Re:The return to the office could be the real reason for the...
by faeriechangling on Friday February 17, 2023 @05:24AM
(#34832999)
When I went home, I saw myself slacking off. When I went back to the office, I saw myself slacking off, and initially I thought like many people "wow work from home has pros and cons".
Once I adjusted more to the work from home lifestyle changed and I started to get much much healthier. As I got healthier, I started feeling like working more. Then I started getting not slightly but a LOT more productive than I was in the office, and I also started taking on more leadership roles, and confidently doing things I struggled with before like the more soft skills side of things.
I started to really tally up what exactly the cost of working in offices was. The unpaid labour of commuting, the stress of commuting, the consumption of narrow food options (pack lunch or restaurant food), the shitty work desk setup, the loud environment, the social pressure to "look busy" and work in socially acceptable ways (For instance, no fidgeting). I have coworkers who got into car accidents, are still screwed up, and for WHAT?! They never wanted to come into the office, they were mandated to come in during bad road conditions, what happened was outright predictable. Why is travelling tens of miles or kilometres every day (or buying high value property) part of computing jobs where you login to a remote computer anyways, would we accept that if it were not already the norm?
I've come to appreciate what the two points of return to office are, in regards to jobs which can be done 100% remote. The first purpose is to stroke managements ego by having all their reports do a performance for them. I'm not a performer, and I'm tired of being sick and stressed and tired and doing a worse job to satisfy some deranged manager's ego, that's not what my job is, that's not what I went to school for. The second use is to make your employees lives so miserable that they will want to quit their jobs so you don't have to lay them off, since the law doesn't properly recognise such tactics as constructive dismissal yet, and management can exploit this.
Once I adjusted more to the work from home lifestyle changed and I started to get much much healthier. As I got healthier, I started feeling like working more. Then I started getting not slightly but a LOT more productive than I was in the office, and I also started taking on more leadership roles, and confidently doing things I struggled with before like the more soft skills side of things.
I started to really tally up what exactly the cost of working in offices was. The unpaid labour of commuting, the stress of commuting, the consumption of narrow food options (pack lunch or restaurant food), the shitty work desk setup, the loud environment, the social pressure to "look busy" and work in socially acceptable ways (For instance, no fidgeting). I have coworkers who got into car accidents, are still screwed up, and for WHAT?! They never wanted to come into the office, they were mandated to come in during bad road conditions, what happened was outright predictable. Why is travelling tens of miles or kilometres every day (or buying high value property) part of computing jobs where you login to a remote computer anyways, would we accept that if it were not already the norm?
I've come to appreciate what the two points of return to office are, in regards to jobs which can be done 100% remote. The first purpose is to stroke managements ego by having all their reports do a performance for them. I'm not a performer, and I'm tired of being sick and stressed and tired and doing a worse job to satisfy some deranged manager's ego, that's not what my job is, that's not what I went to school for. The second use is to make your employees lives so miserable that they will want to quit their jobs so you don't have to lay them off, since the law doesn't properly recognise such tactics as constructive dismissal yet, and management can exploit this.