When I had to travel to the office it was an extra £200+ a month in travel. 2 Hours onto my travel time when the trains were running on time which they usually weren’t. I was also inclined to spend money for food in town.
People also don’t want to go into the office where they are overly micro managed and away from the comforts of home.
My friends said they’re happy going in once a week but would rather quit than return full time.
My business has now completely closed all but the London HQ office, which is still fairly busy. Not the only company looking to scale back regional offices.
[deleted]
When I’m training I’m only meant to be in 2 days a week. However coming from working from home for the past 9 months, I don’t see how people work in offices. People just constantly chat and not work. On top of that the time and travel expense, buying coffees and eating out due to ease, shits too expensive. Just a bus a day is 3.60, that’s just under twenty quid a week purely on bus fare at the moment while I’m in full time. Getting a tea or coffee at 3.20 a pop on top of it. Fuck this, send me back home!
I switched back from remote only to a hybrid job because I felt like it strikes the right balance for me in terms of having more focused days at home and having more collaborative and social days at the office (but it helps that I actually like the people I work with at this place compared to previous roles).
I do think hybrid is the right approach for anything that involves some collaboration with others. If you literally go to work and don’t speak to anyone and are given a set list of tasks to tick off before going home, then absolutely remote working can work for you.
But if you need to discuss problems, iron out designs, train/mentor others, then it’s far more efficient to do so in person, all the tooling in the world isn’t a good enough replacement (yet).
That said, I do appreciate that there are introverts and people with various neurodivergence who find it difficult to work at an office, so I would hope wherever they work are taking steps to accommodate them.
What annoys me about this discussion though is the way its presented with a lot of hyperbole on here and on LinkedIn which is not unlike your parents saying they had to walk to school 20 miles uphill both directions and in the snow. Not everyone commutes 3 hours a day and spends £20 on lunch and coffee.
Before lockdown happened if you were in a role that could take a work from home day every now and again you might have to say to people “I’ll have to do that tomorrow as I’m working from home”. The opposite is true now, I go into the office and there’s just so many obstacles to do my work that I just chalk going into the office as a dead day.
Once I’m finally in the office after my commute I need to get setup which every time I’ve gone into the office has taken an hour because my work laptop will unsync the date/time if left off for too long and since I only use my work laptop when I go into the office and I go into the office quite infrequently this happens every time I go in. Since my date/time is wrong I can’t access any webpage when I’m finally connected to the buildings internet. I can’t change it manually and I can’t run the Command window to change it through there because I’m blocked from accessing that now on the laptop since they added more company “security” features to it.
So waiting for the laptop to realise what time it actually is can take upwards of an hour. Then once I’m finally connected and can access shit the internet is slow as hell because I’m sure the building we’re in for work has downgraded the internet as less people go into the office.
Good. Less travel, less carbon.
Convert redundant office space into housing.
2 days a week is what we’ve been asked to do.
They consolidated the two halves of my department into one office with hotdesks, so we just have a rota between my team so we don’t all show up the same day and end up without desks.
So far it’s been ok. They’re flexible with the two days a week so we can figure it out between us if people want different days so we’re at home for a delivery etc, or people who’s partners also work at the company etc.
I would prefer to drop the charade and just work from home for good, but I’m purposely not making too much of a fuss as they could make things worse
Good, it drives the tories mad that we refuse to be Meal Deal careerists who won’t sit at their desks looking at spreadsheets with a bland trio of misery whilst having to deal with middle manager Paul gloating about his new 4 for £139 Charles Tyrwhitt shirts which are just different shades of Gingham.
I work for a government department in a team that has no other people located at my office, but the Tories still want me in min 3 days per week to prop up my decaying city center. I ride my bike and bring my own lunch and coffee out of spite.
Save £100 a month, saves me an hour each way travelling (so was 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month), I get to spend my lunch break with my wife and playing with my toddler instead of at my desk.
I went in last week and got to listen to three people I’ve never spoken to before gossiping about someone they fancied for two hours while some other co workers seemed to sit behind me chatting about football for most of the afternoon. I don’t understand this ‘we are missing out on the workplace atmosphere’ argument.
