Sorry, not sorry, but wfh really is much easier

[Jeannie88]

I know it's become the norm, especially post covid, but do those who wfh realise how much easier their lives are?

Sorry, but I have found it a bit pathetic and embarrassing that there has been a big defiance of 'going into office' once a fortnight to be such an horrific ordeal?

Don't you all realise how fortunate you are? No commute, time at home to do things those of us have to do after a day of being on our feet, all frontline and retail etc then look after our children?

Sp my point from.personal experience. We are a group of 6 friends (f) and go out regularly together. When we have been to midweek gigs, comedy nights, meal, the 4 who wfh joke how they can roll out of bed and be online within minutes to show present, then have breakfast and just work at their own pace and even during teams meeting they can sit back and contribute what they have to.

Then, the 2 of us who have to get up at 6am, dress for work, ready to drive so sensible of alcohol intake the night before and buy ourselves soft drinks in rounds or even drive and give lifts. Then do a full intensive day with full on human interaction and check e mails on the evening when we get the time to do so.

Of course childcare issues come into this. We who don't wfh have to take our DC to breakfast club or childminder then go on to work, the 3 of the 4 who have DC drop them off at school and rush back having been seen to log on early but not really working as getting them ready.

Ok so my observation and opinions based on this. I guess all the moaning on MN about having to go into the office (which really isn't so hard is it?) had incited me to raise this point.

Oh and I do have DP who wfh and he totally agrees with me. He's hardworking and doesn't do the slob thing, but agrees, in his own words. 'It's a piece of piss compared to going to the office and even that was so easy compared to your job'.

So please those who have the privilege of wfh stop moaning! Honestly, how would the world work if everyone wfh? It wouldn't.

WFH is a huge benefit, but YABU for criticising people who're being forced into the office unnecessarily. Or who are afraid that their WFH is under threat.

I think regular WFH highlights the grind and pointlessness of having to go into the office.

I still do school drop offs, and I don’t know about you but here in Yorkshire I think the council has a hard on for putting Road works in the most inconvenient places then sending no workers to work there for weeks

Exactly, this post demonstrates why it's more inclusive for those with health conditions. Enough of that category have dropped out of the workplace as it is.

Do you really think all these employed people are doing zero work and it’s getting unnoticed?

Ultimately why does it matter to you whether someone who works from home does it diligently to your standards, or takes a more relaxed approach?

Why does it matter if someone ‘rolls out of bed’ for a 9am meeting? If the work allows for it then why can’t people do that?

I think the values of capitalism has infiltrated people’s consciousness so much to the point where the workers police EACH OTHER as to how hard they’re working or not.

I give the minimum to my work. I have no more energy to give.

In fairness what does it matter if people sit at a desk or in a bed?

I don’t as i’d nod off but at my work plenty of people have Teams meeting from bed, because they find it more comfortable

I now and again have to proofread 200 page reports and I’ll lie on the sofa with a blanket and pillow to do so because that work is easier done that way for me and I don’t need to be at my computer

I work from home since COVID and whilst in some respects its easier because I don't need to shell out for childcare, its also harder. I still have to get up, get ready and get kids to school and back for my start time. I still have to deal with people, phone calls, video conferences etc the same as I would in office. I do however have a lot more stress in that people think because I work from home I'm basically available - I'm not, I'm working!! Kids will come to me instead of their dad (who is home by that point) for everything, interrupting me constantly. The school run is the only 'human' interaction I have and I am sick to death of this house by Friday night. If I could afford to I would pick a job where I had to go into an office but I've been here 14 years and I'm not about to give up on that amount of possible redundancy somewhere down the line (quite possible in the next year or two). When I have to find something else though I'm back out into an office in the blink of an eye.

Totally agree, I have a colleague with Long COVID who could not do her job if she wasn’t able to WFH and often work from her bed. She would never be able to go into an office even a couple of days a week

Of course it is.
As a result, all the services I can think about are real 💩, worse then before.
Just do as little as possible to get away with and still get paid, eh?
And I'm saying this as a very fortunate child free, work free woman.
Good for you.

