To think you shouldn't have to work in the office on Christmas Eve?

[oliverwe]

I work in an office environment. Some people work from home fully remotely, most people are in the office 3-4 days a week. My manager has decided that we must come in 5 days a week. That is minus him and other managers of course, who usually go to their country houses for long weekends.

My folk live in Cornwall and I'd like to go and see them for Christmas. It's about 6 hours on the train or driving.

Manager has told me he expects me in the office on Christmas Eve. I can't take annual leave as other people are. AIBU to think I shouldn't need to be in the office? I can and used to work from home so it's just grinch behaviour.

Couple of things

The service I have received from many places has been worse since Covid.

Also Amazon sell thousands of mouse jigglers a month that are marketed as undetectable to IT departments. Why do you think that is buffy?

Presumably the OP will drive over the weekend & wfh Monday & Tuesday in Cornwall.

Ah but you nurses have it easy, try being an oil rig worker who doesn't get to go home at night.

See how ridiculous you're being here? It's neither a like for like comparison, nor a race to the bottom.

I've given up phoning call centres during school run times now. There's no way you get any service.

Of course there are people who work diligently from home but there are also people who take the piss.

We don't know enough about the OP's work to know whether logging in at her parents ' house would be something her employer could approve. I do think though that if her management has seen fit to mandate office attendance on Christmas Eve they should be there themselves.

@ilovesooty that's because everyone else is ringing
Call centres are one of the most monitored jobs out there, you can't go to the toilet without people knowing let alone skive off

If it's one with long opening hours, ring during coronation street/big event on TV
Friday afternoons are often mega busy too and Mondays are the busiest

Thank you for the information.

However I do still believe that in general the standard of service offered by people working from home is variable.

@Hateam mouse jugglers don't work in my job

I'm just pointing it out because I'm fed up of people saying that call centre staff are skiving. You can't. Not without getting sacked

I start work by logging on. If I'm not logged on by my start timeI have to explain why
When I log on, calls come through automatically, you can't stop them and you don't choose to answer them
When I finish a call, it gives me another one (depending on how many calls are waiting or not)
My manager can listen live or to the recordings after

If I need the toilet I press a button which makes me unavailable, that time is monitored as a total over the week
I have to go for my lunch as scheduled or it affects my adherence which is also monitored
If I go over my lunch time I have to explain why
If the doorbell goes I ignore it as I can't step away to answer it because a call would come through and I would miss it (which is tracked)

Every day there are statistics sent out
This shows how many calls I answered, how long I was unavailable (toilet/drink time), my adherence, everything compared to everyone else

There is also a screen which my manager monitors which shows if I'm available or on a call or in the toilet or doing emails or coaching someone

Also Amazon sell thousands of mouse jigglers a month that are marketed as undetectable to IT departments. Why do you think that is buffy

I don't know about Buffy but people have them because Teams has changed to mark you as absent from your desk after about 2 minutes and you can't change it. Enough to go for a quick wee perhaps but nothing more. I've been talking to a colleague in the office (about work) with both of us sat at our desks next to each other, and it's gone amber. It's f-ing ridiculous. So you get a mouse jiggler so you can actually make a cup of coffee or go to the loo or talk to someone on the phone without it making it look like you are not there.

Yes so much skiving. That must be why I get a bonus and pay rise and glowing appraisal every year, despite WFH most of the time and just going in for the odd meeting.

The standard of people working everywhere is variable.

Fair point.

I had a job years ago where five of us were made come in on Xmas eve, and the director came in too. He left at 11 - waving and smiling at us all to have a happy Christmas! We all had to sit there until 5 - with no work to do! - but obviously couldn’t clock out.

All five staff members had left/moved on by June, they had to hire and train a whole new team. Flexibility pays, if I had even been let off at 3pm on Xmas eve (or just been allowed work from home so I didn’t have to commute) I would have accepted it and been happy with that.

I am a vet. I have been fully home based for over a decade. I elected to leave clinical practice for flexibility around my life and family, with the added bonus of being paid a lot better. If you don't like what you do, change it.

I also work for an organization that treats me like an adult. Christmas Eve is a half day for everyone. They don't care if I work from home or from a family member's home on any day of the year. I am similarly accommodating with all my team. I don't care where they are day to day as it is clear when people are not delivering on objectives.

Also Amazon sell thousands of mouse jigglers a month that are marketed as undetectable to IT departments. Why do you think that is buffy

I have one because sometimes I need to use a system that can take 20 mins to log onto and logs me out if I'm inactive for more than 60 seconds.

I could just not bother and charge my client for all the wasted time for getting in and out of their terrible system but it's soul destroying so I use a mouse jiggler.

Plenty of people take the piss while supposedly working in the office!

So you’re saying you’d work on the train rather than from home? Seems reasonable tbh. Sounds like your company could allow it, just won’t, and that’s the kicker.

If you’re saying you’d work from home and then travel, then you can work from the office and then travel, surely? Or you’d travel down at the weekend and work from Cornwall? Fair enough.

Thinking of my friends and family, everyone is off Xmas Eve to new year. It’s not unusual. Nor is working over Christmas, but it obviously depends on what job you’ve chosen.

Jesus, the micromanaging! Nightmare! How infantilising. Giving me flashbacks to my callcenter days 😭

Who are these people who are so insistent on following the rules to the bloody letter. I know that when I'm older looking back I will remember the christmases spent with my family more than the dutiful logging in and working my exact hours on Xmas Eve.

I work from home and over Christmas there is less work to do so I absolutely make the most of it and enjoy a more leisurely pace.
Equally at our busiest times I make myself available outside of normal working hours and travel to customers in my own time.

It has to go both ways.

It never ceases to amaze me how half of the posters on mumsnet turn into Victorian workhouse owners on every employment thread.

😆

I bet most of them don’t even work!

Lol! Agreed.

When I was running a business, I found that goodwill made the world go around.

I didn't want the angst of going in on snow days, I didn't want staff shivering and whining about the heat and I didn't want to work Christmas eve any more than they did. I ran the company like I'd like to work there.

Once I started running the company that way, people stopped leaving! Productivity was brilliant. Profits went up.

It's a normal working day, I'm working too. The fact you didn't put an annual leave request in early enough isn't your employer's problem

And it's also sensible management, if you know you're in the sort of field where people are going to end up not doing much on Christmas Eve, not to pay for that. It makes more sense for you to let them take it as leave, instead of otherwise taking a day where they'd get much more done.

A lot of us office monkeys probably have stories of having to work days over the Christmas and interim period where we clearly did so little that our presence was a net loss. I had to work the 28th once, because of a boss who was a tit, and there was absolutely fuck all needed doing. So I didn't.

You have no way of knowing what the people who have a different viewpoint to you do in terms of their employment.

It's not a holiday. If you haven't taken the day off then if course you need to be there.