To be angry that we paid our PM to drink coffee and eat cheese?

[Shamplade]

Article in news today. BJ wants us all back in the office because when he worked from home he spent too much time eating cheese, drinking coffee and walking slowly back to his desk! Then he forgets what he was doing!! He thinks we are all like that too and that’s why we should get back to the office.

AIBU to be angry about this on two counts;

1. tarring us all with his own lazy brush. I barely stop when I WFH. Back to back meetings. Log on early. Lucky if I get lunch. How dare he suggest we are all lazy like he is.
2. we were in a pandemic and paying this lazy, good for nothing lump to lead us. He cared so little, he was meandering back and forth to the fridge and forgetting what he was doing. He is the PM. How does he have time to meander back and forth to the fridge when he is being paid to lead the whole countr?

Made me so cross.

We’ve onboarded almost an entirely new team during the last year. Digital tools have been absolutely amazing for bringing on board my new staff. We are in constant contact and I have daily team catch ups, thrice weekly 1:1s with each direct report and we have a full team chat to ask questions of each other. Documents are collaborative so they can track in real time as things change and they can often hear me on calls too, when I have both lines open.

Whenever something new comes up, I’m a video call away to walk or talk them through something and I will often also pull them into a call if I’m about to do something they haven’t really seen before. Then we all go into the office once a month and all wander in one day every week or two as well, to spend time as a sub team.

Experiential learning didn’t disappear, it just evolved. If anything, we actually talk more now than we did in the office because we make more of an effort. (FYI, they’ve turned out fab so far and come on in leaps and bounds - I couldn’t be prouder of them!).

There does seem to be a lot of sour grapes from people who can't / couldn't ever work from home.... yes you need to work hard to make sure that it can work, and in some industries it's really important there is hybrid working. However I'm sure there are some industries where it is absolutely possible to work from home 100% without detriment.

That's a bit unfair. Some of them were very busy sunbathing and gardening. 😂

@LaughingCat when do you actually get any work done?!

Not in the Daily Mail, on MN. People saying WFH is great because they've reduced nursery costs and can look after the kids when they're sick and during holidays.

Walk to the fridge... hide in the fridge..

Because if you're not a shit manager, you'll create a culture where asking questions is still encouraged, and you'll invest extra one-to-one time with the ones who aren't asking questions. You'll also encourage peer groups to form so junior colleagues can support each other too, in a safe space where their managers aren't watching. You'll still give feedback on specific work and you'll still debrief how it could have gone better.

Just because you're not working physically next to each other, you can still message, email, audio call or video call each other.

It's not rocket science. 🤷‍♀️

Absolutely, just because someone is in the office it doesn't mean they're not skiving. I've taken on work from former colleagues who claimed to be always busy, then left and were not replaced, and I wonder what they were doing because their job added to mine seems to take maybe an extra few hours a week. I put it down to what Lisa Simpson calls "pointless busy work".

@theobligatorynamechange I think we've different ideas of experiential learning.

Whilst your strategies to manage remote working may work, if you were all in an office you wouldn't need to put in all that effort and it would happen anyway, whilst you were actually doing whatever your job requires.

Some people can work from home- they are intrinsically motivated and don't wander off all the time chomping on cheese!

Some people can't WFH- they need people to see them working because they lack internal motivation- BJ is one of those!

civil servant here. We have new hybrid working contracts since last year letting us work an average of 2 days a week from home. To be honest our place would struggle to seat us if everyone was in 5 days a week. I actually work harder at home than at work as less noise and distractions.

OP I know which article you are referring to (one in the DM). I saw it too and it made my blood boil when I read it.

I WFH and I do NOT slack off. Some days I don’t even take a lunch break because I don’t have time. I have young children and I don’t get to spend as long with them as I would like to because I’m working so much.

For the likes of Boris and his friends at the DM to imply I’m being lazy is a complete and utter slap in the face. Thanks to Tory cuts and austerity I’m doing the job that would have been covered by at least 3 people not so long ago.

