to think some people would be weirdly excited if WFH came to an end?

[LoveWFH]

Why do some posters sound almost delighted at the thought of Nigel Farage stopping WFH?

There’s this tone of “that’ll teach them” whenever it comes up. As if people working from home have been getting away with something.

Here’s the practical bit though. My company couldn’t bring everyone back full time even if it wanted to. They’ve sold off chunks of the office space. Whole buildings gone. Desks gone. Leases not renewed. There literally isn’t room for everyone anymore.

Hybrid working isn’t some trendy phase. It’s how a lot of businesses are set up now. They’ve planned for it. Budgeted for it. Recruited around it.

You can’t magically create space that no longer exists.

If you prefer being in the office, fair enough. Plenty of people do. But I don’t get the satisfaction at the idea of other people losing flexibility that works for them and their employer.

I think a disproportionate amount of the mouth-frothing about wfh also comes from pensioners 🙄

I don't understand how the same people who don't want WFH to continue are also usually supporters of AI. AI makes their jobs easier, fine, but it also means many jobs are now obsolete. Eventually the idea of AI is surely to make it possible for us not to work, or work less? IMO it is business owners (see Farage's funders) who want cheap or free labour for their personal profit and again, mostly men who gain more from being out of the house.

Lots of older people think if you don’t go into the office then you’re lazy. My nana (who owned her own business) would actually probably have allowed it if it worked and provided people didn’t take the piss. That’s what irritates me, slackers who wfh and then skive.

Well the anti-WFH thing isn’t really pulling up the ladder - as they didn’t get to do it!

Or alternatively, many of them didn't need the option to wfh as they could afford a mortgage and a nice lifestyle on a sole income. Working from the office 5 days a week is easy peasy if your OH is doing all the school runs etc! So in that sense it could be seen as pulling the ladder up

Are these pensioners some of which never worked a day in their lives? Being SAHM/W?

Couldn't agree more, OP! There's almost a glee at the prospect of people being forced back into the office. And, as you say, it's not always convenient or even possible for businesses themselves.

Whereas everyone know builders sit about drinking endless cups of tea and not doing anything (I joke).

But yup! It's "no-one appreciates me and everyone except me is taking the piss". The thing is, if everyone was a builder he wouldn't have anyone to do building work for and would be unemployed. Plus, he would have no electricity, no food in the shops, no one to teach his children, no one to do planning applications etc etc it's bizarre because in any society that's advanced past subsistence you need different specialisations.

There is a subset of pensioners who I think secretly want to send us down the mines 😂 but they can’t do that so being in the office will do for now.

Same as my mum.

Her belief is that people who WFH have limp wristed, useless, mickey mouse jobs and wouldn't know hard work if it slapped them in the chops.

In some ways I do agree. I mean if we found ourselves in a 1970s "Survivors" situation, it's the people with WOH jobs that'd be most useful for survival.

But the service sector is big and employs people who pay tax, own houses and spend on goods just the same as people with 'real jobs'.
People WFH still work hard. Even if their jobs would be mostly bullshit in a 'basic' society situation.

I say this as someone with a limp wristed, useless, mickey mouse job who WFH almost permanently by the way.

Not unhelpful though. I feel there will be a fair few people at the intersection between the three groups of 'Enjoy working from home' 'planned on voting Reform' and 'don't understand the limits of the power of government over businesses'. Think Farage has misjudged this one.

I was mainly thinking about men, so basically a retired version of the bossy men (and women) the PP was talking about.

My DD had to do exactly that. They went full WFH, closed the office 4 min walk away and then now they gone back to the office it’s a different office over an hour away that she can’t do because of her health and disability.

a friend of mine also changed their job as her company went full WFH and she hated it so has a new job with a company that’s hybrid.

The idea appeals to commercial landlords and those with big commercial property portfolios. It appeals to retired right wing people who don't understand how work functions these days and just assume people can't be getting work done. And to bad, controlling managers who like to lord it over people (unlike managers who are actually good at their jobs)

He can't dictate thst companies force workers back to the office. Not in the private sector anyway. Starmer has recommended previously that he would like to see people return to the office, but he cant force it unless in the public sector. And yes, there is a lot of jealousy around people wfh, so some will be pleased, but it's irrelevant as its not going to happen.

If I need to contact any type of Customer Service - I never do it 8am-9.30am, or 3-4pm. For the very simple reason- people who are working from home are on the school run and I could write a book how many times I was disconnected because of "bad signal ". Once I had very important call regarding medical test results and I couldn't understand a word because of few dogs barking non stop. It wouldn't happen if these people would work in office.

I don't think they problem is about them working from home. It's about quality, performance and availability during your work hours. We literally saw school mum with laptop in her hands on school run. What kind of quality you can get from it?

It's a nonsense, whipped up by the media. Private companies will continue to have the freedom to agree working arrangements with their staff that suit them and their business. I guess if you work in the public sector, in certain roles that could be done from an office, then it might be an issue. For the rest of us, it won't be. And those in the public sector are free to leave and find another job if the working conditions no longer suit them.

My old.company a local.authority sold off a lot of its buildings.a couple.of years before.covid. my current job would.not.fit us all in if.we went back.0

I’ve WFH even before COVID, the company I work for had already figured that they can save a lot of money by not renting office space. I don’t think this will change.

My company have hired so many people and not invested in office space. We are only allowed one day a week in office..

He can't stop WFH anyway. Even if he insists on all government employees/civil servants coming back into the office full time now, he'd have to spend an absolute fortune of tax payer's money on additional office space. Nobody wants that.

Farage is just shooting his gob off to appeal to his knuckle-dragging fan base, as usual.

SAHM is another thing. I worked all while my children were little but in my experience it was the SAHP doing most of the volunteering for school trips or lunchtime supervision. Because they could. But everyone benefitted. The same way people benefit from me working.

And the vitriol against the WASPI women campaign is something. I don't think honestly we can afford to compensate them given other spending priorities. But I can understand why they feel hard done by. Whereas some of the messaging is again, gleeful about it.

It's not just pensioners. Though I too have retired parents with opinions on how easy my generation have it taken straight from the Daily Mail.

Well surely this is about something bigger from WFH isn’t it? Is society “working” when there is no adult in a household who can afford to take the time, or have the flexibility, to drop their children at school?

I’m retired and I think it’s great that people can work from home. I know I would have been more productive having at least a couple of days every week working from home. There was a lot of wasted time , unnecessarily long meetings and chit chat at work. I think it’s just another example of finger pointing and divisive speech. Also the person who said there might be a financial motive of investment in office space has a good point. I like that technology has made this possible. My only concern is that there still need to be ways of doing things that don’t exclude people who find using technology difficult. I occasionally don’t know how to do something and there’s no one to ask. It doesn’t make any difference if someone is speaking to me from their home though. I also wonder if there’s an agenda to make it more difficult for people with family responsibilities and disabilities to work.

Some of the biggest lazy slackers I know work in the office FT. They spend their days wondering around chatting, on endless tea breaks, take around 15-20 minutes to answer an email, so going through emails literally takes them all morning, they honestly get so little done it’s ridiculous.

Same. Was made WFH in 2015 and haven't worked in an office since.