Work from home if you can should stay in place, surely?

[Ninefeettall]

Just thinking about June 21st and Boris said as recently as yesterday or the day before that 'Work from home if you can' will be scrapped from 21 June. Surely if the Indian variant is a problem (which we don't know for sure yet) then this is a really, really, really easy win? 'If you can' doesn't have to include people who need to be in the office for mental health reasons or who can't work properly from home, but there are vast numbers of young, unvaccinated or partially vaccinated office workers who have now been working from home for a year, doing their jobs perfectly well if not better who could just keep doing that and not add to the commuters or office workers spreading the variant about.

I'm dreading going back to the office. I've loved working from home.

We were asked last year what our ideal would be so I put 1 day a week in just to show willing. Now we've been told that we are expected to go in 2-3 days a week 😢.

Unfortunately work have had a brand new office built (in the middle of nowhere rather than the town centre one we left) so have a vested interest.

The memo had a load of blah blah about the importance of connecting with colleagues etc. However we've just switched to a 'book your desk' system and as there are 2000 employees we're unlikely to be sitting near the same person twice.

Plus the noise of the office made it difficult to hear when we were on the phones - I'm in bereavements so talk to people who have lost their loved ones and had to keep asking them to repeat themselves. Not great.

DH and I used to car share then I'd walk 10 mins to the office. Now it will be 2 cars as its 20 mins further and busy roads.

Sigh.

@feckwit

I guess if you are a cafe owner in central London, dependent on office worker trade, that’s the last thing they need? So many people impacted by what might seem a “no brainer” decision.

In this situation, a “no brainier” doesn’t mean there is no impact. The government doesn’t care about individual business owners, they have to look at the economy as a whole. I can’t think of any other options they have to reduce people moving about to the same scale that have a lower economic impact.

@Temp023

I hate working from home full time, can’t wait to get back to the office. There will always be variants of the virus, we can’t keep cowering in our homes. Have none of you got teenagers, have you seen what this shit is doing to their mental and physical health?

Yes I have seen that @Temp023 - especially with my youngest teen. Very depressing and I empathise.

Though I guess wfh needn’t impact teens - as long as they get the opportunity to live their lives as normally as possible?

I think if those who can work from home don’t want to go back to the office yet, surely they can just email the boss and say “I’m more than capable of working from home and I’d rather do that until I’ve had my second vaccination”. There is no one size fits all here - everyone has a different risk appetite, different jobs and different vaccination dates. I may be being naive - it’s what I would do, but I work somewhere where we are very much treated as grown ups and I know some work places are different.

I can see why Boris wants things to go back to normal in terms of office workers. Working from home if you can isn’t a ‘free’ measure. The towns needs people pottering around town on their lunch breaks, paying for parking, paying for buses and trains and going to costa. But equally, i imagine it has a siginificant impact on reducing spread of the virus.

It will probably be reviewed before then anyway and 21st June won't go ahead if the variant spreads rapidly.

If it does I’m seriously thinking of leaving my job and looking for something in retail or similar so I have to go to work. I just can’t do it much longer, it’s destroying me.

If the Indian variant isn’t causing an increase in hospital admissions and deaths, then there’s no reason to stay at home.

The stay at home order was put in place, we were told, to protect the NHS. If the NHS is no longer in danger of not being able to cope, then there’s no need to continue to protect it.

Well if Whitty said cases due to return to school, imagine if everyone was in the workplace.all unvaccinated office based staff can know what it has been like for unvaccinated school staff! Sadly.

Honestly I never cease to be astounded at the misinformation on these threads. Firstly and importantly he said if the vaccine proves significantly more transmissable then the road map is in jeapordy and they will reassess. Right now they think it’s marginal, but they don’t have enough evidence. They need to maintain a watching brief.

So no there is no definite it will be scrapped. It will be scrapped if there is no need for it

Secondly. People really need to remember that for anyone below fifty and not extremely vulnerable this is a totally benign virus.

So if it’s only marginally more transmissable and not any more lethal, then yes working from home dictate from the government can be scrapped and individual employers can make their own decisions.

Sorry if the virus proves significantly more transmissable not the vaccine.

‘Secondly. People really need to remember that for anyone below fifty and not extremely vulnerable this is a totally benign virus.’

