5 days in the office - rant!!!

[DonnyDoris]

My company mandated 5 days in the office a couple of months ago, which in principle I have no issues with. However, my commute is just over an hour on motorways that have long term roadworks, so massively tedious and today I have no meetings so absolutely no reason to be here other than presenteeism. Could have got so much more done and also all my housework if I could've worked from home 😖Just needed to get that off my chest!!!!

I have breaks when in the office….

Not the same as doing your housework and complaining your employer wants you in to actually work

Why can't she do her housework in her lunch break or commuting time? Why does everyone always assume that people do their housework during working hours

It takes me 2 mins to sort laundry and 1 min to put it in the washing machine and switch on. More than enough time while a kettle boils.

@Bambamhoohoo GOOD! "The corporate family" is BS culty woowoo and people should not go "above and beyond" for a company who absolutely wouldn't do the same for them.

It’s exactly the same. Putting on a load of washing is absolutely no different to having a 10 minute conversation about what you watched on tv last night with the person across the desk from you. Which I’m sure you’ll tell me you’d never, ever do.

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It is not normal to get so flustered and agitated by such an inconsequential issue. There are some mental health issues at play here. Are you ok, OP? You seem like you need some therapy.

This type of scenario I can fully understand being in the office is stupid. My DSis has to be in the office 2 days a week, where she holds the same Teams calls with her team as she would at home, because she's the only one in her team that's based in Southern England. The entirety of her team is in Scotland and South Africa! Totally pointless her being in the office, costs her money to commute (no parking, so she has to take the bus) and takes her away from home, and the kids, for longer.

On the other hand, I do work in the office 5 days a week. For me, I prefer it. It's much easier to walk around the office to have a quick catch up with someone than calling or doing a Teams meeting.

My team is hybrid though, but I have too many fingers in too many pies to make WFH effective for me.

I also enjoy my commute (although it only max 30 mins) as I can listen to a podcast or audio book. During Covid I really struggled with not being able to separate work from home, so would end up doing my daily walk after work. I called it my commute!

I like the flexibility to be able to WFH if I have to though, if there's a delivery due or a gas engineer is coming round, etc.

Because you need to manage your own work which includes managing any distractions. Unless someone is very junior I would expect them to be able to deal with this and not tell me it makes them less productive and i have to stick it

Agreed. I’ve had calls with companies where it’s obvious people are working from home, can hear children or dogs barking in the background, so unprofessional.

I hate WFH and would jump into a 5 day office based job in a heartbeat. Covid days are over now, meetings on teams etc are not the same as face to face interaction. Not everyone has the luxury of a suitable space go work at home.

@TheNewWasp "inconsequential issue" are you OK?

OP is now having to waste 9+ hours of her week unnecessarily - or would you be totally fine wasting over an entire working day every single week when you didn't have to?

I can put a wash on in five minutes

100% agree. All those people saying put the kettle on, load the laundry have seemingly forgotten all the other things they do but don’t like to admit to.

Or the two+ hours lost to commuting could be used for house work. When I'm making my lunch on my lunch break I do the dishwasher/wipe the sides. I actually have more of my own time back.
When I'm in the office - where so many snide people on here seem to think is the only place people work- I see colleagues standing around chatting for ages.
There's less distractions WFH. Hybrid is so much better and probably stops people burning out.

I think the issue is that 5-15min statutory breaks are one thing. But many employees do the school run, pop to the shop on the way back, take the dog for a walk etc - ie are away from their desks for 30-60min periods - and claim that perhaps being on a team call [muted] is sufficient engagement. I would postulate that the majority of employees don’t take the piss, but employers can remove the likelihood that any of them do by withdrawing hybrid/WFH completely. The anger on this thread is misdirected at employers - it should be a the piss-taking fellow employees who have ruined it for the majority.