Can’t wait for the Daily Mail to use this as their next outrage piece
Thankfully my place has reduced it to 1 day a week. I’m guessing it’s a cost of living thing to save us money
I work for a Local Authority and I go in once a month, the office is completely dead and they have shuttered two blocks already. The minute I’m asked to go to in more is the minute I hand in my resignation.
My employer tried a half-hearted hybrid model, and gave up. Recently got an email saying we are “remote first” or some shizzle to that effect.
I’m new to the company, and would likely benefit from meeting people in person, but overwhelmingly prefer remote! FUCK COMMUTING!!!
This is actually very accurate for me, I live walking distance to work and normally do Wednesday and Thursday. If it’s dead on Thursday which it normally is with me and two other people in an office of around 150 desks I use my lunch break to walk home. Much prefer it to the pre pandemic norm of 40 hours in the office
I once worked out that at a job I was earning £24k a year at and travelling an hour each way to, I spent around 60 working days a year commuting at a cost of around 20% of my salary on top, for a job I could have done just as well at home.
Now I work for a company that’s 100% work wherever you choose as long as you get your work done – and I will never accept anything else.
We work 2 days in office and 3 days at home. The 3 days at home I use to finish the work I couldn’t do in the office because of the noises, the meetings, the “banter”, the long lunches and the commute.
I haven’t been into the office in about 4months,amd I don’t plan to unless either something is done about the insane rail fares, or my employer offers to foot the bill.
I have to take 45minute train, which costs £50. £50 is around 1/3 of my pay for the day.
I am currently doing 1 day a week though my company has asked us to go back 2 days a week. A large number of employee’s are not going in at all though which is interesting as they are putting the company in the position of having to lay down the law or just acknowledge people are not going to be going back for as much time as they wanted.
If the company are sensible they would read the writing on the wall and not make this into a big issue but I don’t know which way they are going to leap at this point.
Personally love the office, actually ended conversations with some employers since they had no office presence, but even I can’t do more than 3 days any more. Having a day or 2 at home is much better for overall mental health while working
I wouldn’t be surprised if come autumn and winter this goes down further still with the further cost increases.
I cannot bear the amount of gossip, backstabbing, resentment, tales of misery, office politics and covert discussions about wanting to leave when I’m in the office for my mandated 1 day a week.
I write it off as a wholly unproductive day, and tell my boss (who is in another city) that I’ll be offline most of that day as people want to ‘network’ with me.
I thought I’d hate working from home, largely due to being isolated from my team and with my work life being so busy and draining at times… It can be hard to get in the mood to go out with friends. I also used to have massive social anxiety in my late teens to early twenties, so working in an office/with a team really helped me get out of my shell.
I admit I did regress a little in terms of being a little shy, but that’s something that I am working on with my friends, however working from home is much better! I can do my hours whenever I want, so if i one day I decide to work an evening… Just drop the boss an email and we all good to go.
Saving well over 200+ a month in travel.
I do go in once a week to do admin work and to natter a little, but I can’t see myself changing back to going in everyday, especially since I want to spend time with my wife and kids, when I have both mind you, lol.
I work for BT Group and we’re in 4 days a week.
In a bloody *telecoms* company, FFS.
I have gigabit speeds at home as I’ve got FTTP so I have no real need to go to the office, other than so the middle management can justify their existence. I could do my job on the moon if I had internet.
It’s mental. My annual train pass is “only” £750, so it’s not that expensive but it’s still the time I lose going back and to. 25 hours a month I’ll never get back is a lot.
Going into my office means waking up earlier, not having much do to at lunch time and overall losing 2 hrs of free time. Not only that but my office is consistently dead with 2-3 people in 1 day a week out of 20-30 who could be in. I was doing 1 day a week, now its more like 2 days a month if that.
I know for a fact many wouldnt stay on if forced to come in.
Just before lockdown in my city they were building several new office buildings downtown, I cant wait to see what happens to all that empty office space as there is 0 chance they will fill it.
