she's not talking about a customer facing pub or hospital environment but rather an environment much more like mine

This is going to blow your mind, but: not everyone in a computer-based job has a job exactly like yours.

Well, the original poster referred to working at a computer checking to see if people were logging on at night so she clearly does 🤡

@Rosebell75

And can we please stop thinking that flexible working is the preserve of those with DC. There are an awful lot of people with elderly/disabled relatives for whom they have caring responsibilities so whoever said people with DC will never understand the pressures clearly has tunnel vision!

Very true and I would 100% make provisions and offer flexibility in these circumstances too. If someone is feeling better and resentful towards the company because we can't allow relatively small adjustments to make life easy for them such as half an hour while working from home to take someone they care for to a doctors appointment or to quickly attend to them if needed, we won't get the best out of them in the hours they do work.

A grateful and happy employee costs the company so much less in turn over and is so much more productive

Meant to say *bitter not better (silly autocorrect)

I have 12 employees who are mostly part time
We have always allowed flexible working - providing it meets the needs of our clients and the business itself (some face to face work and travel across whole county)
The downside of everyone working from home when we had no choice was everything took longer, new starters took far longer to gain experience, we had to have much more frequent team meetings, all the little things like sharing ideas a nd helping out others became harder
Many people felt their mental health suffered
We went back to office as soon as we could and things improved straightaway
I am very flexible with my staff but would never recruit someone who did not want to spend at least 50% of their time in the office/with clients

@QuirkyTurtle

Can't believe this thread is still going!

Neither can I tbh! I just came looked at AIBU after about a week and was surprised to see it on the first page

@GreenPepperRed you hit a nerve! I think a lot of us are wresting with this.
I'm a manager, hate working from home but enjoy the home-life logistical ease. My team are a mixed in how much they get done at home. I know I'm thinking about this A LOT.
There's no right answer, is there?

I've even heard people complaining about coming off furlough when their mates were still on it. Talk about entitled.

Well, the original poster referred to working at a computer checking to see if people were logging on at night so she clearly does 🤡

Okay, I am running out of ways to phrase this that will help explain to you that not everybody’s job is like yours, but I will try once again.

Your job allows for a kind of flexibility that some other jobs don’t. Even if those are computer jobs where people can work at home sometimes, and yours is a computer-based job where you can work at home sometimes, different jobs are different.

So in your job, if people contracted to work 9-5 are actually working 9.30-3.30, maybe that is not a problem. But it is a problem in some others people’s jobs. Like the pp who said it was a problem in her job.

In your job, if you pop out for 30 minutes on the school run, that might be fine because nothing urgent will come up. In other people’s jobs, that won’t work so well. Because they are doing different jobs to you.

In your job, as you said, you can move meetings around to suit you and your team, and it doesn’t really matter if you turn up 20 minutes late. There are other jobs where it doesn’t work like that. I’m sure you can imagine that meetings play different roles in different kinds of jobs?

So yes, the pp who complained about her colleagues taking the piss can work from a computer, and you can also work from a computer. But beyond that, your job and her job are different.

And flexibility will look different in their jobs to your job.

I actually know someone who moved house on the back of a "never having to go in again" assumption, except an assumption is all it was and now she's predictably outraged. I've tried suggesting she looks elsewhere, but apparently her very rural position "makes this difficult", and all those other companies who'd be "happy for her to WFH completely" have turned out to be a mirage in her sector

Maybe she’s one of my colleagues! I do think my work should have been more explicit that permanent work from home wasn’t happening - most of us did understand this but some didn’t. But on the other hand, surely you wouldn’t move out to the back of beyond without being really really sure your work was going to accommodate that?

I know people who are planning to move house now because they’re fine with a longer commute two or three days a week if they get to work from home the rest of the time. Seems reasonable and hopefully will help out a lot of the little rural places further out from commuter belts.

Why on earth did anyone get the idea that WFH would be forever? It was never even a possibility.

I actually know someone who moved house on the back of a "never having to go in again" assumption, except an assumption is all it was and now she's predictably outraged. I've tried suggesting she looks elsewhere, but apparently her very rural position "makes this difficult", and all those other companies who'd be "happy for her to WFH completely" have turned out to be a mirage in her sector.

Epic fail. 😂