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.

But lots of people do have that flexibility and are paid very well. The reality is that if you have expertise that's in demand, you can't just find someone else that's cheaper.

But are you really constantly called a skiver?
As I said, I've wfh for four years and I have never once been called a skiver so struggle to believe the name calling is constant.
I think it's in some people's heads sometimes tbh

With all due respect though, that just doesn’t make sense. There is disparity in all walks of life. It’s up to you to change your position if you don’t like it. Eg many jobs I’ve had where I live much further away from my colleagues and so my time lost and expense was way more than theirs so should I have asked for more salary? I mean where would it end?!

I’ve lost count of the number of posts on here saying things like “my company wants me back in the office. How will I manage looking after my twin toddlers, boisterous pre schooler, 5 dogs, elderly parents, and my flourishing Vinted selling business , if I have to go into the office. It’s not fair”. Which just about sums it up. Not everyone who WFH is like that, but there enough of those people to open the concept up to criticism.

I wfh and honestly think it's win win for the employer and the employee. The employer saves on office space and parking and the employer isn't stuck in traffic jams every day. Also, long term, we need to start moving jobs out of the big cities. Wfh allows people to move out further into the countryside so it frees up space for other amenities.

So they have to give out awards now to encourage people to work, rather than people just doing the job they are paid to do?

PMSL at what a massive oxymoron your post is @WFHFan

You claim you work sooooooo hard from home and claim you have awards for your work (LOL) and yet admit to doing chores and shopping in work hours.

If you were in the 'office' you wouldn't be able to do this, so why do you think it's acceptable to do it when you 'work' from home?

No-one is 'jealous' love. People are just sick of other folk swinging the lead, slacking, not pulling their weight, and claiming they work sooooo hard, when they clearly don't, as you are proving by admitting you do household chores and shopping when you're being paid to WORK.

I agree with the pp who said you are paid to do what your employer wants you do do.
It's that simple.
I think some people lose sight of the fact that their employer buys a certain amount of hours of their time to fulfil a role.

Tell me you’re jealous without telling me 😂🤣

@Bluebellwood129 I had no idea that all the people WFH had unique rare niche skills, commanding salaries while walking their dogs. To be honest, I think most of them work for customer services, probably HMRC, if the call waiting times are anything to go by!

Exactly this! ^ THIS is why many employers want their employees back at work - in the office, because many people take the piss.

Does it mean confidential information about a child is less secure on a home computer than in a business? I think that would be something that would worry me, everything from Ms X answering a phone call/someone at the door and her child having a nosy look about another child to internet connection not being secure.

My only bad experience with WFH was contacting the passport office about an issue with GCs passport (he lives with me) the call was clearly in someone's home and she couldn't understand the issue let alone answer the question. When I finally had enough of going round and round the houses I asked to be transferred to someone more senior and was told that wasn't possible as she wasn't in the office but I was promised a call back within 24 hrs. Two years later I'm still waiting. Obviously depends on the job but I do think that sort of thing needs to be addressed.

I'm not jealous by the way, I'm retired, tied to the house looking after disabled husband and miss being in the office.

Do you spend every minute working in the office? Never go to the loo, never take a break, never talk to a colleague, never wander off to another department? Never chat while the kettle boils, never get talking to a colleague in the toilets?
Wfh is just the same only the downtime is spent differently.

I’ve rang in office ones where the chatter in the background is distracting and they don’t know the answer, not being able to answer isn’t a wfh exclusive, for every wfh call centre jobs I’ve had fwiw, I’ve had to prove I had a private office and people have had to prove they have childcare etc. as for asking the manager, works the same way for people in the office as out in lots of call centres, you ask on the chat or put them on hold and ring, no need to be in the office for that.
You get terrible wfh call centres, you get terrible in office ones.

I've never understood the argument that if a job can be done from home then it can be done from somewhere with poorer worker rights like India.

Surely, if the job can be done in an office in the UK, it can also be done in an office in India?

