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.

This.

OP is weirdly excited at something someone has said who will never be in a position of power, 'angry man makes no sense' type of thing, getting all frothed up

No business is going to be told how many people it should have in an office, its not possible and wont happen.

Buseiness will decide what they want and how they want it, given many have sold off their office space they havent got a lot of choice anyway.

I only wfh occasionally and I enjoy being at work. It doesn’t bother me that others wfh

What's he going to do to support this?

Nothing. He just likes stoking up division. Plus the Venn diagram of "Farage supporters" and "people who wfh" will only have a small intersection. To him I expect they're a useful bogeyman (cf. the kind of people his supporters vilify as being as out of touch/soft/MC/"so-called experts" etc etc.)

I do wonder about the impact of wfh on recruitment for those jobs which can't be done from home. There isn't as much making them appealing now. I wouldn't have picked an office job as that just didn't appeal, but office work done from home? That would be different.

They may have no say over private companies but what about the Civil Service, MOJ in particular? Do we want courts backing up even more as offenders will need to wait until a probation officer can either travel to their local probation office or their local court and visa versa to do pre-sentence reports? Being able to do them over teams saves so much time and doubles the amount of reports that can be done in a week.

What about prisons? They are often located 40-50 miles away from where people live as there are not enough specialised staff in the local area. If Probation working in the Offender Management Units have to drive over an hour and a half every day even on days they are not seeing inmates and are effectively just driving there to write reports in busy, distracting environments.

Not to mention the office based PO’s who are already struggling under huge pressure workloads and need a WFH one or two days to write reports without the chaos and continuos interruptions. Probation is already struggling to retain staff.

It is odd how this has become a culture war. I think it's manufactured by the likes of Farage to further his victimised by the elites agenda and best ignored. Like 15-minute cities, chemtrails and 'left wing milks'.

Or company has sold off huge amounts of space, we couldn’t all fit back in the office if we wanted to. The team are based all over the county so we all have different ‘base’ offices and wouldn’t end up working together from one place anyway. We’d end up schlepping into an office to spend all day doing teams calls with people who are in different offices, an absolute waste of time, we may as well be at home.

We work for an LA, and the whole thing would crumble if they forced us back into the office, everything runs on overtime, which we do because we’re already home. If we’re commuting in, we’re not coming in early or staying later…it would all catch fire in the space of a month.

My boss would be positively giddy if we all had to be in the office 5 days a week!

She HATES that we get to WFH for 2 days.... fucking dinosaur!

I don't understand why the issue has become politicised.
I retired 10 years ago way and working from home was common and even encouraged then! No one complained, cared or were even aware if it.
Why does it matter to anyone else? We are in very strange times when this has become an issue for people

What is a left wing milk? Is it from a communist cow? Is it red top?

Due to the nature of my job can't really do a great deal from home but there are some that do one or two days at home. Some people really work their socks off and have sent multiple emails and answered queries before others have even logged on and continue like that the whole day. Others don't seem to do very much including having been seen at the shops etc by people who work part-time

But they were the same at work - those who spent most time walking back and forth to the coffee machine in the office are those that do least at home.
We do get a fair few interruptions when in the office - most of mine tend to be "how do I do something" sort from the juniors which can be answered quickly and easily.

Yanbu OP. Not sure some of the whiners would be too keen on ponying up for enough office space to cover the whole public sector again, mind!

The oh I saw one woman with a laptop on the school run or I know my uncles friends cousin watches Netflix all day instead of working. I always find a weird argument to always put forward, you can see lots of ridiculous behaviour in an office too, people dicking about not working, people being rude etc, but no one is suggesting closing all of them down on just one off cases, I was sexually assaulted in my first office job (hence I now do wfh roles) but I don’t think that’s representative of every office job, but people think one off peoples shitty behavior is representative of the whole wfh culture?
if people are taking the piss in either office or wfh roles, that’s for their boss to deal with, not Nigel farage doing nanny state for working.

Farage has railed against oat milk, almond milk etc, calling it left wing and saying he just wants some 'proper bloody milk'.

I love it. 'Left wing milk' 👌

I didn't think about the vegan alternatives. It made me think about click,clack, moo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click,_Clack,_Moo

A book about left wing milk

But there might also be people who are otherwise isolated and value productive interaction with others.

I think WFH has done a lot of damage to society in a really insidious way.

That is not to say occasional flexibility isn’t a good thing and a flexible understanding work place is a positive.

However, there is no good example to the younger generation being set, which leads to the school refusal epidemic. Many young people have huge social anxiety and just aren’t used to being with other people . And huge chunks of all the businesses that supported work places have disappeared, further hollowing cities out.

Traditional mentoring and social structures within workplaces are dying. Teams just isn’t the same as a casual lunch with your boss!

I think a lot more research should be done before we accept WFH as the norm.

I work in a profession where people come and see me for appointments. The amount of people that come in with laptops open or say “I just need to keep my phone on me as I’m working at the moment”. Then they need to jump up if someone rings them. Or they keep stopping during it to check emails. I’ve called people in from the waiting room and they’ve walked all the way to the treatment room without so much as acknowledging me as they are “just writing a quick email for work”. I once had someone end an appointment early as their boss rang and they absolutely panicked and said they needed to get to their laptop and she left! (Without paying anything I should add)

So I might not work with any of these people. But it very much is affecting MY work.

My husband calls it "shirking from home".
Neither of us work, we live off land and rental properties (commercial and domestic).
No jealousy there.
Home workers, as someone else commented, will likely be replaced by AI.
Please don't bother to reply or quote me, this stuff is none of my business or interest whatsoever.

How does adults working from home lead to the school refusal epidemic?

Have you not thought at all about how the traditional social structures you're praising here completely screwed over some people?

For a long time there was no choice but to accept in person work as the norm, when most of us needed to have physical access to things we couldn't keep in our homes. Now that there's a choice for some jobs, actually a great deal of research needs to be done before we accept that in person work is an inherently beneficial norm. That assumption very much needs to be questioned.

And you're going to need to back up your claim about school refusal.

Loads of people don’t like WFH, so jobs that are office based will still be wanted.

Certainly hasn’t impacted recruitment in DH’s company - their jobs simply can’t be done from home and they still have 50+ applications for jobs at all levels.

@beasmithwentworth ,

If you see your parents putting on their ‘uniforms’ and leaving for work, it is an example.

If your parents log on to their computers half dressed, why wouldn’t you feel that was fine for you too?

If you don't work, then why have either of you got an opinion on whether people are more productive in the office or not? What are you basing that on?

Of course Reform want to stop people working from home. It has vastly benefitted women and disabled people. It doesn’t fit with their ethos of keeping women at home having babies.