Working From Home

we had a meeting where they basically said we should be coming back into the buildings more because they are expensive. which seems to be a bad argument. buildings are expensive whether people are in them or not. and if there's a desire for people to wfh more then there's scope for even fewer buildings. (the've already sold off the top two floors of the building we used to occupy before, to a competitor, no less.)

This article a couple of weeks ago added fuel to my fears that many CEOs are just biding their time and waiting for the next recession to tighten the screws on letting people WFH: Why CEOs are so WTF about WFH

I feel my public speaking is suffering because I do it all from home now. in my old job, although I still was mostly WFH, I went to the office frequently during trainings, client meetings, etc, so I was presenting in front of people.

I am getting tongue tied more often now, finding I also hate the sound of my own voice. some of that is also my anxiety/stress levels lately, but it's disheartening as this is one of my strongest skills and it's eroding fast.

even stuttering now, which was never a problem for me previously. I find I have to slow myself down in those moments.

I, too, have some issues with the sound of my voice and there was one person on a zoom call where there was enough of a lag (bluetooth speaker?) in their zoom session the other day that I ended up hearing a quiet echo of what I just said a moment later. Not a big fan.

oh yeah I can't do that at all. the echo renders me unable to speak usually.

Our own voices are uniquely terrible. I however have heard an mh and he has a familiar and friendly voice. I bet it’s the same for you, Neanderthal!

a very satisfying read

Part of the problem is that the collegial, purpose-driven office that senior leaders idealize feels like a myth to many young workers. Since long before Covid-19, most offices weren’t delivering the mentoring, collaboration and social fabric that makes in-person work feel worthwhile. Indeed, many of the offices I visited in recent years were desolate, open plan landscapes dotted with individuals staring at screens, headphones on.

"Shut the fuck up! I am sorry, but shut the fuck up! I cannot stand this garbage. It “feels like a myth” because it never fucking existed, and you are a con artist if you suggest otherwise! One anecdotal example of a good office does not replace the tens of thousands of different offices that suck, and you can’t even come up with one! Your example is so fucking rotten that your anecdotal evidence works against the point you’re trying to make! "

https://ez.substack.com/p/privilege-and-pro-office-pablum

lol, it is purpose-driven for the senior leaders because it is fulfilling their purposes. They feel gratified and that it is worthwhile because it reinforces their egos, their power ... not that of the plebes that are pretty much only there because they need the money and they'd prefer not to have to do manual labor.

As much as I hate to admit it, it's not exactly a crazy idea that humans work better together in person. I would still trade more time and flexibility at home for a more impersonal and slightly less efficient remote work environment though.

it depends on what they are working on tbh.

I mean, some jobs are harder to do virtually than others, sure. it was just many businesses' insistence that the job couldn't be done remotely that was frustrating for many.

if your job involves doing a lot of individual tasks that don't require you to frequently check in with someone else, honestly it's easier for me to do that if I can put on the TV or music than if I have to hear people at the cube next to me talking about the mega awesome Nickleback concert they just went to

my current job, being a trainer, doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense as a virtual role, but they let me be virtual before the pandemic, and they started giving me classes full of people who weren't based in my state, so I couldn't choose to go in if I wanted. (originally when I took the job, I hated training from home so much I would go to the office and reserve a room just so I could feel like I was in an office teaching, even though there were no students in the room with me.

it sucks because teaching people in a classroom at work used to really feel rewarding, it used to be fun and I got to travel a lot. but at the same token, if I wasn't allowed to be virtual, I'd have had to quit a year or two ago.

I'm back in the office 3 days a week now and actually loving it. My wife likes having the time alone at home as well, lol

some of my work involves physical structures and things, and it definitely helps to have everyone involved in decision making there in person looking at the thing at the same time. But, one thing covid really has reinforced for me, is how many jobs exist that are completely detached from anything material / physical.

i think wfh is a godsend for bullshit jobs with awful managers you don't want to be around (i.e. mine). if you actually like your coworkers and like what you do then it makes sense it would feel refreshing to be back in the office.

yeah that's my case, thankfully

(the latter)

The one big gap at my place - if your laptop blows up. As a phone representative, you get your shit literally in a day, they can't afford not to.

If you're me, they ask you a million questions and maybe you get one that day maybe you don't. Ten years ago, if you couldn't be without your laptop for a day, it was nbd. We we had four floors of classrooms you could reserve with a computer, polycom, tv screen, the works. You could reserve the room from your phone or one of the guest computers on the first floor.

Boom, you're square. Well, now, we sold like three of our floors. We got rid of the guest computers. You can only reserve a room on your phone with Samsung or Apple (I have a OnePlus). You gotta call.

If you get a room, half the time you walk in and the room is gutted. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, no polycom, something is missing.

If it's not, some of the computers are somehow still configured to our old company's server prior to spinoff (despite that being four years ago). Then you can't get in.

