They don’t give me a work from home option, the buggers. If I had it, I’d take it in a minute though. The problem for me isn’t just the duration of the commute (right around 20 minutes), but all the other irritating bits.
Commute traffic. I drive close to the speed limit, but that means here in Colorado, where our cardinal driving sin is speed, I get rocked by a ton of traffic casually doing 10+ over the limit.
Winter commuting weather. Per my location, there’s at least 4-5 days a year work says “We’re open and you’re coming in” when it’s blatantly unsafe, at least at the time I have to arrive. You know, semis blown over in the wind, cars slipping off the road (because of the speeding too fast for conditions), or the fact that the damn high doesn’t get above single digits.
People. I know some of us like being social, but any group is tainted by the lowest common denominator. Whether it be the asshats that steal lunches, wear too much perfume/cologne [ or not enough! ], or talk about Trump in the workroom, no I don’t need them.
Cheating. Okay, this is a guilty one, but my job is pretty mindless, I could frequently do it, or large portions of it, with 1/4 of a brain. Which means at home I’d probably have a spare window open on my computer for light reading (or 'Dope surfing, or the like). At work, you cannot do that, or rather, you can, and people do, but it’s much easier to get caught.
Sure, 4 is entirely selfish, but the first three are totally legitimate. And I’m leaving out all the other comforts of home, like the cat, the bidet, and how it would be so much easier to walk a dozen steps and be able to prepare a hot meal rather than something cold I can keep at my desk away from the free-for-all work fridges!
Speeders drive me crazy, and they don’t know how to drive in winter weather. I’ve seen plenty of cars that could make a curve because of speed and end up looking like a crumbled up ball of foil.
Re: People/Social - I have hearing difficulties. Working from home, during meetings I can CC them on Teams. Though I wish more people would get headsets (they’re cheap, both the people and the headsets)
Re: ‘Cheating’ - Everybody does, whether at work or at home/work. I used to work 7-3:30. Now it’s 7-5. This is because I’ll probably take the dogs for a quick walk or whatever. And yes I’ll cruise the net/SDMB. But I often have to test code that might take 45 minutes to run. I’m not going to start something else and get completely sidetracked.
Our work is located in a ski community. Close down because of snow? No way. This ain’t Atlanta. Well, in the 32 years I’ve worked there, they closed twice. This is great for me now, I can plow my drive during ‘lunch’ In daylight.
If my commute is less than 30 mins, then it all comes down to the quality of the workspace, and whether I have any midday appointments.
In the corporate office, when I had a semi-private cubicle in a quiet working space, I’d actually arrive early and stay late because I felt more focused than being home with family members milling, stirring, and mumbling all the time. Kids come home early, wife leaves late, dog needs a walk, always some sort of stir that only leaves about 5 hours of focus time. And I need a LOT of focus time, and it takes me a good hour to build up focus.
But even with an ideal office I’d offten work home 1 or 2 days a week, because some days I just wasn’t feeling the commute, or there was some small home chore or appointment that needed to be done.
Post-pandemic, we were told to go to the campus office for 60% of our working week. That meant 3 days per week for all of us. In my last office, I worked Mon-Weds on campus and had the end of the week at home. Then I changed offices and now work Weds-Fri on campus instead which doesn’t really suit me but it’s a long-standing arrangement.
My commute is not a great distance but since it involves public transport, it’s at least 1.5hrs (often closer to 2hrs due to delays and cancellations on the trains). I am at an age where I can’t afford to retire but I’m also kind of fed up with the whole work thing I resent having to go to campus when I spend all day in the office and see nobody except the other team members.
We are told there must be 2 people in each office so with a team of 8, we can cover most of the week with just one day each. There are some people who are happier in the office, whereas I am much happier at home. I loved working at home all the time, it saved me an awful lot of commuting stress. I never really understood how stressful the daily commute was, until I didn’t have to do it. WFH has been a massive boost to my mental wellbeing, I just want to do more of it.
I went through that. In a team of 4 with vacations and sick days it was nearly impossible.
It was a security thing. A co-worker that I’m close to said that if there is a problem, she was gonna run out the other door. I would be right behind her.
That’s all changed. We just keep the doors locked. Duh. And I don’t go into the office anyway.
My current client wants me to come into their office 3 days a week. It’s a super easy commute. 5 minute walk to the ferry. about a 20 minute ferry ride to Wall Street. Then another 10 minute walk.
The thing is, it’s stupid and pointless to force us to come to the office. There are three of us on our team - my client, me, and a junior idiot from my firm - and we each show up on three different days of the week. So there’s really only one day where we are all working together physically.
