If working from home became the new standard?

[TickTockMan]

If you could anyway. Would you be okay with that?


Your pros and cons?

 

[NotHardUp1]

It will be part of the rot if it happens.

I've seen the corporate office environment first-hand for over 30 years. Less and less work is being done every year, and that's on site. Supervisors supervise less and less work, and often don't know how to do the processes or use the systems fully themselves. Workers increasingly lie about working, while away the day with texting and playing on phones, lie about workloads, lie about hours worked, and lie about why things didn't get done or can't be done.

And there are types like tropes. There's the gal who can't stop managing her kids, husband, parents, pets, whatever from work, so never realizes she is losing as much time as she is from her tasks. If you were to turn off her personal phone, she would have to leave and go home.

There's the guy who's having trouble with his wife, mistress, girlfriend, children, boyfriend, parents, whatever, who can't stop texting obsessively.

There's the senior guy who knows stuff inside out and is idle more than half the time because he's succeeded in convincing managers he's busy and analyzing away when he's bullshitting with a cluster of old cronies.

There are the managers who contribute little but poking in the back from the poke in the back they get from their manager. No value added.

Much of corporate America is bloat.

You have the people who never intended to work and know it and literally play games like Angry Birds all day or watch YouTube or read news.

And those are just office workers. Go to retail and you find cashiers, clerks, warehouse employees and others hiding out, playing on their phones while the store is in disarray and customers are "in the way."

My company is currently at home except for a small fraction of us in the office, and the same people who worked only 70% of the time or less are now working half that with eyes no longer on them.

It will hasten the outsourcing of "professional labor" to India, and the rest of the third world. And, as office buildings empty out, if they do, speculators will simply renovate or backfill with more overprices housing or lease property for residence.

The pros are that it could hasten the death of the middle class as they are cut out, and we'll see fewer $50,000 SUVs on the road and less pollution, as someone in the Phillipines gets the job and lives a much more modest lifestyle ecologically.

 

[unloadonme]

After three months of working from home, I'm champing at the bit to get back to the office.

Pros

Commuting time 5 seconds rather than 50 minutes.
Save money on transport costs, lunches and after work socialising. Drinking less.
Not having to travel on grotty, routinely late and overcrowded trains.
Can get away with shorts and t-shirts every day.
Less likely to catch Covid-19.

Cons

Social isolation from colleagues.
Discussions over Teams are not the same as face-to-face.
Reduced ability to supervise and support work of my team.
Boundaries between home and work blurred, temptation to work out of hours (work/life balance).
Limited IT, especially one small screen rather than two large ones.
Not all information is held electronically. Lack of access to paper records is delaying some work.
Motivation and concentration. At home I'm much more likely to put things off and I'm sure I'm doing less.
Lack of exercise. If I'm going to the office I walk to and from the station at the very least. Currently I end up having virtually no exercise despite my best intentions.
More temptation to snack between meals.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I did work from home during about five or six weeks when my company forced us to.

Had my dual monitors and docking station at home, but resented the intrusion of my company into my home life.

Returned to the office once it was allowed, but less than 10% of the staff is back.

It has been nice with the main highway not clogged, but one hates to get used to it, as the cluster that is rush hour will return soon.

Unfortunately, Alabamians are high on the stupid index. A manager in the same department two aisles over refuses to wear a mask evidently, despite the company constantly emphasizing it and the 6 ft. rule. She literally enters cubicles and stands over her employees when working with them. Less than 30 feet away from me is a colleague who had a kidney transplant last year, so the gal who isn't masking couldn't give a damn, obviously.

 

[Dominus]

It will be part of the rot if it happens.

I've seen the corporate office environment first-hand for over 30 years. Less and less work is being done every year, and that's on site. Supervisors supervise less and less work, and often don't know how to do the processes or use the systems fully themselves. Workers increasingly lie about working, while away the day with texting and playing on phones, lie about workloads, lie about hours worked, and lie about why things didn't get done or can't be done.