The last time it happened to me I went to the office and dropped off my laptop and they were like noncommittal on new one's timing. I had a class to teach in four hours, spent 3.5 trying to find an available room with working equipment, and nothing. I had a half hour to go and I walked back and said YO CAN YOU GIVE ME LITERALLY ANYTHING TO USE FIR A DAY and they relented and gave me a loaner.

i think wfh is a godsend for bullshit jobs with awful managers you don't want to be around (i.e. mine).

hahahah lol! it's also awesome because you save money on food and can do laundry at the same time.

extremely otm, also save gas $

It's exciting - parking at my building has been free from March 2020 through now, but we will be returning to paid parking in the next few months and they're raising the rates by 66%!

Love to have a pot of beans on the stove while I am reviewing contracts. Haven't figured out how to do that in the office.

right? also love to skip out and go grocery shopping or go for a run when everyone else is too busy to notice.

but i'm a bad boy and LOVE it if i can steal time from the state without any risk.

otoh i will gladly give all of this up for an on-site job opening up in a different area because i hate my manager so much.

I did a bump of coke with one hour left in my shift a few years ago, as I was at my friend's house getting ready for a party, expecting it to be a slow Friday, then someone sent me a question that required me to investigate something, and that was mega difficult.

I like dropping by the office so I can tell my coworkers about nickelback concerts

mysteriously the “please return three days per week” emails keep saying “except mh” at the end. my work is done

today I was asked by a trainer if I could prepare them Wednesday through Friday this week. Originally her manager had asked me to prepare her Wednesday, and Monday through Wednesday of next week, but the trainer said she had PTO on Monday and Tuesday, but that she was willing to give it up if need be. I of course said "no, your time off is your time off, let's do it this week and then pick it up when you're back".

and she had this teary-eyed reply thanking me, because otherwise she wouldn't get to spend much time with her visiting family, and I'm like, wow, it says a lot about how bad the workforce is right now where I'm being thanked for simply respecting someone's existing time off, which fwiw is what the default response should be.

if you actually like your coworkers and like what you do then it makes sense it would feel refreshing to be back in the office.

I like most of my coworkers and I like what I do, and the odd times I do go into the office I enjoy my time there, but I still don't want to do it more than like a day a week.

A few months ago my employer arbitrarily decided that people have to do three days in the office (two for me because I'm a four-day-week person). They say they expect clients will want to do meetings in person again, which is unlikely bc 90% of the clients are public sector and afaict most of them are happy working hybrid and sticking to virtual meetings. More likely is that they just spent lots of money on a new office (badly needed though) and want to justify the expense, plus a couple of the directors like a bit of presenteeism.

I plan to continue ignoring the rule. So far nobody has noticed that I'm rarely in twice a week, nobody cares, or nobody wants to confront me about it.

big fan of ignoring rules no one wants to enforce

Hello fellow jaywalker

We are all very much still kicking back against the return to a formal office, but our work is incredibly well-suited to flexibility and remoteness, though my husband's work is less flexible so I might end up going back in over the winter on his mandated office days so as to use the office heating and electricity rather than ours when I'd be home on my own through the day

I just realized I don't even know where my badge to get in my office is anymore, lol

this reminds me that I have to go through the absurd ritual today of going to the city government building to get the mail for work. We had an office in a storefront in a city building, but the building was not designed for direct mail delivery to the storefront, so our mail got delivered to the city government mail room.

Before Covid, I would just walk in during regular business hours, go to the mail room, and get the mail. Since Covid, this building hasn't been open to the public except for certain reduced services.

So now, every time I want to get the mail, I will go to the front entrance.
The security guard will amble to the entrance.
The security guard will ask me why I am there.
I will tell the security guard I am there to get my mail from the mail room.
The security guard will ask to see my City staff badge.
I will tell the guard that I do not have one, because I don't work for the City, but I work for an org that receives mail there.
The security guard will be either confused or suspicious.
I will reassure the guard that I have been doing this for several years, and that if they don't feel comfortable letting me in, I could call Lorane, the mail room supervisor
And then they nod slowly, back away from the door, and let me in to get the mail.

OK, I am officially Too Busy. I just got a part-time job which starts in mid-September. So that brings the full list to:

• part-time job in health care marketing (15 hrs/week)
• editing & ghostwriting work (10-15 hrs/week divided among 2-3 projects at any given time)
• freelance journalism (10-15 hrs/week divided among several outlets: Stereogum, Bandcamp, The Wire, the NYC Jazz Record, DownBeat)
• new thing (TBD)
• unpaid writing (weekly Substack newsletter, a book that's due to the publisher in November 2023)

Plus, I will now be a three-computer person, since the health care marketing job sent me a Dell laptop to work on, and the new place will be sending me a Mac. I'm starting to feel like I should rent an office.

lol do you have a half dozen different email addresses that you are supposed to be keeping track of at all times? ... this is my world now too.

I have three email addresses that I check on a more or less hourly basis, one that I only check while working for a particular client, and two others that I never check.

Grrr...I think I'm about to have to walk away from a job before it starts.

I interviewed for a remote gig which I understood would involve the company sending me a laptop. This would be the third laptop in my house (my regular one, one that another remote freelance client sent me to do work for them, and this new one), but fine. But today, in an email, someone at the company told me a) that I might have to come to their offices, a 90-minute drive away, to collect the equipment, and b) it's not a laptop, but a desktop computer.

