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.

Hmmm, but many people have children and it seems easier to drop off, pick up from school etc if you wfh.

I am with you OP, not for the temperature reason, but because there are always people who have habits that you would not accept were they friends or family, even if well meaning.

The face to face benefits can be got in one day a week at an office I think.

I'm not intolerant of people. I am generally quite a sociable person, and I'm genuinely fond of some of my colleagues.

However, I am intolerant of long, expensive, uncomfortable commutes, and offices that are poorly designed, badly maintained and inappropriately equipped.

I'm intolerant of insecure, incompetent micro-managers who value presenteeism over actual output.

I'm intolerant of the idea that we must all go back to doing what we did, just because.

After years of office work I did a stint stacking shelves in a supermarket and I was so much happier. It’s too physical for me now but I loved how stress free it was and how I could just get on with it by myself without worrying about office politics or drama. I wfh now and I never want to work in an office again.

I would also leave my job if they made us all come back to the office full time. Mainly because they insisted we had to WFH during covid and it was a huge challenge then as we weren't set up for it and had to do it with kids at home. So if it was good enough then it's more than good enough now.

I do 3 days in the office and 2 days at home. Those home days were hard won and the owner of the business still begrudges me them. There is no way I would go back to full time in the office. The wasted commute time, the lower productivity and the inane small-talk would drive me crazy.

We should question any high-profile business personality who demands that people return to their offices otherwise they are just shirking. The big two that struck me were Elon Musk (needs people to commute and need more cars) and Alan Sugar (owns a huge amount of office space and needs us all in so he gets it all rented out).

If my office was 5-10 mins from home I'd happily go in most days.

My issue is that like many london workers, its about 1h 15 to get there each way.

Wfh 3 days a week means i save 7.5 hours a week, that's not just time I get back, its £112 of childcare costs a week. Plus i save £75 on train fares.

That's £800 of post tax costs a month, its equivalent to around £1200 of earnings for me.

Not to mention losing the commute means i can work part time over 5 days and do a couple of school runs a week on the days i wfh - its just not feasible to do school runs and only be in the office 10-2 but 9-3 works.

Its quality of life. If i couldn't do it this way, I'd want to work less hours. Wfh keeps a lot of women, or parents generally, productively in the workforce and i hope the government realises the economic benefit of that.

Yep like many others I'd leave if I was asked to go back to office more than a couple of days per week.

Pre covid I did a 70 mile round commute, on predominantly single carriage roads, which my colleagues laughing referred to as 'wacky races' due to the awful driving and inappropriate overtaking. We were expected in when it snowed, or was icy even if it took us hours. If the traffic was bad, I'd end up being late to pick the kids up, if I got the train, invariably one would be cancelled or delayed. Whole thing was a monumental pain in the arse. Our office is old and poorly equipped, we have to take our own drinks, there isn't even a water cooler.

We now work from home almost exclusively, but do come in once a month for a team meeting, and if we are required to for a meeting that would benefit from face to face attendance.

I have zero desire to go back to the office. I'm in my mid 40s, and get my social interaction in my actual social life. I like my colleagues and we chat on teams and meet up once a month, but that's enough for me! We all live miles away from each other, and most of us have young kids, so it's not like we'd be out all the time if we were still office based. If we all came in, our mileage would be around 500 miles total for a team of 6...

I have worked from home since 2015 so long before covid.
I would never do a job again which involved going somewhere else other than my home.
People used to find it strange that I worked from home but now no one cares.

I agree! I work 4 days condensed hours so longer days, and pre covid that was one from home, 3 in the office. I now do maximum one day a week in the office but often less and a month can go by without me going in. I love it! I like having the option of going in and seeing colleagues in person, but I couldn’t bear to do it every day.

This! As a fresh faced 21 year old still living with my parents, I don’t think WFH would’ve appealed at all. I had a great social life in my first job, a funny bunch of people to work with, largely single, so every Friday night we would go to a local bar for drinks. I’m not in touch with the majority now years later but two are still very close friends.

Now at almost 40 with two young DC, WFH suits my lifestyle down to the ground. There’s so many other ways to socialise outside of the workplace and to be honest I enjoy the peace of WFH.

Could of written this myself
I do 2 days in office and rest of home
love working from home, save costs of childcare, no commute lest money on petrol don’t think I could work full time in office again. More productive at home when not hassled by colleagues

I can see why this would be difficult but I think companies need to rethink their training programmes if this has previously been done in an informal way.

