Do you miss the virus?

[Trajectory.]

I do. Especially the lockdowns, when the freeways were empty and the air cleared up. And the machines pretty much fell silent.

And not having to go to the office! Boy, that really sucks. A little over a year ago we had to go back, and I just cannot get used to it.

And the people in the office. I didn't realize how much I can't stand them.

Even though we can work remotely from home two days a week now, I really dread those three day when I have to commute. So wasteful and distasteful.

I was getting used to having 24 hours in my day. Sleeping to a natural wake up time. Now on my office days I only have 22.5 hours. That really makes a difference.

We need another pandemic.

 

[RustyOldNail]

I was getting used to having 24 hours in my day. Sleeping to a natural wake up time.

We need another pandemic.

No, you need to RETIRE! You get those nice benefits to life… assuming you can… if not, keep working with that goal in mind. Otherwise try a new/different career that you might enjoy till then. Good luck!

 

[Perfect_Speed4069]

I'm a good 30 years away from retirement and feel similarly. Going to the office is like using a phone booth to make a call.

 

[florduh]

The richest, and thus the smartest, guy to ever live says we're all wrong about working from home. It's morally wrong because service sector workers cannot work from home.

Elon Musk says work from home ‘bulls—t’ is ‘morally wrong’

Musk hurled all manner of invective at what he called the “laptop class,” suggesting that they should not be exempt from working in person.

www.sfgate.com

My guess is if I had a chauffeur and a private jet, care of investors I've lied to, and subsidies from the gubernment...I'd enjoy commuting to work and flying to see clients more than I currently do.

 

[Farid]

This is so insensitive to people who lost loved ones to Covid.

You might not have had to go into the office, but tons of people in Healthcare, manufacturing, emergency services, retail, etc. did. Some of those died or were maimed for life. Not to mention the people in hospitals who were not able to see their loved ones as they passed, or people in prison forced to be isolated in an already isolated environment.

I understand your sentiment about work from home, but to say we need another pandemic is wildly offensive.

 

[vapirtoo]

The sweetest air I ever had in NYC, living in Queens under two airports was during the lockdown.
The silence was eerie after a lifetime of listening to engines and turbines.
Manhattan was yours on a bicycle
Farid your right, many people lost alot.

 

[florduh]

I definitely don't like the fact COVID is here forever now. Before 3 years ago, every time I got a scratchy throat, I knew I was either looking at a mere cold... or if I'm unlucky, the flu. Now there's this extra third option we all have to worry about from now until forever.

I don't want to add a fourth option. Though the traffic from May to say...July 2020.... *chef's kiss*.

 

[DrömmenOmFrihet]

Fuck no. My mental health, which wasn’t the best prior, took a massive dive into the shitter and hasn’t 100% recovered. The isolation damn near killed me.

 

[SquirrelMaster]

Fuck (nearly) everything about the pandemic.

If working from home is that important to you then you should start looking for another job.

I do not understand the opposition to wfh if a job can be completed remotely. If someone has x amount of hours to finish a task, who gives a fuck about where it is completed. Plus, the savings in a reduction of corporate real estate can be partially passed on to employees for home office supplies.

 

[florduh]

I do not understand the opposition to wfh if a job can be completed remotely. If someone has x amount of hours to finish a task, who gives a fuck about where it is completed. Plus, the savings in a reduction of corporate real estate can be partially passed on to employees for home office supplies.

The opposition comes from two places. One, corporate America has a lot of make-work middle management jobs. Most of those jobs aren't necessary in a remote work environment.

And you're right that remote work saves on commercial real estate. But commercial real estate is an enormously powerful industry. Ensuring the health of that industry is more important than work-life balance. Mayor Adams in NYC specifically said he's against work from home because it's killing his friends in commercial real estate.

I'm pro-remote work. But the powers that be have their reasons for opposing it.

I'll also add a Floridian perspective. Lots of remote workers moved down there during the 'ol pandemmy, driving up the cost of real estate. This has been disastrous for Floridians who lived in the State pre-2020.

Now, you have people relying on Florida's shitty, service sector based job market competing for housing with remote workers drawing a decent salary from States with advanced economies up north and out west.

 

[Pinte]

Good news is a lot of the covid data has finally been analyzed by major business research and consulting firms and they're all saying the same thing:

Forcing workers into an office lowers productivity across the board for up to 20%, even if you allow them to work from home 1-3 days of a week, the aspect of forcing makes workers have far less enthusiasm, and morale, leading to loss of work.

