To think working from home is a cushy number?

[MrsSlimShady]

I’ve got a new job that entails loads of e-learning, and webinars. They said I could do it at home and I literally sat there on the sofa and ate crisps and had cups of tea in my loungewear on the computer.

My DH works 3 days a week at home. He has back to back meetings but also manages to go the shops, go the gym, do exercise classes before work and at lunch time and do other chores. He’ll say his first meeting is at 0900, then nothing till 1130, then he can pop out 3-4pm….. it all goes like this.

I have another job and I have a 2-3 hour commute, and I am on my feet all day. I cannot get one chore done for my outside life. It has to wait till I’m off unless it is a text or email.

I know there are people working from home who work really hard too, but come on, AIBU to say that if you WFH you are really lucky and have it a lot easier than most other people?

I think it’s dependable what work you’re actually doing.
for example, you said you were just watching webinars and doing e-learning - not exactly difficult stuff or something to get your teeth into.
your husband sounds like he just doesn’t have enough to do so nothing to do with working from home.
I work from home full time and sit at my desk in my home office the whole day, working non stop (except for loo and lunch breaks.)
there is of course the less pressure of the commute or getting fully ready but it suits me and my lifestyle with a toddler.
I worked from home part time pre covid so I’ve always done it. When I did a mix,
i’d do wayyyy more work at home because there’s always something distracting in the office :D now wfh, I don’t spend my day cleaning the house or putting on washing (except for my lunch) so for me, it’s just a normal busy day

Just out of interest, can I ask what you do during summer holidays when your ds is off school?

It doesn’t in the winter I have to wear ski thermals and clothes and still get cold sitting still at laptop all day. Cost of heating is so expensive. You walk so little. 1 or 2 days great wearing loungewear but I used to love get dressed up and made up now just look a state and it becomes a pattern, literally roll out of bed. So glad I’m leaving full time wfh for a hybrid role where I can go in as many times as I want. The commute will be 3 hours a day but for me my mental health will be so much better. It’s destroyed my zest for life

Yes dh has chilblains 😳

TBH, it's a nightmare. I work as much as I can before he wakes up. Then I do some work while he's here, which involves allowing him screen time. Sometimes he'll go to a holiday club. I work flat out, non-stop for the club (covers 8am-5pm) to get the hours in to justify the cost. Sometimes a relative will have him if they're off work. There are a couple I can ask, one is for very minimal amounts though. And work again after he's in bed.

It's a struggle. It isn't the easy option, by any stretch of the imagination, but I tell myself it's for a limited time, until he's older.

That’s really sad. I could really relate to you. I worked 1 day a week for 20 years carrying heavy files to and from but meant I could do childcare and clubs and I was grateful. Since pandemic fully remote and I hate it longer hours are expected I can go whole days not speaking to anyone. My job is stressful and having a colleague to agreed with made all the difference. My mental health is bad I’ve gained 2.5 stone and can barely be bothered to get up early to make most of no commute time. Never switch off as I feel my files and deadlines 24/7. I’ve now found a hybrid job and can go in as much as want but 2 days compulsory and I can’t wait to commute 3 hours ans be in hustle and bustle of city.
I feel like I must be so needy as most people seem to love being hermits. Hope you get a better job soon x

If you're the kind of person who would take the pi** when WFH then you're probably the kind of person who would find ways to do the same in the office too - useless meetings, chats in the corridor or tea room, going "out on site' - there are plenty of opportunities.

Exactly this. Also how many jobs don't have a measurable "product" these days anyway?! Eg if my work doesn't get done, clients will complain etc. I imagine same with call centres, admin etc etc - so really don't know how people can genuinely take the p*

One other thing, I WFH when a lot of the office went in (I lived far away). I missed out on fun lunches, office chats, spontaneous half days etc

WFH is good for some stuff butnt for others.

Not really, my partner and both work from home 3 days a week, I'm a health & safety advisor for a consultancy and my partner is a Senior IT Network engineer for the NHS, working from home doesn't necessarily mean a job requires no skills or can be done by someone in India!

If the job entails sitting on the sofa watching videoes or being free to go to the gym between the first morning meeting and last afternoon meeting then yes I’d agree.

but those jobs are in the minority surely? I work from home 3-4 days a week and I work my commuting hours, through lunch and into the evening, while trying to put loads of washing on, cook the tea etc. so not necessarily easy, it’s just not in the office. I haven’t sat in bed with a coffee for any longer

To be fair to my DH, he’s grafted for years with a long commute into London and loads of travel. He’s now senior management (finance). He seems to be laughing a lot, and on meeting calls but does seem to get a lot of “him” time into his day.