Yes @Bluntness100. Ffs! This thread! I cannot believe how happy some are to have their lives curtailed in such a way. You could get cancer tomorrow. Have a car accident. Trip over in the house in 5 mins time and have life changing injuries. We cannot stay in our houses indefinitely, it’s damaging people, culture and the economy beyond recognition.

In my circle the people coping the best are the ones who never stopped working out of the home or who had a mix of WFH and office. It’s those who have been at home since March 2020 who seem content to stay there forever, because of fear out of all proportion to facts.

@Bluntness100

Honestly I never cease to be astounded at the misinformation on these threads. Firstly and importantly he said if the vaccine proves significantly more transmissable then the road map is in jeapordy and they will reassess. Right now they think it’s marginal, but they don’t have enough evidence. They need to maintain a watching brief.

So no there is no definite it will be scrapped. It will be scrapped if there is no need for it

Secondly. People really need to remember that for anyone below fifty and not extremely vulnerable this is a totally benign virus.

So if it’s only marginally more transmissable and not any more lethal, then yes working from home dictate from the government can be scrapped and individual employers can make their own decisions.

Totally benign virus?

Pretty insulting to those aged

*Totally benign virus?Pretty insulting to those aged

giggly same here. My teens appreciate me being at home when they get in. I can check homework while it's few in their mind and help DD snack and wind down, she really struggles with school.

I think I'll be going back 1 or 2 days a week which is OK as it'll probably be fairly flexible and I'll need to book ahead.

Mind you, I always walked in and took lunch with me. My commute never made anyone any money.

fresh in their mind even.

[quote Bluntness100]*Totally benign virus?Pretty insulting to those aged

Sigh, ok I should have said for over 99.9 percent of under fifty and not vulnerable this is a totally benign virus.

Bout sums it up.

It likely will and it makes me want to cry. We were supposed to come back to the office last summer, then they decided to wait until after the summer holidays and everything went to shit in autumn so we didn’t. 14 months so far. It’s so fucking shit. I dread to think how long this is going to drag on for, there’s always going to be a new variant for people to get hyped up about. I can’t even look for a new job since for my kind of role most are still pushing wfh.

If you call long covid benign.

From a selfish point of view, if we have to continue to WFH much longer I’m scared I will have a full breakdown. I’m also completely letting the families I support down because I’m not allowed to do anything.

@5usa

‘Secondly. People really need to remember that for anyone below fifty and not extremely vulnerable this is a totally benign virus.’

Yes @Bluntness100. Ffs! This thread! I cannot believe how happy some are to have their lives curtailed in such a way. You could get cancer tomorrow. Have a car accident. Trip over in the house in 5 mins time and have life changing injuries. We cannot stay in our houses indefinitely, it’s damaging people, culture and the economy beyond recognition.

In my circle the people coping the best are the ones who never stopped working out of the home or who had a mix of WFH and office. It’s those who have been at home since March 2020 who seem content to stay there forever, because of fear out of all proportion to facts.

But why do you think those WFH since 2020, the first time WFHers if you will, are so reluctant to return to the office?

Perhaps they fucking hate their old commute? Perhaps they don’t want to be so tired in the morning they have to buy another £6 sandwich from Pret for lunch? Perhaps they don’t like sitting in a stuffy office with pervy Brian from accounts? Perhaps they enjoy the flexibility to pick their children up from school? Perhaps they like being able to pop a wash on, and hang it up when it’s done?

Perhaps they just have a better life?

What cunts.

ceara yep. I'm not a scientist but a couple of years ago we saw a mathematician demonstrate exponential growth with the rice on the chessboard story. Never knew it would come in handy less than a year later 🤯.

I completely disagree.

People not commuting to a place of work has a huge detrimental effect on the service industry. City centres will be dead. No passing trade, no cleaning companies, no office consumables, no money being spent on public transport etc etc

These are people’s livelihoods. Rightly or wrongly, the success of the UK economy is predicated on people spending money in the services sector. A crashed economy costs lives and puts pressure on the NHS too... we don’t even know whether this new Indian variant will cause major issues or not. We know continuing restrictions definitely will.

I cannot believe how happy some are to have their lives curtailed in such a way.

IMO some people are loving their new lifestyle working from home and don’t want to go back to the office ever. They’re clutching at this new variant in the hope that it could delay their return further.

My hunch is that the variant won’t have any significant impact on hospitalisations and we will go ahead with the return to work on 21st June as planned.