I was a WFH pioneer in 2001. Until I retired last year I’d had fully WFH jobs apart from 2 office based ones lasting 3 years. My productivity was far higher when I was WFH and my customers and managers appreciated my flexibility (lots of evening and weekend meetings and events). One employer (pre pandemic) in a fully WFH job, decided they wanted us to use time logs and put in requests for taking back lieu time. Previously we just had to put TOIL in our calendars after checking it didn’t clash with a key meeting. Suddenly everyone realised they were doing way over contracted hours and coupled with TOIL requests taking ages to be approved, the quid pro quo the management had benefitted from evaporated. The policy was quickly scrapped but the extra goodwill work we had done previously was less readily undertaken after that.

I never worked at home in my PJs - always dressed appropriately as I did a lot of video calls and attended external meetings that I simply travelled directly to from home. I did do some jobs during the working day, but only during scheduled breaks. Most of the time I’d work longer than my office colleagues because I hadn’t noticed the time and was in ‘the zone’ writing a report or devising a presentation and it would be my dog demanding food that made me realise it was late.

In my final job a new director wanted his team in the office more ‘in case he wanted to ask them something’. Because I lived close to the office I was told to come in and had dates put in my diary regardless of any other meetings arranged. But colleagues doing the same job who lived further away didn’t have to comply with new rules. So most of the time I was just working in an empty office holding Teams calls on a hot desk having carted in my screen, keyboard and mouse (because most of the hot desks had somehow lost these items). Pure vanity on the part of the new director, who himself rarely showed up on so called ‘office days’.

Blanket policies that simply encourage presenteeism, breed resentment and fail to recognise that everyone has a need for some flexibility during core working hours do not result in the employee behaviours all their HR directives say they value.

In much the same way as office workers like to forget that they aren’t productive every minute of their working day. Far from it.

@PropertyD don't admit to what? I had a bath on my lunch break last week - and joked with my manager about it - guess what they like to do that too sometimes!

You just sound petty and bitter when you moan that others get a benefit that you don't.

Thankfully my employer doesn't care if I hang up the washing, pop to the post office, or anything else in my working day as long is my work is complete. I have a set number of hours to do in a day and as long as I do them everything else is flexible - if I start at 5am then have a 3 hour lunch and finish working at 7pm that's fine with them - as long as the work is done!

I agree. It’s not bad management if they cannot stop the piss takers. It’s tricky to spot, he said she. Management changes etc. Basically a large % of people cannot be trusted. After Covid the piss takers would have rocketed and they are not being brought back to the office quietly.

Most of my colleagues still do the school run
arriving later / leaving earlier to balance it.

I have colleagues who go to the gym when at the office over lunch and have an extended lunch hour and as for dog walks - many in our team when they need a break will be off for 15 - 30 mins for a walk to clear their head.

And many more than make that up. I have always worked at places that value delivery over presenteeism.

I am just stating that when the topic of wfh comes up a lot of people like to pretend that office workers arrive at 9am and not move from
their seats till 5:30pm with no breaks and no non work chatter which is simply not the case for many/(most?)

I go to the shops in the office, have gone to the post office etc.

Since we have had hybrid working our sickness rates have dropped by over 80%.
We are able to employ excellent people, who due to disabilities, health conditions and care responsibilities, without WFH would have been unable to work, thereby possibly adding to the 'benefit burden'.
Our staff appreciate the better work life balance and show this with loyalty and commitment. We have saved costs through smaller office space which means we are able to offer better rewards. Productivity is up, due to falling sickness.
On a wider level, fewer people travelling is good for us all.
Any individual under performance due to not working well at home is easily addressed by capable managers who monitor outcomes rather than bums on seats, and take action if performance falls below required levels.
Other than pandering to the pettiness of those who if they can't WFH don't want anyone else to, I can't see a single reason to discontinue it.

Seems unreasonable to expect you in every day. But you can't change it. Hope you find another job soon.

When I worked in a skyscraper it took longer than that for a lift to arrive coming back from getting coffee!

See I find that really odd. Why would wfh reduce your sickness by 80%? It just indicates that now your employees wfh when they’re sick which is shit outcome.