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?

@QueenofDestruction

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.

My walk to work is not bad for the environment. Me using energy all day just for me is much worse.

@QueenofDestruction

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.

As I've said before I can work from home but I've got no intention of doing so. Why should I feel as though I'm living in the office? I have a one bedroom flat and work in the living room, I have no other choice.

It seems that those of us who don't have a good set up for working from home don't actually matter now.

We're going in 1 day a week now and that's just about doable for me. My circumstances have changed significantly over lockdown and I wouldn't be able to work in the office ft. They get a lot more out of me WFH anyway.

" 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?"

In my job it's extremely difficult to find times that work for everyone for meeting so a core hours thing wouldn't work. It worked fine in other jobs I've had.

@Florenz

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

Well the company I work for has got rid of everyone's desks. We have a communal office now for a if and when you need to go into the office. So it was a possibility for some

No sympathy at all for anyone who upped sticks without a change in their contract. More fool them.

Surely you wouldn’t move out to the back of beyond without being really really sure your work was going to accommodate that?

You'd think not wouldn't you? But sometimes people hear what they want to hear, which is why it can make little difference no matter how explicit management are

It's weird how triggered some people get about others working arrangements.

My work has only asked people to come back in once a fortnight, so I am a bit at exactly how far away people have moved to that this is a huge problem. Portugal?

Perhaps it’s because if everyone refused to return to the office it has an impact on colleagues? Work is about more than a set of stand alone tasks. It’s also about how people work together to create a great organisation with a great culture.

What I find weird is that those people seem to have no thought to how that shift changes the culture. People meeting up to collaborate and work together in person can never be replicated as well online.

Hybrid working doesn’t mean WFH 100% of the time. It’s about getting the best of both worlds and choosing the optimal place/way for the work to be done which will be different dependent on the task. It also doesn’t mean never seeing any colleagues in person ever again.

Not sure some people are understanding the difference.

@Notyourtypicalvirgo - ah, the old chestnut about making friends at work is sad and you, naturally, have outside friends. I suspect that you are the type who piles onto school gate threads and tells mums that they are losers for trying to make friends there. Actually you really don’t sound very pleasant

Fwiw I made two very good decades-long friendships at work. When you are young you are open to more people and meet those (and learn to rub along with) people you wouldn’t encounter if you are only engaging in particular hobbies. And I reiterate that it is good to interact with others in person as opposed to an echo chamber online.

Our work did a survey and found out people want hybrid, so they decided to go with that. Fair enough..

Turns out hybrid to most people means wfh 99% of the time with a very rare trip into the office.

They're now flapping on this. Refusing to send kit out for WFH (..come to the office if you want kit), and "encouraging" people into the office a few days per week.. ie.. if you want pay increases, make sure we see you.

All very predictable.

Flexible working is great. But it has to be an actual agreement with the employer, not just the employee deciding to work or not work certain hours.

It's a nigh on impossibility to have an approach which will suit all companies and roles. The idea of having no meetings before 10am or after 3pm would be laughed at where I work, because generally our meetings involve stakeholders and leaders from different functions so it just wouldn't be practical. However, if a meeting was arranged and somebody key to it asked to move it slightly to accommodate picking up their kid from school, an assembly, doctors appointment or whatever it wouldn't be an issue. Similarly, our company applies the same flexibility for everyone so whether you want to pick the kids up, walk the dog or have your nails done, if your schedule allows for it then great. But you can't decline work to do those things. Sometimes we do relatively little in a week and have tonnes of time to do as we wish and other weeks we're flat out.

There are a handful of people with young children who are still working from home and performing childcare. It doesn't work. They aren't fully available when they need to be, there isn't enough focus on their work and professionalism is missing when their children are featuring in teams calls. And that is being dealt with. We have a policy coming into play which stipulates that home working will only be permissable where there are childcare arrangements in place, excepting an emergency which should be communicated to your manager and would be expected to last no more than a day or so.

If parents have older children who can entertain themselves once they're in from school it isn't really an issue. But it massively impacts when it's younger kids who need that interaction with their parents as it effectively writes off the last couple of hours of their working day.

Really, communication is absolutely key. If you need to hide what you're doing from your manager then you shouldn't be doing it. If you need flexible working, agree the terms of it with your manager and if your employer requests everyone to come back into the office you really need to have a compelling case as to why you cannot or should not do that at least some of the time.

I'm really pleased with our arrangement. We have one day a week where the whole team is in and thats a set day, and then people can go in as they need or want to. It means you get that guaranteed face to face time with people you work most closely with (and of course others who are in the office), yet have some autonomy over the rest of the time. We had a new joiner so I was happy to go in everyday for 2 weeks to do induction stuff and they wanted the support which was fine, I usually on a normal week spend 3 days in office and 2 at home which is perfect.

