WF "Home" question

[CheesesandWines]

I am in the lucky position to WFH 5 days a week. Of course this happened in COVID, and I have since secured this permeantly. I'm good at my job and at this stage don't feel the need to "network" and be physically present at work.

One of the benefits of wfh is that I don't have to commute and can also fit in hobbies and exercise in the day. Twice a week at lunch (which is 1.5hrs) I like to go to my local gym/ Spa and really relax / switch off. To fit this in, I then work from the spa in the afternoon. There's a private booth in the cafe with no outside noise and because I'm a regular customer I have the space reserved for the afternoon automatically.

Here's the issue. On one occasion the laptop moved and my line manager could see someone at the spa walking around in their robe. Nothing more. She is now saying that wfh means your home and that I can't work from the spa two afternoons a week. I think her attitude is discriminatory and is impinging on my own health. I work much better from the spa and all the work is done with my body benefiting from a full body massage before an afternoon of work. She says that me working from the spa will affect colleagues who have not been allowed to wfh. I've looked at my wfh contact and nothing i am doing is not allowed. I have a good mind to work from the spa every afternoon now to prove my point !

Have you read the OP's messages? The issue has nothing whatsoever to do with her lunch break, it's that she stays at the spa for the rest of the day.

Interesting though that people are defending the OP’s right to work in a spa even though they don’t know what work she does and whose details could be being compromised by doing so.

I work for a bank. Dealing with customer information. If I’d posted here that I work from the local spa twice a week without actually saying what I do, I’m sure that there would be people who wholeheartedly would support my wish to do so. But if I then divulged where I work I’m sure the same people might take a different view.

Have you read OP's messages? She stays at the spa , in a cafe pod working for the rest of the day !

The thing is if one employee thinks that it is ok to work from a spa, another will think it's ok to work from the golf club, another while they are providing childcare, another while they watch Netflix on the sofa, another while they are on the beach or from the balcony of their hotel. Before you know it everyone is doing what they want and it becomes really hard to manage. It is also about the optics that someone is working in their spa robe while their colleagues might have no choice but to be in the office. WFH is a privilege not a right, it is certainly not discrimination for your employer to question this OP. At the very least they need to provide clarification on their WFH policies.

Sorry if you’ve already mentioned this but how long does it take you to travel from your home to the spa?

@MayThe4th

It’s one thing saying that wfh is convenient because you don’t have to commute. It’s quite another to think that it should give you a chance to do your hobbies/pick up the kids/essentially be paid to take the piss.

This. ^ And THIS is the reason many employers are making people go back to the office now. Too many people taking the piss. Having extra long lunches, having 10 ciggie breaks a day, chatting to their mates, putting last night's BB or Love Island on, going to the gym, and also (and this refers to 2 people I know in real life,) running a youtube channel, and doing their filming in works time !!!

@TheFifthTellytubby

Why is working somewhere other than home "larging it up"? There is no reason for the OP's colleagues to know what her daily movements are, unless the manager tells them just to stir things up! Background-blurring cockups and daft discrimination claims aside, as long as the OP completes her tasks, meets her targets and doesn't compromise security, it doesn't matter where she does her work. And if her colleagues find out and don't like it, then what's stopping them from asking for a remote working arrangement too?

This is such a flimsy argument. You say 'as long as the person meets their targets and goals and so on and so on,' they can do what they want with the rest of the time. Well no they can't. If said employee is being paid for 37 hours a week, and is doing her actual JOB for only 27, and piss arseing around - going shopping, getting her hair done, meeting her mates, going to the spa etc during the other 10 hours, then it's clear she doesn't have enough to do, and needs to be assigned more work.

Do you think if a supermarket set a target for 'Julie' on checkout to serve 150 customers in 5 hours, (9 am til 2pm,) and she served 150 in 4 hours, that they'd let her fuck off home after 4 hours (at 1pm) and still get paid til 2pm? Would they fuck! She would stay til the end and carry on working. If there was no customers she'd find something else to do, or something would be found for her.

The OP and some of the posters on this thread come from a certain set of people in society who are breathtakingly entitled. If I or anyone who I have ever worked with ever finished what they were doing in any given job, we would be given another task or duty, or we would FIND something to do. Not be paid for 37 hours, do everything assigned to us in 27, and then piss arse around for 10 hours, go do some shopping, or go HOME. That was never a thing, and never has been in any job I ever did. (I started work in the very early 1980s.)

