To ask if you (also) just ignore your "required" days in the office?

[Everythingisnumbersnow]

I am supposed to do two days. But the office is a minging hotdesk box full of coughing weirdos and the toilets are smeared with shit by 910am.

I can't do my job well in the office so I just don't go. I do manage people and they seem to appreciate the flexibility (half go into the office sometimes, half never do, we perform well).

Anyway it's been a real eye opener for the power of low key just defying silly rules.

Anyone else?

(If they cracked down I'd go elsewhere)

We have to do 11 or 12 days a month and face disciplinary action if we don't. The office is always freezing so I sit with my coat on.
You aren't allowed to listen to music or wear earphones so no way of blocking out loud conversations.
Thank goodness I'm leaving soon.

I would say about 80% of people do that at out company. We’re supposed to be in 3 days per week, we do about 2 days.
we all have childcare for our working hours, so no complaints so far.
If they want us to be reachable in the weekend/early mornings/evening (joy if working across time zones), they need to be a bit flexible in return.
if they insist on coming back three days or more, its 9-5, which would cost the business millions and millions

You are making massive generalisations based on your own experiences. I find it impossible to connect with people online.

That's horrific, you need to take this further as a health issue. If the management won't deal with significant hygiene problems, then perhaps a union?
Unless people are doing a "dirty protest"? 🤢

I'm fully WFH now, but previously I was in an office where some teams did this (lead by managers/directors who did the same) and it really killed morale for the teams whose managers expected them to comply with the in office requirement.

I understand the mindset, but I feel if there's a requirement set for everyone in the company, if senior leadership then decides not to comply/flex the rules by team, its massively unfair.

My office is really nice so I can't really use that as an excuse, but the commute is a waste of time and I can do my job from home.
I do the same as you, I'm supposed to do 2 days a week, but tend to go only 1 day unless I have a meeting with my boss the other day.

They do track attendance but not individually, they run the numbers by department and I'm lucky my team actually goes quite often (because they want to, they know I don't care).

TBF that’s just not feasible for lots of offices. I work in IT and the idea we can recruit the skills we need out of one small town and an hour radius commute is laughable. But a couple of days in the office fine/

I'm in the public sector and they "request" that we attend the office 40% of the time but there's no mandate. They got rid of one of our biggest offices and vastly reduced office capacity so there isn't actually room for all of us (or even half of us) to attend on the same day.

I just tell my manager that I'll happily go in if it's of some benefit to someone (i.e a new starter that needs training, a meeting that would work better in person etc) but I won't just go in for the fun of it because I work better at home and it costs money in fuel/parking etc so it just doesn't make sense to me.

At the moment I go in once every three weeks for a specific meeting with a client team who all attend the office on that day. Having a "hybrid" meeting when they're all in the room and I'm on a screen doesn't work well, especially when the whole meeting revolves around me advising them.

We are expected to do 40% in the office and I do and I expect my team to too. It hasn’t been very enforced but we have a new senior leader who has made clear he expects it. And I’m glad. I think it’s helpful to have in person contact with colleagues, especially for new colleagues, and people at the beginning of their careers .

I have 2 peers who clearly don’t follow the 40% - one of them moved to a cheaper area of the country during lockdown and is now complaining about travel costs and whether they will be subsidised (no mate, same as my mortgage isn’t subsidised). And the other is making the same comments as the OP about dirty toilets (I haven’t experienced a particular issue and if I did I would report it to facilities / one of the cleaners regularly roaming the office).

Are you usually so literal? She’s making a point.

In our company it’s not anything to do with boomers why they are enforcing the required office days now. The boomers all wanted to work from home. It’s Gen Z and younger millennials who are actually wanting the office time. Many were leaving as the rest of the team including their managers weren’t coming in and therefore they weren’t getting the face to face support time and the team interactions that would help their careers. The company couldn’t have all the younger staff leaving, who would become the seniors in 10 years time. So now we are all doing a required 2 days a week in the office which is a good compromise really. I have no need to be in the office, I’m a mid-millennial, pretty senior and learned a lot when I was a junior from everyone in the office before Covid so I don’t really need that so much now. But I can see how it’s unfair to our juniors not to give them that and I don’t think 2 days is too bad an ask, it’s much better then 5 days.

my work has a 40% minimum. I probably do about 80% because I have a lot of in person meetings and my job relies on relationships. If I am not in formal meetings I am catching up with someone over coffee.

i have found, in my specific industry, that leadership requires visibility.

everywork place is different - I wouldn’t be effective at my job is I did it from home. Some colleagues have tried this and their reputations are trashed. It gets noted that they aren’t in the room. In some board meetings for example the tiny square in the corner of the screen gets forgotten about. They don’t participate in the causal chat before and after the meeting. Miss out on the body language. Or when the technology fails they are just gone!