You’ll have to ask her boss, which isn’t me.

I don’t get these threads. I don’t start one whining about all the people lucky enough to attend one site and not have to drive around. For me, it can be at the drop of a hat. I chose this job. I might have a whine about the traffic or something but that’s human nature.

I don’t like any 9 am meetings, be it face to face or Teams. I start at 8 but I like to be able to plan my day and really get into things. That’s just the way I am.

What job do you do @Jeannie88 ? Can’t you see that all the jobs are important and help society? You’re very dismissive of people who sit at a computer all day.

I suspect where you are having worse service it's nothing to do with working from home and more to do with lack of staff or unmotivated staff

Because customer facing roles tend not yo be work from home do they?

Most call centre staff are still in centres and even if at home they are monitored to an inch of their lives - it's quite degrading in many cases - so they won't be getting away with skiving off because the rate of them answering a call will be logged

Also this, you can not get away with skiving if you work for a large call centre. Even when I did this job in my teenage years they had the tech to monitor and record your every second.

You are essentially logged into the dialler and can not log out of it without using a code to stop the calls being automatically being made or received.

You have code for;

• lunch
• break
• toilet
• wrap up (e.g typing notes on the customers accounts and making requests on behalf of the customers to different departments. Also you get the same amount of allowed wrap up time per call and have to meet your KPIs, so if you had a 2 min easy call you would get 2 mins wrap, and if you had a complex 15 minute call, you would still only get 2 minute wrap.)

And all of these have set limits, if you go over them some over zealous team leader will call you out in your next 1:2:1.

You could not get away with popping out to do the school run or having a nap in contact centre type roles. It would be impossible.

Those blaming wfh for poor customer service have zero idea how these environments operate and are being quite offensive to those who have to do these roles.

It's great if it's a choice but when you can't, and the rest of the people you work with do, it's quite lonely and you get forgotten about.

I think there are a few different issues to unpick in the WFH debate.

For transparency I currently hybrid work (approx 3 days per week on site). In a previous role I was frontline (including all through Covid when many of my friends were furloughed). I get way, way more done at home. Because I manage a team my on site days are nearly always spent talking to people - which is great and has its own value, but actively hinders me from the strategic planning part of my role. I wouldn't change it though. Hybrid gives me the best of both worlds.

Every job should be reviewed for the merits of WFH/hybrid working. A really positive thing to come out of Covid was that technology really has advanced so much it can enable WFH in a way that didn't exist 10 years ago. At a time when our cities are overpopulated, where roads are severely congested and where environmental concerns are more important than ever, WFH can offer a partial solution. The opportunity to capitalise on the momentum gained from remote working during Covid should not be lost because of concerns about the impact on businesses reliant on renting out offices or providing refreshments to those office workers or just good old-fashioned presenteeism and a reluctance to embrace change. Those who tried to fight the industrial revolution found it pointless and the same will happen here ultimately. Far better to embrace it at an early stage IMO. The job losses can be mitigated if we genuinely commit to a changing economy and new opportunities will arise.

We'll never have a fully WFH economy because too many jobs require F2F contact, but where it can be embraced the benefits for the environment and people's work/life balance (particularly working mothers) is huge. However, IMO there needs to then be incentives provided to those who can't WFH. Whether that's extra pay to cover the commute, more leave in recognition of the greater impact travelling in has, or other things I don't know.

I'm not entirely sure what it would all look like TBH. I'm just a random person on the internet voicing an opinion that is in no way based on expertise. However, it definitely shouldn't be a race to the bottom with WFH competing with those who work frontline for who has it harder or who is the most productive. You'll find an equal number of excellent workers or lazy workers in both.

I haven’t really come across people moaning about it. I have seen posts on social media from people who are worried about WFH being taken away because they’re depending on WFH due to disability or other personal circumstances. I am glad that as other posters said, we are making the most of technology. People shouldn’t be made to go in when they don’t need to!

I think wfh sounds fantastic. I am on the cusp of having to give up a perfectly good job, which I love, because of the commute. The bulk of my job has to be face to face.