This lazy entitled mindset is alien to me. Some people on here would never have survived in the workplaces I have worked in. They would never have made the cut. They'd have left or been laid off within a few months,. Thinking once their tasks are done they can fuck around and call their mates, go for a ciggie, go get their hair done, or even go home, and still be PAID. WTAF?! 😆

Because that's what some people are proposing on here. Be paid for 37 hours, complete your 'tasks' and 'targets' in 27 hours, and then go to the gym or spa or for lunch with a mate for the remaining 10 hours WHILST STILL BEING PAID FOR THOSE 10 HOURS. LMFAO, the entitled attitude of some!

As I said, if you have loads of time 'spare' you clearly need to be given more work. And don't flannel me with 'oh but I work so hard and so fast, that I do my work in record time!' I don't buy it. You are still being paid for 10 hours where you're pissing about and not doing your job! No wonder bosses are demanding people come back to the office. (Also, as I said, it's clear from this thread AND from a few people I, and many others know in real life, that people do swing the lead/take the piss!)

As for the 'as long as there is no security breach' comment. There WAS one with the OP. Someone saw a person walking past behind the OP, in a spa robe, which means that person walking past could have seen the OP's screen! Obviously conveniently missed that bit of the OP's first post!

I'm not really sure if you have read OPs comments but essentially they are using the spa in their own time (lunchbreak) and then working for the rest of the afternoon as contracted just not at home. With your attention to detail I'm not sure you would cut it in most work places!

@BobblePin How hilarious that this is the only part of my post you actually focus on. You'd never make the cut in any workplace I have ever worked in. Only focussing on 5% of any given thing.

I said the OP would 'never make the cut' because she takes her laptop to the gym/spa, and has extra long lunches, (which she claims she makes up but I struggle to believe,) and she has horrific breaches of security.

And as for the hilarious accusations of discrimination for her boss not wanting her languishing at the spa when she is meant to be WORKING. Don't even get me started! She would have been laughed out of every workplace I have ever been in for this!

I clearly hit a raw nerve with you. Are you in the gym right now 'working?' 😂

Glad you can at least acknowledge you havent paid attention to detail @AlexaCanYouHearMe ! That's really important in jobs these days. The fact you can't see that working away from the office is still working is a shame. I hope you aren't one the presenteeism dinosaurs still lurking about. You need to wise up to the new work environments and have a good work life balance while excelling at your job. Good luck upskilling !

Some posters don't seem to realise that not all jobs are the same.

I work part time anyway, there's a lot of problem solving involved (scientific software development, that sort of problem), breakthroughs are very likely to emerge when I'm ostensibly relaxing. If I'd stayed FT I'd have probably burnt out in my 50s. The same may apply in a variety of creative roles, I'd think.

Anyway, the OP may well be a lazy entitled pisstaker but it'd do some of my colleagues a world of good to escape the office and relax more!

As long as you are using a phone hotspot and you can’t be overheard or someone read your screen and are in the UK (for tax reasons) I don’t see a problem with this.

Touché 👏

The thing is analysis of recorded chargeable hours and conversion of recorded chargeable hours to actual fees in my firm does not bear out the claim from people working from home that they are "just as efficient" as when they were in the office, or those currently in the office.

poor you 😥

It's an interesting approach, isn't it... "since you're clearly working far more efficiently from home, here's some more work" instead of "well done, so lets see if a better work-life balance means we can all get our work done in four days but still get paid for five" - which is precisely what some forward-looking companies are actually doing, as they've found it actually increases output and leads to greater work satisfaction and employee loyalty. But hey, wait - those bums have to be on those seats or it doesn't count as work .... right? 🙄

Oddly enough, Hilton hotels have a TikTok video where someone is “working from home” that features a body massage, someone in a white robe and a booth to work from.

YABU!!
There is no confidentiality at a spa
WFH means exactly that

I don’t see the problem with it op. The more all of us can do to stay productive enough at work but find a balance that works for us- the better!

That well may be the case for the sort of job that has recorded chargeable hours.

On Friday afternoon I wasted at least half an hour of my time correcting mistakes in documents brought to me by a trainee to sign. They were documents which needed a formal signature.

It wasn't my client or my transaction but the partner and the assistant who were responsible for it were "working from home" and couldn't be bothered checking that what their trainee stuck in front of me was correct. If either of them had been in the office they would have had to check it and the partner "working from home" would have signed it.

Well yes, if you're in a role where physical presence is required even if it's just for something like a formal signature then wfh isn't going to be very effective.

Well it's extremely effective for the 2 people not in the office who made their failure to deal with their trainee's mistakes my problem.

This sounds like a person problem not a wfh problem. More training required !

Agree with this - one or other of them should have been in the office or prepared to come in at short notice for something like this. Or Friday afternoon WFH slots should be shared out evenly - hopefully this poster will get their turn next week.