Letting workers choose is the best way to get the most out of workers. When they choose to work from home, full time, partial, or to actually work on-site, productivity is upwards of 20%. Some people have smaller apartments, and going in to work is refreshing for them, some people have larger homes, so they can have space to work as they see fit, and some people crave that interaction, so they come in once in a while to speak with people, but prefer working from home.

All of the larger business research firms are saying this. Right now people who have no idea and think things should go back to the way they were, are dead wrong and it only hurts the business.

If your business is larger, you likely have access to some of these firms for training and management resources. Take a look, the worst thing any business can do right now is forcing people to work on-site if their job can be done remotely.

 

[SquirrelMaster]

The opposition comes from two places. One, corporate America has a lot of make-work middle management jobs. Most of those jobs aren't necessary in a remote work environment.

And you're right that remote work saves on commercial real estate. But commercial real estate is an enormously powerful industry. Ensuring the health of that industry is more important than work-life balance. Mayor Adams in NYC specifically said he's against work from home because it's killing his friends in commercial real estate.

I'm pro-remote work. But the powers that be have their reasons for opposing it.

I'll also add a Floridian perspective. Lots of remote workers moved down there during the 'ol pandemmy, driving up the cost of real estate. This has been disastrous for Floridians who lived in the State pre-2020.

Now, you have people relying on Florida's shitty, service sector based job market competing for housing with remote workers drawing a decent salary from States with advanced economies up north and out west.

Hehe, I do understand the perspective of the opposition to wfh, but I didn't want to go down the rabbit hole. I don't understand it from the viewpoint of someone wanting a better work life balance for a large amount of people vs a few staying rich.

The only option I see is leaving companies that act that way. If it's sustainable profitable to have wfh employees, then that's the direction we'll move to. The companies that choose to ignore this will fail.

 

[Canna Chameleon]

For me Covid was more profound. It ripped the veil of perspective off the world and showed us who people were, in real light.

I will never recover from the mental heath changes that occurred during Covid because you can’t unsee or un remember how people acted.

I am way more isolated and refuse to socialize with most people. I learned how few people I actually care about and have no desire to waste my efforts or time faking it with the rest.

 

[Farid]

I agree opposition to WFH from the top down is often silly, since it offers a company so much: The ability to save on office costs, the ability to seek out employees from lower cost of living areas and thus pay lower wages, and more.

That said, on a personal level, limiting yourself to exclusively work from home positions can stifle your career growth. There's something to be said about the smalltalk and personal connections you make with your boss or coworkers that doesn't happen when you're working from home all the time. With a hybrid schedule you can still get this though.

I also think there are many jobs that cannot be done well from home, though they can *technically* be done from home. For example any support job for manufacturing like planners, supply chain managers, engineers, etc. need to spend time actually seeing the processes they manage in person.
The Japanese call it "genchi genbutsu" or "go and see" and it's critical to understanding the reality of your work.

I'll take a 4 day work week any day over WFH though. Imo that's the secret sauce to holding on to your employees.

 

[Grass Yes]

I'll take a 4 day work week any day over WFH though. Imo that's the secret sauce to holding on to your employees.

I hope to have both some day. Or stop working as suggested above. At my company the bosses are always patting themselves on the back for "innovation" of being fully remote. But whenever a 4 day work week comes up, they roll their eyes at the audacity.

I do think 4 day work weeks are coming but without a strong labor movement it's going to be a "perk" for highly desirable workers for a while.

 

[florduh]

 

[Farid]

From a management perspective there are major benefits to a 4 day work week. The biggest is you can pay people less and they will not seek out other jobs. I know I would take a 15% pay cut if it meant only working 4 days a week.

You'll also have a lower attrition rate due to people not wanting to lose that major perk. This lower attrition rate means you spend way less on training, and the quality of your workforce goes up.

Then you can also cut down your HR department to be much leaner, since you won't need to hire as many people as regularly.

 

[florduh]

I know I would take a 15% pay cut if it meant only working 4 days a week.

In my opinion, you should get 100% of your pay for 4 days of work.