Problem #1: I don't drive.
Problem #2: I already have a desktop computer and have no place in my apartment to set up a second one.

Either they're gonna find some way to give me access to their servers via FTP or whatever, so I can do the work on the desktop computer I already have, or I'm walking away from the gig. At present I'm getting about five offers a day from various recruiters, and I have plenty of work from other clients, so I'm good no matter what, but this is very annoying.

As predicted, I had to walk away from this gig, but the agency that put me on it felt so bad (they believed there was a miscommunication on their part, since the equipment issue had been there from the beginning) that they submitted me for a different gig which pays $6 more an hour and sounds even more interesting and is guaranteed 100% remote. Waiting to hear about that one now.

throwing in the towel and posting for another job/position at this company. at this point, I can't afford or even mentally handle the long drawn out process of posting externally, whereas it's a cleaner/quicker process here, and I can find a department that's a bit more calm and then re-evaluate long-term when the dust has settled.

in the last two weeks, we've had one long term colleague move to another position, and not be replaced, my manager announced he's leaving exactly one week from today, and another colleague (through no fault of his own) is without power in San Juan. thankfully he and his girlfriend are ok, but we were already understaffed, and when the manager leaves next week, there's three of us to do the work of six people. and once again I have the heaviest workload of the year, even after warning weeks in advance "I can't do this again, please find me help". nothing was done.

going to try and move to a boring, benign position, as htey will maintain my current salary, just so I don't literally have a breakdown, and then that will buy me time to look elsewhere and hopefully I will leave this fucking company for good within the next year, now that we have Medicaid in place and I don't strictly have to be homebound.

sounds tough Neanderthal, good luck with the move if you decide to go for it.

Yeah, good luck Neanderthal. You definitely deserve to be treated better.

Definitely the right move. You can't be supporting that much weight by yourself — get out from under however you can. Good luck!

Neando - I am so proud of you taking this step!

Yes! Good luck Neanderthal!!

On the plus side, I have 16 (!!).days of PTO scheduled between now and 12/31. Mostly due to being unable to take for three months and being on a 15+ year accrual schedule.

So a lighter year is coming on top of any move I make

Best wishes, great that your employers will pay you your same salary for soemthing less stressful. Not many would do that for you.

a lot of it is small things, like, so we have thousands of colleagues in San Juan. Obviously, almost all of them are gone this week, and the company has been sensitive to those impacted, and used contingency plans to ensure business continues.

but, of course, a lot of these people were in classes, and so my instructors ask the pertinent question of 'what will happen with them' so that they don't leave one terrible situation (having no power, possibly food insecure as a result, etc), recover, and then return to find they either have no job anymore. or they do, but they were forgotten, so they're expected to go onto the phones despite having missed 40% of what they needed to learn, and they quit in frustration.

so I ask, and I am soooo diplomatic in things like this, like, I make it clear I want to start talking about how we can accommodate them to return those who are able to return to a situation that is not stressful and helps them pick up and resume their career, and I get met with a smug "well first of all, their SAFETY is our primary concern".

No fucking shit, asshole. I've visited San Juan on business, I love the island. I love the people. I've been to the office, I've met the head of the building, who personally gave me a ride to the airport. I am still buddies with people I met and trained there. I'm the dude who lobbied us to update our training materials to quit incorrectly SUGGESTING THAT SJ WAS OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES, DICKHEAD.

one of our colleagues works there, and lives with one of our former colleagues, and we're concerned about them too. I'm NOT deriding the situation, but I'm actually trying to work these logistics so a) you know that there are going to be resources you are expecting that you are not getting, more than likely, so you don't accuse me of withholding this info a week from now, and b) more importantly, the last class of the season is about to start and if we don't get approval to move them there, and they resume in October, they won't know how to do their job, they won't have a class to go to, and their hiring company will be telling them "unfortunately due to no fault of your own, we no longer have a position for you", and then hey, now on top of recovering from a hurricane, they no longer have the income they expected.

like....try and insinuate I'm being callous when like, it was pretty obvious that I know and respect that, we still have to solve these things! hope you enjoyed your five minutes of being performative by trying to cast aspersions on me though.

xpost - yeah, absolutely. now, there's limits as to where I could go, I can't go back to an entry level position (I wouldn't want to), and I"ll probably have to stay same pay grade (or higher), but the work itself could be the type that is better suited to my brain and life and current stress levels.

one of my best friends I met at this company in 2005 and he still works here, and I am going to ask if his department is open because I could do what he does, and he has no trouble balancing his life, while raising his kids etc.

I make it clear I want to start talking about how we can accommodate them to return those who are able to return to a situation that is not stressful and helps them pick up and resume their career

I realize this doesn't accurately capture what I said. my comment was basically "they will not be able to return for a while - so that they don't have to stress about what's going to happen with their job when they return, can we proactively plan some contingency plans if many of them are gone another week or two, and think about moving them to our last class of the season, which has a much later hire date, and they could pick up where thye left off comfortably when they're ready and not have to worry that they'll come back to no job".

sorry for all that, i am done venting all. that helped clear my head a bit.