I’m 100% WFH now, and I’ll never willingly work in an office again.
27 comments
When I had to travel to the office it was an extra £200+ a month in travel. 2 Hours onto my travel time when the trains were running on time which they usually weren’t. I was also inclined to spend money for food in town.
People also don’t want to go into the office where they are overly micro managed and away from the comforts of home.
My friends said they’re happy going in once a week but would rather quit than return full time.
My business has now completely closed all but the London HQ office, which is still fairly busy. Not the only company looking to scale back regional offices.
[deleted]
When I’m training I’m only meant to be in 2 days a week. However coming from working from home for the past 9 months, I don’t see how people work in offices. People just constantly chat and not work. On top of that the time and travel expense, buying coffees and eating out due to ease, shits too expensive. Just a bus a day is 3.60, that’s just under twenty quid a week purely on bus fare at the moment while I’m in full time. Getting a tea or coffee at 3.20 a pop on top of it. Fuck this, send me back home!
I switched back from remote only to a hybrid job because I felt like it strikes the right balance for me in terms of having more focused days at home and having more collaborative and social days at the office (but it helps that I actually like the people I work with at this place compared to previous roles).
I do think hybrid is the right approach for anything that involves some collaboration with others. If you literally go to work and don’t speak to anyone and are given a set list of tasks to tick off before going home, then absolutely remote working can work for you.
But if you need to discuss problems, iron out designs, train/mentor others, then it’s far more efficient to do so in person, all the tooling in the world isn’t a good enough replacement (yet).
That said, I do appreciate that there are introverts and people with various neurodivergence who find it difficult to work at an office, so I would hope wherever they work are taking steps to accommodate them.
What annoys me about this discussion though is the way its presented with a lot of hyperbole on here and on LinkedIn which is not unlike your parents saying they had to walk to school 20 miles uphill both directions and in the snow. Not everyone commutes 3 hours a day and spends £20 on lunch and coffee.
Before lockdown happened if you were in a role that could take a work from home day every now and again you might have to say to people “I’ll have to do that tomorrow as I’m working from home”. The opposite is true now, I go into the office and there’s just so many obstacles to do my work that I just chalk going into the office as a dead day.
Once I’m finally in the office after my commute I need to get setup which every time I’ve gone into the office has taken an hour because my work laptop will unsync the date/time if left off for too long and since I only use my work laptop when I go into the office and I go into the office quite infrequently this happens every time I go in. Since my date/time is wrong I can’t access any webpage when I’m finally connected to the buildings internet. I can’t change it manually and I can’t run the Command window to change it through there because I’m blocked from accessing that now on the laptop since they added more company “security” features to it.
So waiting for the laptop to realise what time it actually is can take upwards of an hour. Then once I’m finally connected and can access shit the internet is slow as hell because I’m sure the building we’re in for work has downgraded the internet as less people go into the office.
Good. Less travel, less carbon.
Convert redundant office space into housing.
2 days a week is what we’ve been asked to do.
They consolidated the two halves of my department into one office with hotdesks, so we just have a rota between my team so we don’t all show up the same day and end up without desks.
So far it’s been ok. They’re flexible with the two days a week so we can figure it out between us if people want different days so we’re at home for a delivery etc, or people who’s partners also work at the company etc.
I would prefer to drop the charade and just work from home for good, but I’m purposely not making too much of a fuss as they could make things worse
Good, it drives the tories mad that we refuse to be Meal Deal careerists who won’t sit at their desks looking at spreadsheets with a bland trio of misery whilst having to deal with middle manager Paul gloating about his new 4 for £139 Charles Tyrwhitt shirts which are just different shades of Gingham.
I work for a government department in a team that has no other people located at my office, but the Tories still want me in min 3 days per week to prop up my decaying city center. I ride my bike and bring my own lunch and coffee out of spite.
Save £100 a month, saves me an hour each way travelling (so was 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month), I get to spend my lunch break with my wife and playing with my toddler instead of at my desk.
