Working From Home

working from home: classic
working from home when your flatmate has been made redundant and is mooching around the flat with his annoying boyfriend all day: DUD DUD DUD oh god just go awayyyyyyyyy

I twisted my knee playing football last night (that's why I'd stopped playing!), and couldn't walk properly today as a result, so I emailed in sick to work, and told them I had various things I'd do online and that I'd be available via email and my work mobile. As result I've actually been marked down as "home working" today rather than on sick leave.

This is the first time I've done this (although I do, if off sick or on leave, generally check work emails reasonably regularly - especially when I was off after my hernia operation for instance), and it's been surprisingly productive; I've organised as many if not more things as I would have done had I been in the office, sent a gazillion emails chasing various things, edited a load of copy, drafted some new web pages, AND had a nap and stroked the cats. And all while wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that are full of holes and not fit to be seen in public.

i'm working from home today and it is fucking amazing.

-shouting abuse at co-workers who can't hear you in response to their emails
-singing along to records
-cooking your own lunch
-not bothering to pretend to work if there's a lull or you're done by 1600
-no commute obviously

I have been working from home for almost four years. I can only see advantages. If you're office based and you have Skype, Webex and so forth I really don't see any reason *not* to. The people who still insist on buying or renting huge energy consuming, Earth destroying office space (space which could be used so much more constructively, be it for housing, parkland or given back to nature) are truly behind the curve.

What I'm interested in -- and I'm interested to know if there has been research in these areas:

(a) Has anyone done serious calculations of how much energy we could save (inter)nationally if everyone who *could* work from home did so and secondly,

(b) from a sociological point of view, the focus has been on the negative ("you can't get to know/work properly with people who don't see and physically interract with, ergo groups of home working people are doomed to failure") but shouldn't we also consider the flipside, that home working allows for people to be judged on their true merits, rather than the ad hominem nasty stuff that comes to the fore when people have to share a space?

Heh, my wife just started doing this full-time and has liked it so far.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple people at my office must have asked about the possibility because the partners sent out this really passive-aggressive email at the start of the year about how it will never be a possibility here because, basically, "it is impossible to believe that anyone could work productively out of their home". It was just laughably obnoxious and reductive about any possible benefits. (Of course, several months later one of the partners' favorites moved to Texas with her husband and was suddenly approved to work "remotely")

I don't ever want to do it

with my immunocompromised status and the virus terror, I may have to

BUT

the plantation I contract for, at a pitiful wage, uses a "VPN" that requires use of your

PHONE

which I do not have and do not want

fuck apps, fuck texts

is that app PingID?

no

Full time wfh since Oct 2012. Best thing ever. Makes work not suck. Def still look forward to the weekends but I no longer dread Monday. Limits my "advancement" options but I don't care; if I could maintain current position now thru retirement I'd be thrilled.

makes personal traveling mid-week possible. it's harder now that I changed roles, but when I was working in implementations, all they cared about is that I worked, not where I worked from, so sometimes I'd head out of town mid week and bring my laptop.

did manage to go to Vegas midweek last year because i had no classes that week

I’m starting to wonder whether spending £4500 a year on train tickets so I can commute to London, sit in an office and have web conferences with my colleagues and customers around the world is the most productive use of my time and money. The big problem with working from home ime is that it is much harder to put a cap on the day. I’m more likely to agree to 7pm meetings or answer emails at 10pm than I am if I have physically left my place of work.

Full time WFH since May 2015. It is definitely harder to put a cap on the day, though I don't really have meetings or emails to answer (I'm a web dev)

Its the job content itself as much as the WFH but I've changed around my perspective to not see work in terms of hours or blocks of time like this, but blocks of stuff that I need to have built by the end of the week or month. This means the delineation between own time and work time is more entwined. Mentally I'm kind of always at work but also never at work, I don't know if its better or not but I don't miss my 90 minute each way commute!

I feel a lot of the risk could have been mitigated if more organisations were better at actually allowing people to work staggered or different hours - fewer people on public transport at peak times, less crowding on train/tube platforms (can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a crush of a few hundred people waiting to get on a tube train) and management doesn’t have to pretend it cares about having a coherent wfh policy. My parents have never worked more than ten minutes from where they live and I envy them.

I feel a lot of the risk could have been mitigated if more organisations were better at actually allowing people to work staggered or different hours - fewer people on public transport at peak times, less crowding on train/tube platforms (can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a crush of a few hundred people waiting to get on a tube train) and management doesn’t have to pretend it cares about having a coherent wfh policy. My parents have never worked more than ten minutes from where they live and I envy them.