The new graduates need to be assigned an experienced “buddy” to train them, who they can shadow in the beginning, and then work alongside for 2 days a week or whatever, with the workload and /or pay of the “buddy” being adjusted accordingly.

I could never work at home, I hated it so much I retired early, home is where I relax and use my space as I want, not to work for someone else's business.

Agree with you word for word.

Soul destroying, never again.

Agreed, I do 2 days a week in the office now!

Gosh I love going to the office. I am 200-400% more productive (compare to WFH). I can focus. Better equipment. Faster connections. Good printer. Not so keen on commute, but plan to move closer within next year. Right level of social interaction. Warmer & more salubrious than my home. Better quality music or podcast set up. Interesting gossip tidbits.

It's nice to have flexibility of WFH given the commute or when the house needs work doing but yeah, office is so much better for getting actual work done.

You're not unreasonable to like what you like, but I couldn't cope with that. I worked from home the other day and hated it. I was cold, bored, had noone to talk to, and had to make notes of people I needed to speak to so I could catch up with them when I was back in.

I know lots of people love WFH, but its not for me.

I also worked from home in a share house in my 20s and I loved it. I saved so much money on lunches and transport and outfits. I lived with friends and had a great social life. I was quite happy working from the dining table or the sofa.

Being on MN has actually opened my eyes to the number of people who really don't like interacting with others, and I agree it is quite sad.

I'm not in the UK, and I live in a large town, not a city, but far more people here have just gone back to work as usual. I believe wfh is more common in the cities, but I don't actually know anyone who wfh more than one day a week - and not many of them.

I was quite happy WFH from 2020 onwards. Then a faceless senior somewhere in the US decided we all had to come back to the office 1 day a week - and it had to be the whole team in together the same day every week with no exceptions.
After 3 months of this we were told how well it was working and now it’s 2 days a week with it becoming 3 days from January.

There’s no flexibility no changing days if you have an appointment and we are told if we’re not well we have to take sick leave we can’t wfh instead.

It’s the lack of any flexibility or admission we have all wfh for nearly 4 years . Just the ‘because we say so’

@givemeasunnyday

Being on MN has actually opened my eyes to the number of people who really don't like interacting with others, and I agree it is quite sad.

You should read some of the Facebook Uni Parent's Groups that I'm on. Huge numbers of first year students who've been at Uni a month or two and not made any friends, neither in their flats nor courses etc., and pretty depressed about it. Unless they're "party central" kind of students or extraverted, there seems to be lots who can't make the first move to talk to anyone else. There are new posts, literally daily, from parents severely worried about their children and lots of students giving it up and returning home!

I wonder what the hell we've done to society when it seems lots of people are frightened (or anxious) about trying to make new friends, or even talking to others.

I don't think it's just smartphones either. Far enough when you see others staring at their phones walking down the street or sat on a bench or whatever - they're giving off the "I don't want to talk" vibe. But even people just sat around or walking around are heads down, avoiding making eye contact, etc.

Are there now so many nutters out there that we're all frightened to even say hello or nod as we pass? Maybe there are? If not, what the hell is everyone frightened about?

Same in workplaces, "normal" working relationships seem to be a thing of the past now that so many WFH, so they barely acknowledge their work colleagues on the occasional days they're in the office.

From reading most messages here and on similar topics on other fora, the common theme is the commute, both in terms of cost and distance.

That's entirely down to the centralisation of, mostly office, jobs into a handful of large cities. It's caused untold problems, i.e. city centre congestion, sardine cramped buses and trains, and forced people to move to the already congested cities if they want a decent (professional) job.

Go back a few decades and "office" jobs were spread out over the country. There were head offices in smaller cities, "branch" offices in larger towns, even HMRC had offices in every medium/big town, as did banks, insurance firms, national accountancy/solicitor firms, etc.

Perhaps that's what we should be changing, i.e. encouraging firms to reverse the centralisation and start to re-open regional offices so people had more choice of jobs closer to where they live.

I agree re the commute. My last office was originally a couple of stops on the tube from where I live. Less than half an hour door to door. They closed it and relocated us all to an office way out. A long tube ride, then a bus, which wasn't very reliable. So a nightmare in winter when you just wanted to get home. That took me 1.5 hrs each way on a good day. One colleague went from an hours journey to nearly 3 hrs! Loads of us left and now they're severely short staffed. What did they expect?

Did it for years and spent a fortune and hours on trains, had a call about a job today but 5 days in the office no way can I face that again.