And aside from that, our job mostly entails sitting on conference calls with dozens of people scattered all over who knows where. So it basically amounts to coming to an office to hold conference calls I could do just as easily from home.
We communicate more. Now that we are scattered about. Perhaps that’s to be expected, but we all have our own Teams Chat lines to each other. What’s great is that everyone has a record of everything that was said. Not just your unreliable notes.
When we have meetings, I do them remote. I do it with proper headphones and microphone. I can’t convince them to do the same. So they gather around a single laptop computer and use it’s internal mic and speaker. Just sit at your own desk, and do it from there.
I’m just not in the need and rarely in the mood for ‘face time’.
Yeah, before I retired I had occasional work-from-home days. I found them mostly very unproductive. I had a strong urge to take a long nap in the middle of the day, since nobody knew what I was doing.
Both my wife and I can work from home (maybe not full-time, but often) and we mostly choose not to unless we aren’t feeling well (not sick enough to not work, but not well enough to be around other people). We are both productive working remotely, but it feels so isolating compared being in the office with your coworkers. During the pandemic when we had to work from home, I felt almost trapped, even though we were out biking, hiking and walking a lot.
Seems like some people like a hard line between work|home. I can understand that. Just doesn’t matter to me.
When COVID hit, I saw the writing on the wall. This was my chance to work from home. When I prove that it works fine for me, I’ll have a better chance at convincing TPTB that I should be allowed to continue work from home.
First thing I did is majorly updated my home computer/monitor. I got Starlink (only fast low ping internet available) and installed the dish. I did this on my dime. I did not ask for any help at all.
I’m in GIS, it’s all database work for me really. Coding too. The department head had a visit/meeting with every employee in our IS/GIS department and asked us what WE wanted to do (a very reasonable fellow). Home, home, home for me. I’ve already got one foot out the door (retirement on the way) and they know it. Letting me work from home was really the only way to keep me for this long.
Before COVID, some folks in IS did a hybrid kind of thing. That was the sys admins. You see, they knew how and had the credentials to set up their work/home connections (that’s not what I do). They just did it. There was no policy one way or another. Kind of pissed me off -“Why can’t all of us have that?”
Today is the first day I’ve been sick in a long time (I’m not around all people with sick kids), so I’m actually going to take a personal day. i just feel off. I’m going to let them know that If they need me though, just ping me and I can hop on.
Funny story - I was out with a couple old friends of mine I used to work with like 20 years ago. We were reminiscing about how we used to pull down our cubicle wall Office Space style and play chess in the middle of the day in the office.
I mentioned this before I think, but there used to be a time when when the office was a place you went to and actually interacted with other people socially. We’d chat with people at the water cooler. Go out to lunch together. Sometimes grab drinks after work. As long as you got your work done, no one cared.
Honestly I find going to my client’s office utterly depressing. The floor is like 90% empty and the people who are there never seem to speak to each other.
After spending much of 2 years working from home, my last job before retirement was 15 minutes from home and I had in my contract that I worked 4 days a week, 2 at home. I loved working from home. At the start of Covid I worked in Melbourne CBD and spent an hour each way travelling. Suddenly I had that time back and I loved it. It helps that I generally don’t like people much so any social aspects to being in the office were lost on me.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in this thread, I’m now very hard of hearing. About half deaf really. Hearing aids help and have come a long way, but interacting with a group is incredibly frustrating. I depend on context and half of my mind is always trying to sort out what is being talked about.
One on one is ok. Trying to figure out what’s going on in a group meeting is nearly impossible. Especially when you have a couple of ‘low’ talkers. The closest co-worker I have was nicknamed ‘The mumbler’ - Give me some clear text I can read, and we can communicate.
I go into work on days that I have phone meetings - 2 days/week. Our house is a little difficult to shut off spaces and my wife doesn’t need to hear my end of those.
Office is only 6 minutes from home. No one there I have any interest in seeing. I’m perfectly content just working off my laptop from my favorite chair.
My sister in law works from home. Has her own office with a door on it. My brother is now retired. So he takes care of the house (always has). He apparently can’t vacuum while she is working because of hearing on the phone.
She will not wear a headset for her phone because it ‘squishes her hair’. She rarely, very rarely even leaves the house.
My response is … but, but but, ummmm. I have no response to that.
My wife and I are about to sign on a new house, and we both agree, that we will both be retired soon, we want space. Odd I know (doubling the size of your house when you retire). But I want my space and she needs hers.
I think this is a healthy approach as we age. Shit, the new place is big enough for a live in care giver which is another big consideration.
], or talk about Trump in the workroom, no I don’t need them.
I resent having to go to campus when I spend all day in the office and see nobody except the other team members.