WFH today. Probably one of many. Technically I am a 'remote worker' anyway, having been made one about a year ago, but I still come into the office as it's about 10 mins cycle away. Frankly I've nowhere to work at home - I have a small desk in my room that's uncomfortable to sit at, and my sofa and kitchen table are no better.

been asked to supply emergency contact info at work in case of

lol

"adverse weather closing the office"

politics is the art of what cannot be said etc

The big problem with working from home ime is that it is much harder to put a cap on the day. I’m more likely to agree to 7pm meetings or answer emails at 10pm than I am if I have physically left my place of work.

We have a pretty flexible working culture with a lot of working from home and honestly it's great, but it only works if you're prepared to treat people like grown-ups. TBH I'd retain the same boundaries as you do in the office. I don't especially mind working a bit later if I'm not going to be commuting home, but if you do have a 7pm meeting what's to stop you taking a longer lunch break or similar. As long as you get the work done when you're supposed to, who cares?

International meetings make things harder, but one way psychologically to put a cap on the day is just to make a clean break by immediately doing something that absolutely says to yourself I Am Not At Work Any More. Cooking, opening a beer, playing a video game, whatever. If you just start tapering off it becomes very easy to get dragged back into it.

I'm a freelancer, about 80% of my work is on-site at various places, just had my first conversation this morning about an office shutdown, guessing that most everywhere else will follow, shit is going to get tight.

no wonder u ppl are on ilx all fucking day

Been WFH since 2017. Love it. Possibly starting a 9-5 office job on Monday, though, and not sure how I feel about that (besides “thanks for the money”)...

The lifeblood of ILX the entire internet is bored office workers, moreso without the office.

its a turning point in history

in a bad way

let's run all the megapolls we've been fantasising about

i hope office buildings empty out like suburban malls and are repurposed into affordable housing.

Does anyone do this with kids in the house? Seems kind of impossible without turning child into tv zombie

Looks like this will be me from next week, or even maybe tomorrow. My plan is to move to the conservatory and stock up on educational software / film downloads for them.

I cannot work with kids disturbing me, this is going to be hard.

turn child into book and board game zombie imo

my carrom board is finally gonna get some use, v excited to get good

i hope office buildings empty out like suburban malls and are repurposed into affordable housing.

― Yerac, Thursday, 12 March 2020 12:56 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

I wish I could find that faux-pamphlet from a few years back about an office building gradually turning into an overgrown post-apocalyptic ecosystem

I've worked from home for almost 19 years. I expect it to all come crashing down around my ears any day now.

i don't maintain much of a social circle outside of work (mostly just my wife, my parents, and my cat) so I do think I benefit from the social aspects of coming into an office every day and interacting with people. i'm lucky in my position that I typically don't HAVE to do much interacting in any given day if I don't feel like it, but if I do then there are always people around who want to shoot the shit.

Does anyone do this with kids in the house? Seems kind of impossible without turning child into tv zombie

i do but there's always another carer around. she (child not carer) occasionally comes up to spin around on my chair but generally respects the sanctity of the office space.

that sanctity in full:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxqy9SJ-0I

Spare a thought for us poor sods who can't work from home, we're dead.

My first day of working at home. Not without its downsides, but I did watch an episode of Kojak during my lunch hour, and so without coronavirus I would possibly never known about this meeting of the titans

https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/190/1346970079_6.jpg

I'm less likely to brush my teeth on time WFH

I thought you’d been running this drill for years?

I had no use for it but bring it on!

xpost I have. but bad habits never change.

the only real prob i had working from home was a) animals, who would bark in the background during meetings/training, or b) roommates. right now, "b" isn't a prob cos he's never home and even when he is, he's quiet.

my brother used to walk in the door and intentionally try to get me to laugh while I was in a meeting by yelling non-sequiturs (a man in his mid-30s, going on 12). one day he came out the bathroom singing Billy Joel at the top of his lungs, forgetting I was working, so all of my colleagues were treated to that.

animals, otoh, usually the people on the phone go "aww how cute, what breed are they?"

One blessing of my job is that I have not been expected to read and respond to emails outside of work hours. Based on the rules for our WFH, my management seems to be respecting this.

Recommendation of uncertain usefulness to other ILXors, based on my previous WFH experiences: Get dressed, including putting on a bra. (In my specific case, bralessness soon becomes uncomfortable, sweaty, and otherwise not conducive to work.)

