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Original poster

Where can I find a very traditional office environment?

121 replies

FloorWipes · 10/08/2023 09:28

I used to love my job but I’m about to lose it with our hybrid flexible system and everyone doing their own thing and some people taking the p. Fine for them, live your best life, whatever, but absolutely not working for me on any level and I am so so over it. I want a traditional 9 to 5 where we all come in and everyone has their own desk. What industry is my best bet for that in 2023?

OP posts:
Fleur405 · 12/08/2023 07:18

I’m in the legal sector in Scotland and just moved firms - both firms very much flexible/hybrid and people (especially the more senior lawyers) are pretty much allowed to do what they like providing client needs are met.

maybe some smaller firms will still work in a more traditional way but I don’t see the legal sector moving back. Lots of firms are having their offices refitted as hybrid work spaces where no one has an allocated desk.

Wetteatowel · 12/08/2023 07:41

I work for a council and am in the office quite a lot. We have a set team day we have to go in for. There are also a few working groups that have to be in person. I choose to go to the office most days. A lot of my colleagues wfh the majority of the time but I like going in. There are always other people in the office as well.

daisychain01 · 12/08/2023 07:46

admin in thr offices of a manufacturer would be my recommendation

how soul-destroying, and what a waste of 2 degrees. The OP will be bored stupid in no time and underpaid compared to the skills they must have taken years to achieve.

PackettInn · 12/08/2023 08:12

HowardKirksConscience · 10/08/2023 10:26

Travel agent on high street

Receptionist in office

Anything poorly paid and public-facing really

What a load of rubbish.

I'm in the finance industry as is my husband OP. We work 9-5.30 and have a healthy wage!
I mean it's taken me 8 years but when I started I wasn't in a low wage, it was pretty competitive.

MiddleParking · 12/08/2023 08:13

daisychain01 · 12/08/2023 07:46

admin in thr offices of a manufacturer would be my recommendation

how soul-destroying, and what a waste of 2 degrees. The OP will be bored stupid in no time and underpaid compared to the skills they must have taken years to achieve.

A bit of soul destruction is the price you’d likely have to pay to find an employer that rejected most aspects of modern workplace culture, tbh. It’s pretty unlikely that anywhere will be old fashioned and regimented in all the ways OP wants but innovating and exciting in others.

PackettInn · 12/08/2023 08:14

BobbinThreadbare123 · 10/08/2023 14:40

Anything that has a security or data classification aspect ie you actually can't take your work off-site

There's not a lot you can't take off site when you have secure servers.
I'm in finance and we have financial and medical information and we have the option to WFH

Original poster
FloorWipes · 12/08/2023 08:58

daisychain01 · 12/08/2023 05:02

@FloorWipes the way you describe your current role, it doesn't seem as if you use any ICT (collaborative technology such as MS Teams) for information sharing, file storage and discussion, Co-creation of documents etc - that may be because your employer doesn't have them, or you don't like to use them.

You'll struggle in most industries if you don't get with the times and have some flexibility in your mindset. You've got two degrees, more than most, you're limiting your career prospects by not being willing to consider hybrid as a compromise solution with good use of technology to keep connected and getting others to play their part rather than you doing all the heavy lifting to disseminate key information.

Right to be clear I’m not a dinosaur. Not only do we use these things, but I am in fact largely responsible for the IT, even designing some of our IT systems myself. I’m actually highly capable in this regard and very much with the times. In fact I have even considered making that my career move. So that’s definitely not the issue.

OP posts:
Original poster
FloorWipes · 12/08/2023 09:04

AllAtSea53 · 12/08/2023 06:21

I do understand where you're coming from OP.
I'm also a civil servant and expected in the office twice a week, but that feels like the worst of both worlds. I regularly wonder when the policy will be publicly called out for being so ineffective.

My office is absolutely massive, but no one else from my team are based there, so I don't know anyone. So I trudge in twice a week, usually sit alone on a bank of desks and don't speak to anyone all day. I simply sit on the same Teams meetings I would've at home. No attending with any purpose, no face to face meeting when I'm in.

If this is the 'new way of working', I'd so much rather they scrapped the lonely and pointless policy, and had less expensive office space , but spent the money on getting teams together for a few concentrated days every couple of months. Would keep things fresh and exciting, reconnect teams to eachother and their work.