[quote DottyHarmer]@Notyourtypicalvirgo - ah, the old chestnut about making friends at work is sad and you, naturally, have outside friends. I suspect that you are the type who piles onto school gate threads and tells mums that they are losers for trying to make friends there. Actually you really don’t sound very pleasant

Fwiw I made two very good decades-long friendships at work. When you are young you are open to more people and meet those (and learn to rub along with) people you wouldn’t encounter if you are only engaging in particular hobbies. And I reiterate that it is good to interact with others in person as opposed to an echo chamber online.[/quote]
What an assumption.....I enjoy catching breakfast with the mums at the school gates now I'm on maternity leave actually 😂

A lovely bunch of people with so many shared interests that I've been enjoying interacting with more now that my company aren't forcing me to commute in every single day for no decent reason other than micromanaging and bums in seats

Perhaps you enjoyed getting oogled by men twice your age in an office environment where you can't leave or overhearing Karen and her latest diet fad because she hovers over your desk helping herself to treats someone brought in but I can tell you right now I honestly had no interest in any of that shit. I'm one of a very large percentage of introverts who see work as a place to do a job in exchange for money.

Keep shilling for the corporate landlords though!

Perhaps you enjoyed getting oogled by men twice your age in an office environment where you can't leave or overhearing Karen and her latest diet fad because she hovers over your desk helping herself to treats someone brought in but I can tell you right now I honestly had no interest in any of that shit. I'm one of a very large percentage of introverts who see work as a place to do a job in exchange for money.

I don't know what sort of offices you've worked in but that's not my experience. I'm lucky that I work with two of my best friends and we try and arrange our office days so we're in together. And before you say anything, the work gets done!

I'm hardly an extrovert but the thought of spending the rest of my working life at the dining table, having to warn DH if I'm going on a call if he's in the shower (don't want to scare my colleagues!) and seeing no one other than DH, the car and the postman all day makes me want to give up my job and work in McDonalds.

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.

I work in provision of services to vulnerable people. Work needs to be done during the day. I don’t know why me knowing what my colleagues are doing is making assumptions but you insisting that they’re definitely making up their hours isn’t, but I will continue to raise with management that they’re taking the piss.

What I will not be doing is making things even easier for them than they already are. What, getting to work 10 hours below their contracted hours every single week for full pay isn’t easy enough? Should I be working even more unpaid hours so that they can spend even more time at home playing with the kids? Give over.

Thank you to everyone who posted supporting me. It means a lot. I refuse to be chased off MN by one poster with a bee in her bonnet for some reason.

Perhaps you enjoyed getting oogled by men twice your age in an office environment where you can't leave or overhearing Karen and her latest diet fad because she hovers over your desk helping herself to treats someone brought in

Wtf

Notyourtypicalvirgo, do the mums at the school gate know that you're a misogynist or do you just save that point of view for your online chats?

Perhaps you enjoyed getting oogled by men twice your age in an office environment where you can't leave or overhearing Karen and her latest diet fad because she hovers over your desk helping herself to treats someone brought in

How old do you think I am?

*Perhaps you enjoyed getting oogled by men twice your age in an office environment where you can't leave or overhearing Karen and her latest diet fad because she hovers over your desk helping herself to treats someone brought in but I can tell you right now I honestly had no interest in any of that shit. I'm one of a very large percentage of introverts who see work as a place to do a job in exchange for money."

Love how you equate a middle aged woman trying to conform to society's rules about food (hard when you're older) and sharing food with ogling men.

I'm neither particularly extrovert or introvert but work in a field that's heavily introvert-dominated, and actually most of my colleagues are passionately interested in a lot of what we do, and do similar things (even if not quite the same things) outside of work. Plenty of mums in the playground turn out not to actually have been best friends once circumstances change and you're no longer thrown together, just like colleagues.

You sound like you've been some horrible places, maybe you need to find somewhere new after maternity leave?

@Jijithecat

Notyourtypicalvirgo, do the mums at the school gate know that you're a misogynist or do you just save that point of view for your online chats?

Please point to where I have been a misogynist?

This thread is beyond entertaining. Do you guys just do this all day, go back and forth with someone until they say a sentence that you choose extrapolate into an extreme context and then create a villain to pile on to like a pack of chihuahuas?

Netflix is more fun personally.....

Love how you equate a middle aged woman trying to conform to society's rules about food (hard when you're older) and sharing food with ogling men.

This makes no sense, perhaps re read what I initially wrote?

I don't need to find a new job thanks I'm perfectly happy where I am, in a place that trusts and respects me to work from home and manage a team while balancing my family life, but pre Covid some of the office jobs I worked in were pure shit and unfortunately office culture doesn't really change from place to place.... everywhere has artificially lighting, weirdos, communal toilets and one microwave for a whole floor of people....not even my dog would get excited about that and she loves everything