I draw the line at pants (US definition) tho

got access

the daily requirement to reoort back on the detail of my work have made me rather kindly disposed to coming in

one of the first days I worked from home in 2012, I was given a new laptop, and we headed into a web meeting (Skype, Sametime, WebEx, I can't even remember rn). then, like now, I just woke up and turned on my computer in my current state of dress, so I had underwear and pants on, but no shirt. so I log into the meeting, and the webcam comes on by default, and for two seconds, I see myself on camera, face to just slightly below the shoulders. then I realized this was sharing and my project manager said "uhh I can see you", so I ducked below the desk, put a shirt on, and disabled the webcam for-eva

Daily seven-way meeting this morning. Everyone hears a voice: "How much is the toilet roll?" Everyone denies it was them (or a TV they're surreptitiously watching). Everyone then mutes their microphone.

access revoked.

they didnt realise so many people would actually use it

guys I wish i was making any of it up, i really do

ha, i'm in LH and that has special network ('interwebs') for R&D reasons. it's slower than i remember it but...

g) too light in here and too much is moving

h) the snacking / lunch options

can be well worth it to walk to Japan Centre in Westfield, as user Fizzles kno

i) n people, n-1 desks. people who booked desks have been gazumped by the people who didn't know they had to but just sat down randomly. other people have booked desks and have been sat in meeting rooms all morning not using them.

j) zoom meetings where 80% of the people are within hearing distance anyway.

The plot thickens. Today I'm at work and the only other colleague from my team has just left... It's not a big team, but we're still twelve I think.
If the experience is almost the same, what's the point ? I hear the rent is huge and I can't say the same for my salary.

k) four people stood around the desk next to mine. two are actually working.

after a couple of years of trying to encourage employees to go to the office, it looks like my employer has given up and decided that it actually is a waste of money to pay for office space that is barely used. I only ever went once, but from what I heard, even the people who were in teams that regularly went always had to do the meeting through teams because there was always at least one person who was not there in person, so basically nobody got much of the benefits of actually being at the office. Coffee at that office was really good though.

the last time i had an office job, the coffee was great, but that was because i worked for a local branch of a food service company and the locals were snobs about coffee.

i just get coffee from any of the coffee places around my office 🤷‍♂️

(i left at 14:00, having been there since 06:45. another one of these next month, but i have holiday to burn...)

e) shared toilets

this one is big for me... there were some odd shit happening in our shared bathroom pre-pandemic, and not nearly enough stalls for how many people were in the office

Here at home, I have an old magazine and quality TP

for me the benefit of tinkling at home is a bidet and cheap washcloths (i can't just shake it and shove it back into my pants anymore, and toilet paper tends to get stuck to it).

of course a lot of places you also have _gendered bathrooms_. all of that trans bathroom shit, you don't get that here so much, and even if you did i got passing privilege, but god gendered bathrooms are fucking stupid. i'm sorry. they just are.

i don't want a lady to hear me taking a crap, are you crazy

that's why when my wife and i are both working at home i use the outhouse

obviously not a subscriber to the henny youngman school of gender studies

In my dream home (not yet a reality), the bathrooms and showers are outside and can't be reached without leaving the house

lol rush i did think that just as i hit "submit".. i guess that simplifies things

we had an earnings call and we had a fairly disastrous year, rumors of layoffs swirling.

pro: layoffs result in severance, get 2 weeks for each year of service (I have 19)
con: i am likely the highest salaried in my department (excluding the managers) - easy target
pro: i know how to do things nobody else does on this team
con: this company has proven nobody gives a shit about that
pro: i've survived every round of layoffs before
con: i've survived every round of layoffs before

office much nicer today with exactly 0 people in it. coffee still gak though.

it is just a coincidence that today is the last opportunity i will get to use the company bandwidth to download episodes of doctor who ahead of them turning off desktop downloads and me being on holiday for a week.

Neanderthal: that is almost exactly my position, right down to the years of service! Town Hall next Thu. I guess I would hear something before that.

Most teams now have "anchor days", where they're required to come on-site once a week. I'm not included in this requirement (in fact, no one has spoken to me about WFH/office policy in over a year). We've greatly reduced our physical office space (it started pre-covid) and now - for generic hot-desk set-ups - it's a single floor (100 capacity) in the western hub (industrial estate, Z4), and a single floor (65 capacity) in the central hub (old Victorian building, Z1). Canteen in former closed permanently spring 2020. If it's free food truck day, the place is packed. The Z1 office is generally pretty full, judging by the booking app. There are also activities in this business that can't be done (easily) remotely, and those teams have always been coming in (different wing of the Z4 office).

