To wonder how we ever did 5 days a week in an office?

[OptimismvsRealism]

I work hard and love my job (legal). Spent a day in the office today for the first time in months and honestly feel sick. The people flu! I couldn't go back. All those blokes in the City saying WFH was an "aberration" are deluded.

I get that some people love it and there's enough diversity in this world for everyone to find their niche but Oh My God am I glad I don't have to do the daily traipse any more.

I‘m not saying no one should work from home. I’m saying it’s not for everyone and going into the office isn’t the disaster the OP is making it out to be, especially if it’s hybrid. My mother managed it for the best parts of 40+ years and loved the social aspect of it.

I for one would go mad WFH full time, and I have friends who feel the same way. I have friends who couldn’t wait to go back to the office after Covid or mat leave because they felt so isolated WFH. I get not everyone feels that way, but those who love WFH full time dont seem to understand not everyone feels that way. And for younger people especially, I think it’s hard for them to learn if working remotely full time. That’s also not taking into account many of them don’t have suitable WFH environments. Also for women who have abusive partners, getting out to work can be a life saver for them.

I have ADHD. Work absolutely calms me like nothing else. I even struggle on holiday and I'm seriously considering sharing maternity leave with DH to keep the professional side of me alive. I'd love to be someone who is content wfh and can focus, cosy at home with their baby but it would seriously and has previously damaged my MH so badly. I have never been as happy in my career as I am now with my hybrid pattern going on and my mh is fantastic.

My comment was in response to the OP saying she literally couldn’t go into the office - I was just pointing out people have managed it for years! I actually love going into the office a few days a week - I don’t see it as race to the bottom at all, but a chance for social interaction and bonding

Get friends! Instead of unwilling victims.

😂

Some jobs/careers don’t allow you to be anywhere but the “office”- eg, doctors, nurses, teachers, care workers, social workers, lab workers, vets, farmers, fishermen/women etc, etc.
Before I’m jumped on, no, I haven’t RTWT - there’s 19 pages of it and I haven’t got time, but really, it’s time some realised that many jobs/careers out there just don’t lend themselves to WFH. If this has already been said, then apologies for being repetitive, but then again, if it has been said, then I rest my case.

And yet there are so many threads on Mumsnet about 'how long is it acceptable to make my one cup of coffee last whilst I work from a cafe because I miss the interaction with other people when I work from home'.

So not everyone is happy with working from home all the time.

These sorts of posts astound me they really do! Do some people really think that everyone does a computer based office job? I work in a factory so me and the majority of my colleagues could not work from home even if we really wanted to.

Of course they're not. When it comes to different types of work, we shouldn't generalise. There's very little that's true for absolutely everyone.

Re your last paragraph, humans existed before offices were invented, so following you logic, we need neither offices nor office workers!!

I think some people would love for that kind of work to be offshored, just like our car industry, shipbuilding, manufacturing of cheap stuff, etc. Let "someone else" do the dirty work whilst we just sit in our PJs playing on spreadsheets. Then they wonder why the Western economy is going to hell in a handcart whilst the emerging countries are getting richer by the day!

Most of the posts about offshoring in this thread have come from posters mooting the idea that the jobs currently being done remotely in the UK now will be offshored at some unspecified point in the future. It's a popular one on these threads, although people never manage to explain why they think that.

Indeed, threads about coffee shops being full of workers on laptops are usually full of hostile comments!

Two of my DC are parents and working from home is simply a way of life for them now. They're all pretty conscientious and work hard, though sadly I do know others who take the p*ss.

All they need now is a way to deal with the school breaks, the holiday clubs locally are very expensive and I don't think that there are any that are open for the equivalent of a whole school day.
I would have loved to work from home when my four DC were at school but there was only very low paid work available then, envelope stuffing and the like.

My DD and my DiL both work for companies where many of the senior people work abroad, permanently or short term. They're used to working where both parties are remote. I do agree that it's possible that employers may eventually cotton onto the fact that they could get good workers in lower-wage countries.

Yeah that's right. I had absolutely no idea everyone couldn't work from home 🙄

This is perfectly true. And it's possible that factory jobs may simply be lost to AI production, sadly. Or relocated to a lower-wage country. Factory workers get the worst of all worlds, relatively low wages, no working from home and reducing job security.

Same - I thought the noise next door was my neighbour running a Tesla assembly line in his work area.

Home workers instead though. The supply chain would be fucked if not for people playing on spreadsheets all day 😉

Who knew! I just thought dp went for very long walks everyday

'Eventually'. So you think they've for some reason not noticed this now, even in the context of a skills shortage in the UK and apparently lots of people working abroad already, but for some reason it's going to happen later?

My son works in one of the UK's largest insurance/pension firms. He's on daily teams meetings with other members of "his team" who are spread between India and Poland. He says he didn't even know they were abroad when he first started as other "team" members are in based in other UK cities, particularly Bristol and Edinburgh, and he didn't "twig" that some of his team were abroad. It really got him thinking and worrying about just how secure his job in the UK really is as his team already never get together for meetings etc - it's all remote and there's no difference in him talking/emailing his team mate in India as opposed to his team mate working from home near Bristol - just presumably a massive differential in pay for the workers!

Many people, including both my relatives, have moved jobs over the past couple of years for massive pay rises. I don't think that these pay rises have affected profitability yet, but if business takes a downturn companies will be looking at ways to reduce costs. Office space and staff wages are obvious choices.

You don't think they're looking at ways to reduce costs now, then?

If he's skilled, might not be quite as massive as you think! People are quite attached to the idea of there being cheap as chips Poles, Indians etc ready to take these jobs for much less than British workers get paid, and companies having just not noticed or something. But skilled workers with good English have options. The internet connects them to lots of places, not just the UK.