I also find it noteworthy that the biggest critics of homeworking are those who have jobs that cannot be done from home and people who either don't work (mainly through retirement, especially early retirement) or do elite jobs that are not reflective of the experience most home and office works have. In my business for example the people keenest on people being in the office happen to be the people who have their own private, air-conditioned office to work in. But 80% of staff don't have this luxury, we're stuck in a noisy open-plan office which half the people think is too hot and the other half too cold.

The worst part of my job are the days I work at home.

I much prefer being with people.

I thrive off the professional contact, ideas shared etc.

Being at home, alone all day is awful.

The pressure of the ‘teams’ green light means guilt for going to the toilet!

I know someone who works in a management role in a University. She has worked from home since covid and has told me that she takes naps, watches movies, does housework, gardening and exercise classes during the working day. Her perspective is it's "fine" because she can easily get her work done in a couple of hours despite being contracted to work FT and that many of her colleagues do the same. She is now being made redundant, along with several colleagues, and those who are keeping their jobs are being told they need to be in the office more. I wouldn't wish redundancy on anyone, but it can't be a shock that if your FT job is so easy you can do it in a couple of hours a day eventually someone might figure out it can be subsumed into someone else's role or scrapped altogether. Also not surprising that so many Universities are struggling financially if there are whole teams of people being paid to do very little work.

@TheignT your passport office experience is a classic WFH hassle.

100 this.

A friend works in an office. 8.30 is start time, but the unofficial start time is 9 (after the catch ups etc)

Once a week they have a meeting which involves everyone coming up with a positivity story.

Is this a good use of time??
Then there are the distractions of sharing an open plan office (bodily noises / noisy eaters etc)

It’s not the being in the office that’s the issue for many wfh-ers, it’s the sitting in traffic for hours at a time along with thousands of others polluting eveywhere, such a waste of time and so boring. Also dangerous on the overcrowded motorways shared with trucks, people angry everywhere. I don’t blame people for not wanting to do it.

I m a full time employee, and do about 2 to 3 hours actual work a day, and remain available for the rest of the day. It has crossed my mind they should make me part time, but they want me at the other end of a phone at any given work hour, it's their choice to keep me as a full time employee. (I ld leave if I was paid any less.). I ve worked in offices where staff talk complete crap all day long, pointless meetings, procrastination, make a month's work out of a few days worth of work, some people are very skilled at being a busy fool.

At the end of quarter I can be available until midnight for perhaps the final 3 days and/or over the weekend if its a particularly big deal. The priority is getting the deal done and bringing in the revenue. Employers must be mature too, flexibility goes both ways.

I have had roles where managers wanted to time manage me, I left. 😆😆.

I m in a regulated profession and upskill through professional courses pretty regularly. No need or patience for micromanagement.

Oh come on, you're not seriously comparing going to the toilet or chatting to someone while you wait for the kettle to boil with doing the school run, looking after small children, taking long naps, going out to run errands and the many other much more time consuming activities people who WFH have talked about doing on here?? Having something to drink and going to the toilet during the working day are basic rights and essential, doing an exercise class or walking the dog during your paid working hours are not but the fact that so many people who WFH don't seem to see the difference is part of the problem.

I'm a social worker and WFH, I obviously have to go out to complete visits but arrange my own diary.
I don't know a single other SW who doesn't work hybrid/primarily wfh.
Social Work is hard to recruit to for very different reasons.

So true.

We have lost so many TA’s and school admin staff to wfh roles which pay the same ( or more) and give more flexibility over school drop off, flexi days, compressed hours, no commute, no fuel or WRAC fees etc.

@Katypp going to the loo takes maximum of 5-15 minutes all day. Kettles boiling and making a drink maybe another 5 minutes. Passing chat with colleagues maybe 15 minutes over the day. Making a total of 35 minutes unofficial “rest” time in a day. Scheduled breaks obviously not included in the calculations, because WFH people have those too. If people are doing school runs, walking dogs, doing chores, going shopping, and having naps, getting kids an after school snack, helping them when they hurt themselves, taking in parcels, making life admin calls etc etc, can they really do all that in 35 minutes?