Sorry, its destroyed my MH. I can't get my social interaction in the evenings as I have kids and my (entirely) WFH job has little interaction ever. My home is no longer a sanctuary from work and weekends consist of arguments with kids as need to get out and away from this place I've been trapped in all week, and out into the world where I can at least see other human beings. whereas they would like to relax at home.

The ' easier' bits come at a very high cost, for me. If you think you'd find this level of social isolation easy OP, come swap lives with me. I'd take yours in an instant.

I'd move but all similar jobs in my sector are like this now.

I wfh. Bloody love it! Used to my own company though! Introverted!

Again? Why don't you just go back and comment on Saturday's thread on this exact topic?

I really don't understand the arguement. It seems to be "WFH is better than working in the office and so you shouldn't moan about your WFH job, ever. Also, by the way, you shouldn't moan about your WFH schedule changing so that you need to go into the office".

WFH is better in many ways than working in the office. But these jobs are still tough in many instances. It's not a race to the bottom - there are many ways in which a job might be good or bad, and many ways on which they might be improved. Just because the not having to commute or get dressed aspect is easier, doesn't mean other parts of the job aren't tough.

Also people who WFH presumably have chosen those jobs because they suit them. Of course they won't want to go back to an office. What does it matter whether other people have to be up at 6am and use breakfast club? I've chosen a job where I don't have to do that. I don't see why a perk of my job should be sacrificed just because not everyone has it, even Communists don't think that.

My DP works outside the house and has this attitude. My job is a piece of piss apparently, and his is hard work because manual. Nevermind that I had to study for ten years for this job and earn well, he yells at me when he comes home and the kitchen isn't clean because "I've been sat on my fucking arse all day while he's been at work". Why don't you understand that jobs are different but regardless of location, they need to actually be done?

Also people who WFH presumably have chosen those jobs because they suit them

Well no. Lockdown happened and then jobs just didn't go back to the office. I work in the public sector which seems to have embraced WFH much more than the private ( and our productivity has not returned since lockdown, unlike the private sector. Probably linked).

I could go into the office, but my team never does as my manager refuses to go in, and when I go in its often a large empty room, so what's the point?

I have looked for other jobs, but they all seem to be similar in my field.

@LadyHavelockVetinari Your DH is a cunt, I hope you realise this? You should not be spoken to like that, by anyone.

Is the argument "it's hard going into the office, so people who WFH (which is easy) should be fine with doing it because they only do it occasionally"?.

Well, a few counterpoints:

1. It's easier to build a regime around one or the other. My workplace has a lot of reasonable adjustments in place for staff, almost all of which are dramatically improved by WFH.
2. It's mostly problematic when employers know that they want more people in the office so set arbitrary targets without a clear purpose to people being present.

When I was in charge of hybrid working, I organised all staff meetings to take place on two days every fortnight. We'd plan out our work for the following fortnight, and have an all hands meeting online in-between. People would schedule in person meetings themselves as they chose (including walks round the park, lunches etc). If our meetings weren't needed, we ended the day earlier.

And COVID gave me a handy excuse to force working breaks on people to refresh the air - and people's brains!

People don't complain about having to come into the office when it's useful and enjoyable.

They complain when their manager's manager has a vague and unsubstantiated complaint about "people having conversations by the water cooler", therefore gives everyone a 40% attendance target, which results in most people not being in the office together at the same time anyway.

And all this talk of mental health? WFH contributes enormously to better mental health
Actually, the mental health of working age people has massively declined which researchers believe is due to WFH.

No researchers don't believe that wfh is significantly affecting young peoples mental health

That's grasping at straws - the reasons seem to be - covid , lack of decent jobs , col with lack of mental health support

I would really love to know what the real reason is sone people seem to hate it with an irrational passion

'@Dayatthebeach
Actually, the mental health of working age people has massively declined which researchers believe is due to WFH.'

Nope.

The mental health of working age people has declined because of insecure employment, zero hour contracts, too many bad managers, toxic work environments, long hours, bullying...

WFH is actually a positive for most employees.

It also helps people like me who have long term mental heath conditions to stay in employment.