Plus side is he’ll put out the washing, run the dog and make dinner, along with gym, dentist, personal appointments, school runs etc. so I’m not complaining as I can commute without the stress.

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I travel into work twice a week, we are all hybrid at work, we all do two days a week in the office, some live 5 minutes away, I live 25 mins away, when we are in it costs us £4.40 a day to park.
Plus routines aren't always set in stone! My partner might be at work one day a week, he might be in 3 days, he may have a late night as well and end up working at the hospital from 9am to 9pm, he sometimes works Saturdays getting out of hours IT work done at his hospital. You don't need to penalise people for a working arrangement that entire workplaces have adopted and when it's swings and roundabouts! My partner lives 26 miles away from his hospital base but his counterpart at another hospital lives a 5 minute walk away!

You don't have a clue do you! Could you be more insulting and disrespectful or just plain jealous and sad. The hospital where my partner works for example does not have enough office space for everyone to be in at the same time, parking is hell and my partner lives 26 miles from the hospital so has to go in a car, he also sometimes has to drive from there to other hospitals and when there's no parking and he's forced to leave his car somewhere he can't, he gets fined £42! To park at work! Let that sink in!

From my point of view, of course it's fairly cushy! At least in the sense that I don't have to do a long commute on the days I wfh and can sit on the sofa in my pj's instead! I get the same amount of work done as I would in the office.

Work isn't meant to be a punishment. If you can make it easier for yourself and get a better work/life balance why wouldn't you? For me, that's wfh part of the week. For others that might be going into the office every day. We're all different.

Same here

What is your evidence of this! How many people who work from home are you watching through their house windows? You can't make a sweeping statement that you can't possibly know?

Sweeping statements that you can't possibly know to be true sums up a good chunk of the remote working discussion on here!

The problem with the initial post is that it gives a false impression of the reality of working from home! Most of us are sat at desk and cannot just wander off anytime we want and we are not sat in front of netflix gorging on crisps!

The OPs husband needs to be a bit careful if he's abusing the system because people that do that bring a risk of the organisation ripping up the ability for anybody to work from home!

This also why it's also a fake fallacy to claim that people that WFH all sit doing nothing! If it was true then working from home would be banned by most organisations because they wouldn't just sit and tolerate it would they!

Also making sweeping statements like "the amount of people that are always popping out somewhere" - how can anyone know what goes on in other people's homes? It's completely made up statement that cannot possibly be backed up by evidence.

There can be many impracticalities to wanting every member of staff in the office, every day when it's not even warranted! Unfair assumptions are made by jealous people who don't stop and think! If I was go to my office more than the twice a week I'm asked to, I'd be paying £25 a week in parking costs! My partner's department hasn't got the office space for everybody to be in at the same time, it saves him a 52 mile round commute three days a week! His hospital has parking issues and if he's forced to leave his car in something that's not an actual space, he gets fined £42 to park at his hospital for a day!

What I would caution against is people that interview for a job where the office base is three hours away etc and there's a verbal agreement in the interview that they'd only have to visit about once every 6 weeks and can be remote the rest - I've seen people get very stressed on advice forums about this when things have started to change and they've been asked to start doing a 6 hour round commute more regularly!!

What point are you trying to make? People are describing their own personal experiences of working from home! That's not the same as sweeping statements! We are proving that the stereotype given by jealous people is not reality! And there are very valid reasons why going into work 5 days a week has too many impracticalities for some.

Erm, you know I'm agreeing with you right? The sweeping statement you and I are talking about is 'I’m sure there’s some ppl working hard from home but it’s few and far between'. It looks like we agree that's obvious bullshitting about something the poster can't possibly know to be true. And there are usually plenty more like it in any remote working thread. @Viviennemary's skivers charter nonsense that you responded to a few posts ago is another, frequently aired example.

Not unreasonable. I absolutely love it. Get all my jobs done, in for deliveries etc.

It really depends on the job. If you’re doing shift pattern type work and you are expected to meet targets during those hours and only work those set hours, it’s very different than an office job where there is flexibility and as long as you get your work done you can run your day as you please. The lack of commute is obviously a plus whatever the job though.

Everyone saying oh you have no travel costs , yes we do not but we have house costs . My energy bill went from £220 a month to £400 per month when I started working from home . There are additional costs that often are not accounted for .

My son works from partly from home and I can see a significant rise in the daily electricity usage on those days.