To never want to work in an office 5 days ever again

[halloweensweets]

Pre-covid I worked in an office 5 days a week and never considered it could be any different, even though the jobs I've worked could all be done from home. I would commute 90 minutes to sit in an office and have more distractions than I did at home.

I hated the temperature politics in offices most of all - I am a very cold person and usually my (male) colleagues would want air con or windows open even if it was 5c outside.

I don't mind going in occasionally to have face to face interaction with colleagues, but on these days I am much less productive as my role requires me to do everything online.

But the thought of ever doing 5 days in the office, sitting for 8-9 hours with colleagues again is horrendous. I would rather go back to working in retail or another customer facing job, at least then there is justification to be actually there and present plus you can move around rather than sit and freeze.

I've recently been able to switch to full time remote work and I love it! I have a lot more time in the week to make healthy food and exercise. I feel a lot less stressed but I'm doing the same amount of work (my productivity is easily measured.) I don't think I could ever back to more than 2 days a week in the office!

I can still go to the office to meet up with people, but I regularly meet up with my work friends outside of the office already anyway.

There are lots of things I miss about being in the office with everyone. I sometimes feel sad about all the things we miss out on working from home.

Of course you're not unreasonable to have a preference, everyone is different. Whatever floats your boat.

@givemeasunnyday totally agree. Never understand the love for f/t wfh. As someone who craves human interaction I find these threads quite sad. Since when did we all become so intolerant of people? 😢

At the age of 54 I’ve decided to only work part-time temp jobs (preferably from home) because I loathe the office environment.

I like other humans and human interaction and see plenty of people

I also like wfh.

Don't make ignorant assumptions and don't feel sad.

I love human interaction too but not when I'm trying to work.
In fact WFH allows me to go out with friends, attend community events etc more rather than spend 2 hours sitting in traffic every day.

Also offices have become more unpleasant with hot desking and loads of people crammed into open plan offices. If we had nice quiet spaces, our own desks etc it would be much better but which employers' gonna spend that money? :)

I went 2 days a week WFH in 2012 and that was a requirement for any role I took after that. Now in a new role post Covid I am in the office once a week, and I usually travel for that. My team are not in my local office so it is a pointless waste of my time to schlep into London and not speak to anyone. I would never do FT in the office again.

I work hybrid now which for me is perfect (I have small children, I like to get out of the house and speak to adults) I never ever thought I would be allowed to do my job at home (customer service) I do get distracted more in the office

I had this revelation when I went freelance a decade before Covid. The temperature was always a bugbear of mine too, though for me it was always that offices were too hot and by the afternoon I frequently thought I was going to melt.

It didn't surprise me at all that when WFH was equally revelatory to many others once it became the norm. The one shining positive to come out of the Covid era.

WFH enhances people's lives too much for full-time office work to be normalised again. Including young workers starting out - there always seems to be faux-concern about them on these threads (funny that there's never a similar level of concern about the other challenges young people face these days eg affordable housing).

Firstly you need to understand that other people are different from you and don't crave constant human interaction, and indeed might find it draining. That's not a generational "people these days" thing, that's a personality thing. There were always people who found office life draining, you just didn't notice them or take them seriously.

Secondly enjoying WFH does not mean intolerance of other people. It means I have more time and energy for human interaction with the people I care most about - my friends, my partner, my community. My colleagues weren't and aren't especially high on that list.

I don't think so because most people who go into these careers couldn't bare the idea of working in an office whether is a traditional office or home office. I actively wanted to be in a people facing job surrounded by people all day.
No-one goes into a career in healthcare if they want to stare a screen or be in meetings all day, wherever the location

bussteward What a fantastic job! Would have loved that in my 20:s… loved all those magazines in my 20’s. Sad their time has passed.

Hybrid works for me too but it depends on your home environment and colleagues, doesn't it, as well as your personality?

I do my work but tbh I skive some of the time and would struggle if I was remotely monitored and heavily. Let's face it, who among us who works from home hasn't had many tea or coffee breaks that's lasted an hour, and gone out to the supermarket mid-morning for a food shop etc, caught up with life admin tasks, which we could never do in the office?

I feel the same. I currently go in two days a week and that's enough. I am so much more productive at home!! Too much chatting at work. I mean I love yo chat but it definitely distracts me.

Don't then. Presumably at this point no one is making you do so.

You work at home, I work in an office. The work gets done.

The problem with the office = interaction argument is that for a lot of us offices are really really shit places in which to interact.

I have generally liked my colleagues and liked my work - I've actively enjoyed time spent with them.outside the office. I even quite like meetings.

It's sitting in a huge room with flourescent lighting, with people all around me, zero privacy, dozens of different conversations going on all the time, constant ambiguity as to whether you're supposed to be chatting or focused on a task, and the expectation that I act professionally by wearing uncomfortable clothes and sitting in an uncomfortable way that I struggle with.

I coped when I had to work in an office by using headphones to block out at least some of the distractions, by staying late so I could have some time in a quiet office and by escaping somewhere quiet for lunch - but the whole set up wore me down and made it hard to be social.

I have worked from home on a few occasions and I didn't do any of those things. The only thing I did differently was to take a lunch break which I very rarely did in the office.

Jangling envelopes full of coins for the endless leaving collections and signing the cards

Tea runs

Commuting

Colds doing the rounds

So happy these are out of my life

I don't consider that skiving but then another benefit of WFH from me is that I'm not tied to a rigid "work must occur between set hours" way of thinking.

If I need to be logged on at a specific time I can do that but otherwise my role is meeting longer-term deadlines, not being present in set hours daily. Being able to pop to the shops, go for a long run or just take myself away from my desk for an hour helps me work - it's when I'm away from my desk that I have my best ideas, or have the mental space to untie a knotty problem in my head.

As much as I love my 1 day a week WFH, training and retaining new staff (especially those new to the workplace) is SO much better in person, in office as @PuppyMonkeysaid above.

A lot of new grads we've seen in careers fairs etc recently have been very explicit about looking for companies where they would have face to face relationships with their colleagues.

Absolutely agree.

I also can't be in work mode and social mode at the same time (talking the nuts and bolts of my work, not the relational networking stuff). If I need to get my head down and concentrate on work - that precludes human interaction whether I want it or not. Offices are both a crap working environment and a crap social environment.

Looking back, I spent my days in high anxiety, and fuck knows how I worked so well. Now, I only go in twice a month and that's plenty for me. Office days are unproductive as way too much noise and too many distractions. I won't ever go back full time in the office. WFH pretty much full time is part of my reasonable adjustments for my neurodiversity, so I'm staying put.

I'm in a situation where I transferred departments during Covid so I was working from home. I got promoted and moved to another unit, who is now pushing hybrid working and expects some hours to be done in an office. However, I don't feel any benefit for me getting out to the office, as most of my team is based in another location which is further away, so I'm communicating with them online anyway. I sit on a unit where they all have their own work to get on with so nobody talks to me apart from the odd good morning and that's it.

The group I work with is great but hybrid working has made it stronger. 3 out of 5 of us do 50/50 in/wfh.

I agree about office temperatures. For me it’s always too hot. I suffered in silence but have worked in an office a few years back where disagreements about aircon led to a row between 2 people in that office and it made things uncomfortable for everyone.

in our current group we have a certified member of the awkward squad. He’s actually not a bad person, just enjoys a good moan and likes to query things. Pre COVID, I sat next to him. I’ve returned to similar position but with a better thought out layout. Being 50/50 definitely gives me an easier time with this. I’m much more able to think “he means well” rather than “urg give it a rest”.