If I had to start going into the office again it would take away at least 1.5 hours away when I could be working and there is no way I would be willing to log back on at home and continue working to get through what needs doing. It wouldn’t be possible and I would see next to nothing of my children (I hardly see much of them in the week as it is at the moment, let alone if I had to travel into work and back every day).

I can’t wait to vote the Tories out at the next election. They are so completely out of touch it’s unreal…

Maybe. I get where people are coming from when they say junior staff don't just overhear conversations anymore, but if we make more of an effort to actually invite them to a call, they hear both sides, and that's more valuable. And so on. I don't think things are worse; I think they've just evolved.

I used to put in just as much effort looking after my team when I was in the office. And part of of my job description involves looking after my team - I'm not 'wasting' company time doing things that aren't required as part of my role, if that's what you were implying.

Some people just don't want to manage staff. The difference, I think, is that bad managers are more problematic when you do have so many people working remotely. They're less inclined to spot a problem unless it's waved under their nose, and there's less waving remotely. You have to keep your eyes open.

What will it take to oust this psychopathic, lazy, incompetent idiot?

He's a joke, obviously. The cabinet is a bunch of hideously ill-equipped-for-office, self-serving, incompetent, cruel fuckers. It's dire. But people will vote Tory again. I cannot fathom why, but they will.

I never judged people on their politics before, but I do now. To vote Tory is vote for more years of ineptness, contemptuousness and plain cruelty, so I judge 'til the bloody cows come home these days.

If only the rest the cabinet would spend more time eating cheese, making coffee and forgetting what they're doing.

Far less destructive than selling our public assets, curbing our civil liberties, impoverishing poor people even more, hiding their own money offshore, and giving our collective money to their rich friends.

I’ve actually had the best opportunities to learn and develop of my career over the last 2 years of working from home. I’ve just been offered a huge promotion that I wouldn’t have been on track for pre-pandemic, so for me (and many others I know) working from home hasn’t been detrimental to my career or learning opportunities at work at all.

To be fair OP, when it comes to fridges, Boris is like a moth to a flame. He's presumably drawn in by an irrestistable force field.

A leader should not lack the self discipline to work from home.

I’ve done it for years. It so much easier to be highly efficient. I’ve gotten raises, promotions, and am in high demand at my firm.

Yanbu. Johnson is a stain on our country's once great history.

Bojo can jog on.

Like many, I work far better from home. My employer has now closed all but 2 offices in the uk because productivity has shot up. They can now also recruit more talent because they're not reliant on people living within a commutable distance of an office.
I work solidly from the moment I log in! The minute my icon turns green I have colleagues IM/calling.
I can't believe how much time we spent doing nothing in the office! I really can't see myself returning to an office-based job anytime soon, regardless of what Boris says, but I'm fortunate to have a supportive employer!

Boris is an embarrassment. I wonder what the rest of the world think of him? I bet they think he is a chump (being polite here)

There is a huge campaign at the moment designed to turn people against each other to detract from the Boris shit show. I’m one of the lazy civil servants currently being attacked by Jacob Reece Mogg. The hard working MP whose most famous picture is one of him actually asleep in his workplace.
I worked every day during lockdown(from home) long hours, no breaks etc. hated it for a while but made it work and got used to it. I would prefer hybrid working now but am being forced back to the office at the whim of JRM . After a long commute I have to fight for a desk, don’t sit with my team and then send hours sat with people all with headphones on in separate teams meetings!!! Makes my blood boil along with some of the comments on here! People should have a choice and there is a huge body of proof about the benefits of wfh despite some people thinking it’s a scivers charter. Many companies are adopting this going forward. Obviously not the government!

A lot has been learned through the pandemic. None of this type of support would have been in place but a lot of it has come about as a result of being able to speak to people in different locations. You are making out this is a negative and I’m not sure why. We have loads of on line support groups, lots of virtual learning and teach ins which would have never happened. Training is much shorter and targeted than before. Pre pandemic my team was spread over a large geographical area. It’s much easier to support them now (and time saving and cost effective).