to be tired of the jealousy towards people who WFH?

[WFHFan]

No one can post a thread about it without someone chiming in threatening if their job can done from home then it could be given to someone in another country or AI could take it.

Other people saying companies want everyone back in the office. Yes some do. Mine doesn't. They do not have the space anymore. Neither will my job go to someone in another country because of expertise and it does involve some critical face to face work. AI can't do it either.

Then some people getting offended saying if someone is WFH they shouldn't do anything else but work non stop. I can work and I do chores, shopping, school pick up, errands. It does not affect the standard or quantity of my work. I don't doubt it does affect some people's work.

I have won two awards for performance already.

Year on year, worker productivity grows. This study shows since 1979 it has grown 3.5 times
more than pay https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/

There are various articles online theorising it has grown as much as 7 times in the past 100 or so years.

Yet people don’t work 1/7th of the hours we did 100 years ago. Or any less hours really than in the 80s. If anything a lot of people have to work more hours than our parents did to pay the mortgage.

Ask yourself why that is next time you’re begrudging someone an hour on the school run, or 1/2 an hour having someone round to quote (usually taken off “lunch break” time anyway). Or don’t, and keep playing into your employers pockets :)

People take the piss in the office just as much if not more.

I definitely did in my early youth!

If it is so great for productivity, why are so many big companies bringing people back into the office?

Which big companies? I work for a big financial services company and they aren't. None of our suppliers or contacts are. Our competitors don't seem to be.

I also work for a big company. They don't have the space to bring everyone back.

Me too, I hated being there and that's not motivating. And I was always ill from the air con and the fluorescent lights and the commute and how tired it made me. I'm hardly ever off sick now because I can WFH and have flexible hours, so if I need to sleep in later in the morning or finish a bit early I can. And my day starts when I start work and ends when I finish work, not an hour before when I get on the bus and an hour after when I get home, I just switch off my laptop.

For an employer with an employee with a chronic illness, WFH is a gift.

Which office should my company make me go back to? We don't have offices. International company that employs people from all around the world. Everyone who is UK based WFH. So unless you're planning on funding my relocation to New York (and DH and the kids too) I suggest you get a grip on your envy.

Well enough people on MN are whinging about having to go back into the office so obviously quite a few employers are insisting

The ones who don't have to go back aren't going to be posting are they?

And this means lots of the big companies are forcing everyone back? Because a few MNetters have posted moaning they are being asked to go back in?

I also WFH and do the school pick ups and drops. I definitely prefer WFH to office days, though to be honest office days are much less productive! The team usually does a team lunch on the days we go into office, plus ppl keep approaching asking about things and it is hard to concentrate. I always feel I haven’t got as much done, and I am more tired from the commute! My DH is front line NHS and cannot WFH but he does spend some half days at home at times when he has admin time.

“People keep asking about things” - doesn’t that show how crucial it is to be in the same space as your co-workers?

No.

People can ask me things while I'm working from home as well. I can just manage it easier. So for example in the office, if I have a paper to finish, but people want to talk to me they walk over to my desk and it would be rude to ignore them. At home they have to call, message or email and I can respond when I am finished or when I need a break from it.

In the office instead of raising a ticket for an issue with the system, people will say "Ipsy, could you just look at this" because they think I can somehow magically fix their problem (despite me not being part of the application support team) and therefore they don't need to go through the 5 minutes of raising the ticket. At home they have to post that in a group chat or call me, instead of just calling me over, which means they'll probably just raise the ticket (or the group chat can be ignored because someone else will say "raise a ticket").

If I am actually needed for something, rather than people deferring to me because they know I know how to sort things out, people will book actual time in my diary to discuss it, as is the proper process regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office. And if it's something like a discovery workshop, they'll book it for a day we're all in the office or request we try and change our in office day if not.

People being too lazy to do their job or follow a process or read a guide, simply because they can physically see me does not make it crucial we're in the same space.

Yay they can go through extra hoops for the same result! Generally people get hounded more in office if they're infrequently in because people feel more of a need to 'catch' them in person rather than it being spread out.

I feel sorry for the jealous people. They must be very unhappy.

meanwhile I have a fabulous career in which I wfh for which I get paid a lot of money.

DH also wfh so we get to have a great work life balance. And extra 😘

thats down to companies to manage their staff better or offer better pay to recruit those staff

No, they can follow the correct process, which usually doesn't actually involve me.

Even when I was in the office full time, and part of their team, I would have people asking me questions that, while I could (and usually did) answer, were not actually part of my role to deal with. They would ask me how to do something we have process guides for. Or an email would come out with a change and the team would bombard me with questions despite the fact I only had the same information as them, because they didn't want to bother asking the right people themselves.

I'm now part of a totally different team with a totally different role and I still get regular questions that are that teams job to know the answers to. When I'm in the office and they can see me, they'll ask me rather than read a process guide. When I'm not, they'll read the guide.

Insufferable!

Yes, people who want someone else to do their job for them are.

I literally give not one single fuck where anyone works from. I do care when other people don’t do what they are supposed to, within agreed timescales. Since Covid and “working from home” became the norm, this so becoming more and more common.
I do not care whether you work from an office, your home or the fucking moon. Just do your job, because you not doing it has a detrimental effect on other people.

"DH is a nurse and when he's getting up at 5.45am and not getting home till 8.30pm you have to wonder if it's worth it. "

Well, yes, plenty of people would prefer to work 9-5. It's got nothing to do with working from home or not. Unsociable hours have always been unpopular and needed to be compensated either with money, job satisfaction or career opportunities.

Wow I'm glad I don't work with people that are obsessed with process rather than behaving like a helpful human being

You're absolutely right, I should be a helpful human at work instead of doing the job I'm paid for. All so other people don't have to do theirs.

I'm helpful. I just won't be walked over. There's a difference.

And, if I'm constantly "helping" other people do their job instead of doing mine, I'll be labelled a lazy skiver. Can't win these days can you.

Every single person I know who wfh finds time to do the school run/go to the gym/walk the dog/have workmen round to quote or do odd jobs/receive deliveries/go shopping/go to dr appts, hair appts

School run: I do find that, with children, you have to take them to and from school, yes. This happens whether you WFH or not.

Gym: I don’t go but I’ll go for a sea swim before work in summer, using the time I would ordinarily be commuting. People who WFH have more time in the day, you see. (Sea!)

Walk the dog: don’t have one but most people round here do it early in the morning or concurrently with the school run we’re apparently not supposed to do.

Have workmen round: for quotes, all the tradies I know do it in the evening or weekends to leave the days free for jobs. I do have workmen do work during the day and I am also at home during the day, not sure what the problem is here? They do XYZ on the plumbing, I do my job in my home office. Do you think we all stop working and go and help them do some hammering?

Receive deliveries: do you mean “answer the door”? Have you thought about creative copywriting as a career? You can WFH.

Go shopping: we get the big shop delivered during our lunch break on a day we both WFH. Two people unpacking, done and dusted, time for lunch too.

Go to Dr appointments: do people working on site not have GP appointments? They’re away from their desk far longer, I’d imagine, as most people have a GP close to their home address not their work address. NHS once offered me therapy at 2pm at my local practice – I’d have needed to leave work at 12.50pm and not get back till 4.10pm! Local surgery is five minutes’ walk from my house, so yes, unbelievably I will take a wild 15 minutes out of my day to walk there and back for a 5-minute face-to-face

Hair appointments: no idea, sorry. DP does pop to the barber round the corner at random times of the day, but he doesn’t take a lunch break usually, so it shakes out at the same thing