But that would never happen, as people have become entitled and used to having their work expectations come second to their dog's defecation schedule or their kids' after school clubs.

Yes this sounds familiar. I’m sorry it sounds quite depressing.

OP posts:
Peony654 · 12/08/2023 09:06

receptionist or estate agent office? Honestly can’t think of anything else. But I have to say, it sounds your workplace isn’t great. I work most from home with no set hours, as do most of our team, and I don see any of the problems you mention.

Pourmeanotherwine · 12/08/2023 09:08

NHS admin- or NHS IM&T?

EvenlyDetermined · 12/08/2023 09:09

daisychain01 · 12/08/2023 07:46

admin in thr offices of a manufacturer would be my recommendation

how soul-destroying, and what a waste of 2 degrees. The OP will be bored stupid in no time and underpaid compared to the skills they must have taken years to achieve.

Not necessarily, I work in an office based job in a manufacturing business, my job requires a degree, further qualification, ongoing CPD and is well paid and rewarding. We are adopting new technological changes all the time, but we are all
fully onsite (albeit very flexible hours) as that works best for us and we are all happy to do so. We have no difficulty recruiting and retaining staff either.

Superfoodie123 · 12/08/2023 09:11

Go for a huge corporate type organisation. So you can have a couple of days with your team when they come in and even when they're not there will still be loads of people in

Original poster
FloorWipes · 12/08/2023 09:12

MiddleParking · 12/08/2023 07:11

I think being frustrated by other people’s working patterns and flexibility is something you’d have to overcome in your own mind if you want an employer. It’s very unlikely you’re going to find a job that suits you (as opposed to the NMW on-site ones) where everybody else has your same mindset - flexibility for employees is built into the law to some extent now, into the cultural expectations and budgets of organisations and employees much more so, so you can’t really guarantee a David Brent-style office situation where everyone is in the same place for the same hours five days a week without changing. It sounds like you have quite specific skills - could you start your own business? That obviously brings its own uncertainty but it might save you from the frustrations of colleagues.

I have considered starting my own business.

I guess I am frustrated by the loss of creativity, the working towards a common goal, getting excited about things we can do…People are ticking the boxes now. Maybe in a sort of short term efficient way I guess.

OP posts:
lastminutewednesday · 12/08/2023 09:14

Care work but the admin side. You literally have to be in the office for most of it.

IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads · 12/08/2023 09:15

The people I know who go into office work every day are; teachers and school office staff; H&S manager at an oil refinery; IT bod working on equipment too powerful to have at home (or something like that, o don't grasp the details, I'm not an IT bod); farm secretary. Construction site manager and quantity surveyor.

Darhon · 12/08/2023 09:20

We use online calls or phone calls to verbally pass things on. I think 3 days in the office is the right balance for me and I’d hate to go back to everyday unless there were really good transport links. And most of the U.K. doesn’t have those.

OooPourUsACupLove · 12/08/2023 10:06

I get it OP. My place is hybrid but more and more of us are choosing to come in full time and just take advantage of flexible WFH now and then when there's a practical reason.

I work for a global company so remote working and collaboration is nothing new, but exactly because of that we've always known that even if you've been workong effectively with people in another location for years, it still steps up a gear when you visit in person.

We've got all the clever communication and collaboration systems in the world but they don't hold a candle to face to face human interaction. It's all the nuance and instinctive awareness of others that comes with eye contact and body language. Not to mention the social/watercooler chat, the value of seeing who else is talking to whom, seeing which groups are in meetings together, knowing when a good time to interrupt someone is...it's just a whole different world.

I can imagine if you do line work, where you perform a well defined (albeit highly skilled) task in a process, WFH works great. I'm certainly not knocking it for everyone. But when you are part of a team creating new solutions and new processes, when for a significant portion of the time the thing you area working on doesn't exist yet except as a shared idea in people's minds with a lot of grey areas and some documents and diagrams you hope are starting to capture it and you hope everyone reads the same way, being in the same space makes a real difference.

IME, in the type of role I do, the people who say they don't need to be in the office are (usually, not always) the ones who most do, because they are tending to assume their take on a problem, process or challenge is the same as everyone else's. Then of course when they find out they missed something, or when things change around us and our thinking evolves, it's everyone else's fault for not realising they'd missed it and telling them.