And there are types like tropes. There's the gal who can't stop managing her kids, husband, parents, pets, whatever from work, so never realizes she is losing as much time as she is from her tasks. If you were to turn off her personal phone, she would have to leave and go home.

There's the guy who's having trouble with his wife, mistress, girlfriend, children, boyfriend, parents, whatever, who can't stop texting obsessively.

There's the senior guy who knows stuff inside out and is idle more than half the time because he's succeeded in convincing managers he's busy and analyzing away when he's bullshitting with a cluster of old cronies.

There are the managers who contribute little but poking in the back from the poke in the back they get from their manager. No value added.

Much of corporate America is bloat.

You have the people who never intended to work and know it and literally play games like Angry Birds all day or watch YouTube or read news.

And those are just office workers. Go to retail and you find cashiers, clerks, warehouse employees and others hiding out, playing on their phones while the store is in disarray and customers are "in the way."

My company is currently at home except for a small fraction of us in the office, and the same people who worked only 70% of the time or less are now working half that with eyes no longer on them.

It will hasten the outsourcing of "professional labor" to India, and the rest of the third world. And, as office buildings empty out, if they do, speculators will simply renovate or backfill with more overprices housing or lease property for residence.

The pros are that it could hasten the death of the middle class as they are cut out, and we'll see fewer $50,000 SUVs on the road and less pollution, as someone in the Phillipines gets the job and lives a much more modest lifestyle ecologically.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

I confess that I had a bullshit job once upon a time.

 

[Ontariobear]

Total win here for hubby who just earned his 90 day WFH chip yesterday.
Small office but very stubborn people who don't adapt well to change.
IF/when he goes back, he'll be the rule enforcer. The touch thermometer is in his current Amazon order.

 

[TickTockMan]

Had my dual monitors and docking station at home, but resented the intrusion of my company into my home life.

That would be my big issue.


After I got hurt at work and I was on Workmen's Comp and not suppose to be working I still got called all the time because no one else knew how to do a lot of what I did.

Even after they fired me they still reached out to ask me how to do stuff.


The official reason I was fired was I didn't do anything. If I did nothing why did they bother me so much off the clock and when I didn't work there any more? Not to mention promote me so much?

 

[Rickrock]

I'm retired so I don't work, but if I were to work, I wouldn't mind working part of the time from home, but would want to go into work at least part of the time.

 

[rareboy]

After three months of working from home, I'm champing at the bit to get back to the office.

Pros

Commuting time 5 seconds rather than 50 minutes.
Save money on transport costs, lunches and after work socialising. Drinking less.
Not having to travel on grotty, routinely late and overcrowded trains.
Can get away with shorts and t-shirts every day.
Less likely to catch Covid-19.

Cons

Social isolation from colleagues.
Discussions over Teams are not the same as face-to-face.
Reduced ability to supervise and support work of my team.
Boundaries between home and work blurred, temptation to work out of hours (work/life balance).
Limited IT, especially one small screen rather than two large ones.
Not all information is held electronically. Lack of access to paper records is delaying some work.
Motivation and concentration. At home I'm much more likely to put things off and I'm sure I'm doing less.
Lack of exercise. If I'm going to the office I walk to and from the station at the very least. Currently I end up having virtually no exercise despite my best intentions.
More temptation to snack between meals.

Pretty much this.

 

[PrinceCory]

If you could anyway. Would you be okay with that?


Your pros and cons?

No, I miss being around other people. It would be even better at work if summer shorts were allowed in the office. Not that I look good in them with my pasty white legs...but I'm old, I don't care anymore.

 

[rareboy]

 

[Pierresro]

If you could anyway. Would you be okay with that?


Your pros and cons?

My spouse worked for one of the largest accounting firms on earth. We lived at the time in London and he was inIT systems, He worked 4 days of teh week out of an office we had set up in one of our bedrooms.ALmost all the people he worked with did the same. Soit has never been uncommon only now during the Virus for many!