I choose to go the Z4 hub on quiet days, once every few weeks, and never to the Z1 hub. Better ambient lighting and temperature than I have at home, especially in winter. Monitor and chair lottery, however. Free coffee, tea, toast, etc. I feel like a bit of a ghost.

I think the return-to-office was much more keenly pursued in other locations.

(we were told, mike, that the industrial estate that we share(d) with you was being sold off and required a very expensive move somewhere else - all the climate controlled storage etc had to go. did that not affect you?)

((you probably saw the auction of a bazillion vinyl albums...))

I'm never there often enough to notice what happens at other units (it's pretty vast!) but, no, I don't think that closure affected us. That place was the only reason to want to come to that part of the world! I think I'd be pretty happy archiving that stuff for the rest of my working life, instead of doing... whatever it is I do.

I like to go out for lunch to break up the monotony of the day, work a little while out, then go home and finish the day.

today, I forgot somehow that I had a meeting at 1:30, and I only arrived at the McDonald's at 1:15. oh well, I'll attend it from here. this McDonald's is quiet, and it's a short meeting.

no sooner than the meeting starts, a very noisy pair sit very close to me and the barely audible muzak suddenly turns into a very loud Usher/Lil Jon "Yea"

lol....lesson learned.

The place I work for part-time is interested in increasing my hours starting in June; meanwhile, the place I work for "full-time" as a contractor is giving me additional responsibilities and there's talk of hiring me as a full-time employee. I really hope the part-time spot doesn't want me to go full-time as well; juggling both would probably start to feel like real work.

lol, it was a valiant effort Neando.

Going out for a walk at lunchtime and forgetting about that 1pm meeting is something I do a bit too often. Likely to happen a bit more often in the coming weeks with the spring weather.

I walk down to a park a few blocks from my house almost every day, usually stopping to buy a bottle of Guinness on the way.. rain or shine
Nice to get out of my place, even if just for a half-hour

I was inspired by my trip to Stockholm last summer, seeing people laying in the grass sunbathing: "what are theses people doing? don't they have work or school? Wait, I'm gonna start doing that too."

another monthly Face to Face day where everybody is meant to come into the office. but...

one is crying off with 'diarrhea since early morning' (thanks for that)

and the one who instigated these face 2 face days has just posted 'would love to have been there, but have to wait in for delivery'

elsewhere people are commuting in having moved away during lockdown, hours of train travel and literally £100 in one case.

the other two senior managers are a) travelling in after 11 after not feeling well this morning and b) on holiday today

but nigel HAS made it in from Penge. and a colleague who nobody has seen since in person since march 2020 is here.

after last time i booked a desk on the quiet side, away from the desk-eaters and the shouty people. nice view of white city, if such a thing is possible.

Going out for a walk at lunchtime and forgetting about that 1pm meeting is something I do a bit too often.

Having the dev scrum dailies right in the middle of my lunch break (it's not anyone else's 1:30pm) is a new intrusion into routine. Walking around the rec ground, earbuds in, trying to follow a screen-share on a phone.

Going in tomorrow: the Xmas gifts have arrived! Corporate-branded merch that the kids like. Ironically perhaps. In three years we've gone from: 200 'credits' to spend in our online store, shipped to yr house in Dec, to: choose two things only, it'll be three months before you get them, collect from the office.

The best thing about working from home (which I’ve done, for, gasp, 11 YEARS now) is the lunchtime walks in relatively mellow surroundings. Just essential for clearing my head. Every now and then the work day is too crazy or the weather sucks, but without the ability to do this I might lose it

Koogs, your description of your office is straight out of Barbara Pym's Late Quartet.

another in-office day on... Tuesday, the day after Easter holiday weekend. i can guarantee people haven't seen this in their calendars because nobody looks beyond the current week, especially if the week before is short.

(and last Monday all the mixer taps were out of order so no hot drinks (short of popping to starbucks))

Dear Andrew ****,

You have 1 assignment that is 1454 days overdue.

You must complete the following assignment(s):

- Executive Series: Securely Working From Home with Quiz

Lol

I am working from home tomorrow but cannot because kids are on Easter holiday and mother-in-law in staying and I will not be able to focus for one minute. So I need to go to a cafe or a pub, however though I live in a city (Cambridge) there are no cafes or pubs within half an hour's walk.

No point here, just thought I would have a whinge.

Coffe grounds and hard boiled eggs