Yes, a manager can head that off by pulling them back into more frequent online communication to keep them aligned, but reality is firstly since they don't think they need it they perceive it as micromanaging/lack of trust (which TBF if is) and don't engage, and secondly from a manager's POV someone who needs that level of oversight to WFH effectively is hardly proving the case for WFH!

Obviously that type of personality has always existed, but it's a lot easier both to notice when they are drifting off and nudge them back and for them to pick up more of the context from the team when they are physically together. Working in the office, it's not a significant problem, just part of the team dynamic.

That said, selfishly I'm all for hybrid work continuing because (1) I get some nice quiet commutes on Mondays and Fridays and the good lunch places have less queues, and (2) it's creating a two-tier career structure, where those of us who want to come in are finding each other, enjoying working together and accelerating, and those who prefer a job with more chill but less progression get that WFH. Win-win!

OooPourUsACupLove · 12/08/2023 10:08

(And that's just our experienced people! The grads and interns want to be in the office even more because they want to see everything and meet everyone!)

HowardKirksConscience · 12/08/2023 11:08

PackettInn · 12/08/2023 08:12

What a load of rubbish.

I'm in the finance industry as is my husband OP. We work 9-5.30 and have a healthy wage!
I mean it's taken me 8 years but when I started I wasn't in a low wage, it was pretty competitive.

Show quote history

yes, and loads of the finance industry is now hybrid working to save on costs - read the OP again why don't you

MichaelAndEagle · 12/08/2023 11:15

Yes, this

I guess I am frustrated by the loss of creativity, the working towards a common goal, getting excited about things we can do…People are ticking the boxes now. Maybe in a sort of short term efficient way I guess.

And

I can imagine if you do line work, where you perform a well defined (albeit highly skilled) task in a process, WFH works great. I'm certainly not knocking it for everyone. But when you are part of a team creating new solutions and new processes, when for a significant portion of the time the thing you area working on doesn't exist yet except as a shared idea in people's minds with a lot of grey areas and some documents and diagrams you hope are starting to capture it and you hope everyone reads the same way, being in the same space makes a real difference.

Overhearing two colleagues talking about something that I have happened to heard something new about on a webinar.
I can chip in with my information, which prompts a new idea. A solution to take forward. An exciting new idea that puts some wind in our sails.
But they never would have mentioned it to me or mentioned it in a team meeting because when they were talking they were discussing an operational problem between themselves.
Harder when everyone is wfh.

EvenlyDetermined · 12/08/2023 11:37

Yea, that's exactly the sort of interaction our business thrives on, the overheard discussion at the coffee machine or from across the office, or over lunch, sparks of inspiration that you just don't get working at home alone, everyone loves talking about their ideas and bouncing them off other people.

Gwenhwyfar · 12/08/2023 11:48

"could you start your own business?"

What? From um...home???

PensionPuzzle · 12/08/2023 11:53

Admin/school business manager type of jobs in a school would definitely be very routine and everyone in the building type of work. I do think our SBM has had very occasional 'do not disturb' WFH days around budget time but this would be really infrequent if it happened at all.

Of course the actual activities during the working day would not be as predictable but schools are one of the few environments where everyone has their day broken into chunks by lesson bells and fixed mealtimes, and you do almost get institutionalised by that!

Gwenhwyfar · 12/08/2023 11:55

" the good lunch places have less queues"

While they're still open!

daisychain01 · 12/08/2023 11:58

it's creating a two-tier career structure, where those of us who want to come in are finding each other, enjoying working together and accelerating, and those who prefer a job with more chill but less progression get that WFH

Talk about completely pigeon-holing people who wfh as the laggards who chill and aren't interested in progression! And based on what evidence? I've just been promoted, hybrid working had no impact on my advancement - I base my decision on what I need to achieve - come into the office for a reason, wfh for a reason, there is no need to be all or nothing, that's just daft. If I have a deadline to write a paper or prepare a business case, I can avoid the distraction of noise and interruption that is a natural part of working in an office. I pick and choose, so when I come to the office there are always people around to interact with. I set up meetings to be face to face on a mutually agreed day. It isn't hard.