Having to go back to the office is not employer abuse, and certain entitled people should stop whining as such

The BBQ Pit
62

I wasn’t knocking on depressed people by saying that. As I said, I understand it’s an illness. I was making note of an example to identify the inaccuracy of when some people are really negative, but think they’re espousing reality. In this case, some people thinking they’re being realistic when they’re just being cynical. And I mentioned depression, because it’s a very common dynamic with that where it colors your view in such a way. I have had depressive episodes in the past myself where I felt that way, and it’s actually something I read at the time about that.

I was literally just trying to reference a dynamic that is well-known - not sure why some of you assume the worst of my intentions by doing so.

63

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

64

Kiddo, when I was your age, I was married with a baby on the way and living in a dumpy little rental house. I was working two part time jobs and my then husband was working his ass off in a shitty sales job he hated but we needed money. There was no miracle that sent us straight from grocery bagger to cushy office job even though we both had college degrees.

People aren’t giving you shit because they think you have bad intentions. They’re giving you shit because you’re announcing how YOU think things should be based on YOUR almost nonexistant life experience.

65

You’ll never get to the bottom with that attitude.

66

I don’t know; Seymour Cray (of Cray Research, Cray Computing, SRC Corporation) used to dig tunnels in his backyard claiming that “While I’m digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem.” Keep digging, kid; maybe you’ll come up with the next innovation in supercomputing!

Stranger

67

Fuck off with this shit. 4 hour commutes are not petty. Cube farms are not petty. Being at the office just so you can do conference calls all day anyway is fucking stupid, is what it is. Let’s see conference call in my cube or conference call in my home office - hmmmm - I just don’t know which I prefer. I haven’t even gotten to the ableism you’re displaying. The accommodations that were suddenly, miraculously available last year should be kept, not pushed aside in favor of “normal”.

I have no idea why you think being in an office is luxurious. Most people have to sit in ever smaller spaces, with an ever shorter partition, if they even get a partition. 40-hour work weeks - ha. 60-80 hours, with the expectation that you are always available, and read your email 24-7, and answer your phone, and take meetings at 1am because of time zone differences.

Good for you. You want to be at work. Neat. Most people don’t. If you want to be there, go ahead. Just don’t make everyone else show up so you can have some human interaction.

BTW, how about we pay everyone a living wage and universal healthcare to address your other comments. This isn’t an either/or situation.

Fuck a cactus, you entitled toad.

68

In the case of Apple specifically, one needn’t be terribly cynical (in either the colloquial or Shavian sense of the term) to suspect that part of management’s eagerness to reestablish the old norms relates to the desire to get their money’s worth out of Apple Park. Sinking five billion dollars into a building that got only three years of full-capacity use is bound to leave a bit of egg on high-ranking faces.

69

Depressed people may have a more accurate view of reality than non-depressed people, particularly with regard to how much control they have over a situation.

Yes, this. People have all kinds of situations and conditions that make working from home more or less productive, so why do we have to force a one size fits all mandate on everyone?

Take me. I have an incredibly cushy office job doing work I love for about 24 hours/week. Because of the nature of my work, I don’t have to be on site to do it. I’ve had to work from home on occasion due to PTSD or when the environment (open office) became too chaotic for me to focus on a tight deadline. HR probably wouldn’t like me taking days from home but oh fucking well, my ass is covered by ADA, supervisor doesn’t care and I get shit done during the times I need solitude.

That said, the pandemic and working from home all the time was ADHD hell. And I felt completely disconnected from my team and so lonely. After I was vaccinated I begged my boss to let me return to the office, and I’m doing so much better now.

What made the difference for me wasn’t working from home or not working from home, but my employer’s willingness to be flexible according to my needs.

The reason many people are so pissed off is that some people have real problems, ADA kinda problems, that reduce their productivity in an office environment. And so many employers have refused to accommodate them. “I need you here. I need you to do it this way.”

And it was all bullshit. Those accommodations could have been made all along.

70

I didn’t read all the replies, but I either have to be a bit terse or I could write a dissertation on this one. I’ll go with terse.

It depends on how well the job is really getting done remotely, and the rationale of the employer for requiring the employees to come back to the office.

I hate that the US anchors you to a job via employer-provided health care. It’s like a Bracero Program for no end of citizens. We Own Your Ass.

Where I worked a number of years back, several of our best employees worked remotely. Each was highly productive, but TPTB hated the idea that one, for example, wintered in his ski condo at the base of the mountain, would work from 5:30a to 9a, then ski a few hours, and then work at least a full day.

They gave him an ultimatum: come work at the home office or find another job.

This shit sucks.

It happened a few times to a few people where the problem that we were trying to solve … did not exist. It was power and control.

The traffic, quality of life, family matters, the fact that many people actually work more hours (ie, productivity) from a home office than in the Office.

Maybe TPTB are starting to lose leviathan real estate bets. I’ve heard rumors that VC funds invest heavily in RE when they start incubating tech towns like Miami, Austin, Boulder, Boise, et al.

The WFH thing is making “more livable” cities dramatically more attractive and hurting population centers.

And maybe it’s easier for workers to look for, and interview for, better jobs when they WFH. It’s happened to a few friends of mine during lockdown – big, big career wins that they otherwise didn’t have time to execute at the office.