The Productivity–Pay Gap

The huge gap between rising incomes at the top and stagnating pay for the rest of us shows that workers are no longer benefiting from their rising productivity. Before 1979, worker pay and productivity grew in tandem. But since 1979, productivity has grown eight times faster than typical worker...

www.epi.org

Now, this increase in productivity could be attributed to advances in technology. But I don't see a reason why shareholders should get the total benefit of that technological productivity increase. Especially given that the most transformative technologies only exist because of massive public investment.

 

[EarthworldTim]

Especially given that the most transformative technologies only exist because of massive public investment.

I agree but that's never stopped them before.

For years my company laughed in the face of anyone who brought up WFH for union represented groups. Management always had flexible schedules as long as bosses were ok with it but represented employees require an eye and a thumb at all times they said. First day of lockdowns and they scrambled to get us set up to WFH full time and we've never gone back. Guess it's better to keep the peons working even if they can't have their watchful eyes on us all the time. They've saved a bunch of money and sold off real estate since, productivity went up. One thing they've done is further bloat the executive leadership because that's how the work gets done right? Most executives are overpaid gas bags and I despise them.

 

[Shit Snacks]

Yeah I've had a terrible time adjusting, because I really took to the lockdown 3 years ago, it's hard to get social again and going back to the office 4 days a week when there's nothing to do more often than not, I feel like I've lost the life balance I gained and that nothing was learned from working from home... Meanwhile the pandemic doesn't feel fully over because I never got the virus so I'm still so paranoid but I'm paranoid about any virus any type of health thing now it's made me even more of a complete hypochondriac, and yeah feel for all the lives lost and other people who have suffered as a result, my suffering is pretty champagne type problems but mentally I am messed up now worse than ever before lol seriously struggling to get back to what normal was because part of me is totally fighting myself as I feel like I have no idea what my life is or what I'm doing or building towards anymore at all career or otherwise, and paraphernalia doesn't help much anymore so need to stop

 

[Grass Yes]

Yeah I've had a terrible time adjusting, because I really took to the lockdown 3 years ago, it's hard to get social again and going back to the office 4 days a week when there's nothing to do more often than not, I feel like I've lost the life balance I gained and that nothing was learned from working from home... Meanwhile the pandemic doesn't feel fully over because I never got the virus so I'm still so paranoid but I'm paranoid about any virus any type of health thing now it's made me even more of a complete hypochondriac, and yeah feel for all the lives lost and other people who have suffered as a result, my suffering is pretty champagne type problems but mentally I am messed up now worse than ever before lol seriously struggling to get back to what normal was because part of me is totally fighting myself as I feel like I have no idea what my life is or what I'm doing or building towards anymore at all career or otherwise, and paraphernalia doesn't help much anymore so need to stop

I think a lot of what you described that I am feeling. Sorry to hear you are going through that too because it is rough. I appreciated the opportunity to meet you here but I understand if it's another thing adding to your unhappiness. I can tell you are genuinely caring and like to contribute. It makes sense that can also take a lot out of you.

I am hoping we can all still make it through this with a better world, but I don't know where to begin. Definitely a struggle just to do the things required to keep a job and basic life maintenance. I have high hopes for the summer that I can start figuring things out (probably with therapy).

 

[Shit Snacks]

probably with therapy

Ugh yes but it's all so much work

 

[Knewt]

Yeah I've had a terrible time adjusting, because I really took to the lockdown 3 years ago, it's hard to get social again and going back to the office 4 days a week when there's nothing to do more often than not, I feel like I've lost the life balance I gained and that nothing was learned from working from home... Meanwhile the pandemic doesn't feel fully over because I never got the virus so I'm still so paranoid but I'm paranoid about any virus any type of health thing now it's made me even more of a complete hypochondriac, and yeah feel for all the lives lost and other people who have suffered as a result, my suffering is pretty champagne type problems but mentally I am messed up now worse than ever before lol seriously struggling to get back to what normal was because part of me is totally fighting myself as I feel like I have no idea what my life is or what I'm doing or building towards anymore at all career or otherwise, and paraphernalia doesn't help much anymore so need to stop

Have you considered glass acquisition therapy? I’ve heard it can help.

 

[Shit Snacks]

Have you considered glass acquisition therapy? I’ve heard it can help.

Fortunately think I'm finally done! Though am now in the need to sell things therapy stage?

 

[Grass Yes]

Ugh yes but it's all so much work

Yeah. It's hard work and it ruins my whole day, but I think it is helping me.