I wouldn’t want to work somewhere that has no hybrid option though. I work from home on a Friday if I can - and it’s a nice change in pace! I get a different type of work done.

I said YABU but only really because I used to work in an office where we were remotely managed by a manager who'd come in 1 day a month and it really wasn't enough.

But she was an ineffective manager all round really so not sure it would have made.much difference in her case!

But there will be things you miss if you are rarely there. Just things that you would only find out about by observing them.

I find it impossible to connect with people online.

This is an interesting point. I definitely find it harder to connect on a personal level to people who have joined the workplace since Covid. When you're all in an office you chat about your family, what you did at the weekend, hobbies etc. this doesn't seem to happen at all when WFH. I might mention big life events like getting married, being pregnant etc but pretty much all of our conversations are strictly work related.

That said, it doesn't impact how I connect with people on a professional level. Everyone seems to manage to get their jobs done to the same standard.

If I ignored contracted days in the office it would be breach of contact with dismissal. I noticed people seem to have much more sense of entitlement but where I have seen colleagues taking the piss with this colleagues eventually have left the business. Depends on the sector but I don’t believe the job market is as flexible as people think.

I think the toilet would call for a passive aggressive series of office notes and / or asking senior manager to raise in a team meeting and/or request to purchase new toilet brushes.

People saying they'll just switch jobs don't realise you have to go through an interview process highlighting the fact you don't want to be in the office. I switched jobs in September, was previously doing 2 days WFH but had to be in the new office 5 days a week to meet colleagues, do training and earn the trust of my new manager that I am not a diddy.

My last place most of the senior (non management) staff were expected to train up and constantly supervise the junior staff. One of the other Seniors preferred to WFH 5 days a week and it built up a lot of resentment they weren't doing their share of mentoring.

There will be a huge skill gap opening up across all industries. Graduates who got their degree using ChatGTP won't have a clue and the experienced staff able to train them will be hiding in their spare bedroom. Senior management won't care as they wind down to retirement.

I’m very glad we have no such policy as I’d hate to have to make team go into the office. I go in a couple of days a week through choice and because I enjoy it. But could opt to do none.

My team of 12 don’t really go in at all. We have a meeting once a month which they generally attend in person, but they can join on teams if they choose to.

This happens at my friend’s company. Most people have been at home full time since 2020 (having previously been almost 100% in the office like most companies).
During this time some people have moved house several hours away and others have joined the company who live hours away and have never been to the office.
Over the last year they’ve been asking people to come in 2 days pw but it’s all been very vague.
Now they’re “insisting” that people come in 2 days but no consequence for noncompliance has been laid down so some people just aren’t going in and nothing is being done about it.

What’s coming across is your own feelings towards the work environment.

I can and do work from home, sometimes, not often, I like meeting people face to face.

My manager on the other hand is much like you, the team have little respect form him, he’s not there in any capacity. Nobody knows if he’s working or on holiday, he turns his team red. He goes to the gym at odd hours, so never sure if he’s working.

We don’t go to him with questions or issues, there not connection, even if he’s in, he’s not around, always in meetings.

I do think your team may feel the same, and if asked would question why he is needed in the team for the lack of support he provides.

If there are redundancies, he’s likely to be the most forgotten member of staff.

I woner if it is more likely to be generation Xers that you are generalising about? Even the youngest Boomers are over 60 now.

What is a Boomer mentality? I didn't realise we were a hive mind.

We are supposed to be in the office at least one day a month. Our manager doesn't enforce it, and says as long as we're seen on Teams in our monthly team meeting, that's fine. I've not done a day working in the office since the pandemic, other than 10 days training for a new role two and a half years ago.

We have service-wide meetings every three months, so we all make the effort to go to the office for those.

No I always go in on my office days unless I have a reason (e.g. dentist/heavy cold), I let my line manager know.

But my office is fine, there's tea/coffee/fruit, and the toilets are clean and even have a little basket of period products available.

No, I go in when I'm supposed to, but then my office doesn't sound like yours is. Yours sounds like a health and safety hazard and I wouldn't want to work somewhere like that with such uncouth colleagues full stop!

I feel like my company would love to get everyone in five days a week but know there would be enormous push back and probably resignations if they enforced this. A lot of our peers are in four or five days now - they also pay better, so we make that trade off in choosing to work here. My philosophy is that hybrid working is a luxury and a privilege and if you abuse it, there's a danger it'll be revoked.

I'm my opinion, it also makes for a shit working environment to all just be automatons, working in isolation, but that's just my opinion.