If I’m my usual level of cynical, and I ask myself “who profits ?” the money piece starts to shed a little light on the likely motivations of at least some of the actors in this one.

Okay. Not so terse :wink:

71

Well when you put it that way - I think that’s very sensible. I think flexibility is good in particular for people who have actual problems with regard to working from home home or in the office either way to account for them. I think it should be in an optional basis and both should be allowed. And as I was saying above, people like @Sunny_Daze should also recognize that many people do not have a hospitable home office to work from and will do much better in an office environment, so yes quite a few would rather work in a cube than in their bedroom. It goes both ways.

I think my original rant was more directed toward people hyperbolizing the mild inconveniences of working in an office and having such a nasty attitude towards their coworkers, and entirely discounting the value of social interaction in the office, etc.

72

I was not reading very closely, and I read this as “teleport every other day.” And, I thought, wow, things have changes since I retired!

[bolding mine]

73

This. 100 times this.

Along with the multiple studies that showed that productivity was higher with remote work even during Covid.

Studies showing productivity. Hidden to save space.

Summary

MSN

How Productive Have Remote Workers Been During Covid?

Is Working Remotely Effective? Gallup Research Says Yes

This last one was from 2016 so it’s not like they didn’t have the data.

But it’s you who is entitled to think that other people should suffer inconvenience to socialize with you (and other coworkers).

74

As I suggested in the original post, most of the time I actually worked in an office (or anywhere really), I kept to myself and didn’t start conversations most of the time. It’s not about whether people directly socialize with me or not. I can still find that attitude repugnant and whiny (even while recognizing that there should be a choice because there are many good reasons for some to work remotely), and that’s what I was commenting on.

Like why such a strong aversion to interacting with coworkers? Why such a hyperbolization of such mild inconveniences? It just makes them sound unhealthily anti-social, misanthropic, or spoiled (the kind of people always complaining about how they “hate people” and feel as if they’ve been violated if someone makes conversation with them). I definitely lean introvert, but as I said, it didn’t even occur to me as something to complain about.

75

As you say, you’re 23. You probably have not had to deal with sexual harassment. years of nasty office politics, or years of micromanagement.

Everyone has a different experience of working in an office. If some people don’t want to return, they may have their reasons that they don’t share in a Reddit thread. Besides, being asocial or misanthropic are not disqualifiers for all jobs. Being asocial is ok for some jobs. It’s your judgment about what is unhealthy. If they got hired, the company is obviously ok with it. It’s not up to you to decide what’s healthy for them.

77

Alright that’s fair.

78

Why do you care? If it doesn’t affect you and your ability to do your job, what does it matter? It’s not your job to tell them how to live their lives. You don’t know them, you don’t know their issues, you don’t even know if they’re being hyperbolic just to blow off steam. And by telling them what they SHOULD do or feel you will just turn them against you because no one likes being lectured at.

Yes I know I’m lecturing him. I’m old so it’s allowed :stuck_out_tongue:

79

As someone forced to work in an open-plan office, I would kick a puppy for the opportunity to work in a cube farm. Cube farm is luxury. Cube farm is opulence. Please trade with me.

I would rather work in my building than be out doing construction or digging ditches, sure. But my job is 100% compatible with working from home, and I will never not hate managers who force me to commute downtown to attempt to do my job in the middle of 50 gen-X howler-monkeys who tell loud jokes and verbally prefix their hilarity with “hashtag” all day long.

80

I dunno. I agree with the OP. The company policy was “if you CAN work from home you MUST work from home” when things were really bad early this year. I spent the first 8 months of the pandemic working in the office every single day as a program manager for a major defense contractor because I worked in an entirely classified area. so WFH wasn’t possible for me and about 25% of my team (system engineering/architecture developers etc…). I can tell you, without a doubt, the productivity of the 75% of my team that was working from home (discipline specific engineers/designers/contract managers etc…) dropped dramatically. It became almost impossible to get anything completed because key folks were “available” on Skype/Teams but not actually available. So many people calling into important telecons from the fucking grocery store or Target. For many others they interpreted “If you CAN work from home you must” to mean “If you can find SOMETHING to do from home you must” even if that something was of low importance or some bullshit busy work. That was a dishonest way to skirt out of responsibilities under the guise of COVID. Keep in mind the vast majority of my team had individual, single occupancy offices (not cubes) but still stayed home to be safe. It was bullshit.

Now I’m on the other side, I took a job with another company a couple months ago and it’s all WFH/remote. I would say the company gets 8hrs of actual work out of me per week because I’m disconnected with no effective collaboration/teaming. Some folks certainly do thrive in this environment, but most don’t.

I think whats going to happen is many companies are going to realize they don’t actually need the 30 people who used to sit in the office, dump 20 of them and let the other 10 WFH and that’s fair.

81

Isn’t that one of the primary functions of middle-management?

82

As I see it, working in the office is the default setting. “Emergency over, everyone come back” is not an infringement on anyone’s civil liberties; it’s just reverting to normal.

Now if your company is progressive enough to go to a hybrid/hoteling model (as mine is) – that’s great. What we’ve been through will undoubtedly have huge ripple effects in office life and corporate real estate (and personal real estate due to The Great Reshuffle). Reduced traffic is wonderful. But if you’ve go to back … suck it up, buttercup.