I went in last week and got to listen to three people I’ve never spoken to before gossiping about someone they fancied for two hours while some other co workers seemed to sit behind me chatting about football for most of the afternoon. I don’t understand this ‘we are missing out on the workplace atmosphere’ argument.
Can’t wait for the Daily Mail to use this as their next outrage piece
Thankfully my place has reduced it to 1 day a week. I’m guessing it’s a cost of living thing to save us money
I work for a Local Authority and I go in once a month, the office is completely dead and they have shuttered two blocks already. The minute I’m asked to go to in more is the minute I hand in my resignation.
My employer tried a half-hearted hybrid model, and gave up. Recently got an email saying we are “remote first” or some shizzle to that effect.
I’m new to the company, and would likely benefit from meeting people in person, but overwhelmingly prefer remote! FUCK COMMUTING!!!
This is actually very accurate for me, I live walking distance to work and normally do Wednesday and Thursday. If it’s dead on Thursday which it normally is with me and two other people in an office of around 150 desks I use my lunch break to walk home. Much prefer it to the pre pandemic norm of 40 hours in the office
I once worked out that at a job I was earning £24k a year at and travelling an hour each way to, I spent around 60 working days a year commuting at a cost of around 20% of my salary on top, for a job I could have done just as well at home.
Now I work for a company that’s 100% work wherever you choose as long as you get your work done – and I will never accept anything else.
We work 2 days in office and 3 days at home. The 3 days at home I use to finish the work I couldn’t do in the office because of the noises, the meetings, the “banter”, the long lunches and the commute.
I haven’t been into the office in about 4months,amd I don’t plan to unless either something is done about the insane rail fares, or my employer offers to foot the bill.
I have to take 45minute train, which costs £50. £50 is around 1/3 of my pay for the day.
I am currently doing 1 day a week though my company has asked us to go back 2 days a week. A large number of employee’s are not going in at all though which is interesting as they are putting the company in the position of having to lay down the law or just acknowledge people are not going to be going back for as much time as they wanted.
If the company are sensible they would read the writing on the wall and not make this into a big issue but I don’t know which way they are going to leap at this point.
Personally love the office, actually ended conversations with some employers since they had no office presence, but even I can’t do more than 3 days any more. Having a day or 2 at home is much better for overall mental health while working
I wouldn’t be surprised if come autumn and winter this goes down further still with the further cost increases.
I cannot bear the amount of gossip, backstabbing, resentment, tales of misery, office politics and covert discussions about wanting to leave when I’m in the office for my mandated 1 day a week.
I write it off as a wholly unproductive day, and tell my boss (who is in another city) that I’ll be offline most of that day as people want to ‘network’ with me.
I thought I’d hate working from home, largely due to being isolated from my team and with my work life being so busy and draining at times… It can be hard to get in the mood to go out with friends. I also used to have massive social anxiety in my late teens to early twenties, so working in an office/with a team really helped me get out of my shell.
I admit I did regress a little in terms of being a little shy, but that’s something that I am working on with my friends, however working from home is much better! I can do my hours whenever I want, so if i one day I decide to work an evening… Just drop the boss an email and we all good to go.
Saving well over 200+ a month in travel.
I do go in once a week to do admin work and to natter a little, but I can’t see myself changing back to going in everyday, especially since I want to spend time with my wife and kids, when I have both mind you, lol.
I work for BT Group and we’re in 4 days a week.
In a bloody *telecoms* company, FFS.
I have gigabit speeds at home as I’ve got FTTP so I have no real need to go to the office, other than so the middle management can justify their existence. I could do my job on the moon if I had internet.
It’s mental. My annual train pass is “only” £750, so it’s not that expensive but it’s still the time I lose going back and to. 25 hours a month I’ll never get back is a lot.
Going into my office means waking up earlier, not having much do to at lunch time and overall losing 2 hrs of free time. Not only that but my office is consistently dead with 2-3 people in 1 day a week out of 20-30 who could be in. I was doing 1 day a week, now its more like 2 days a month if that.
I know for a fact many wouldnt stay on if forced to come in.
Just before lockdown in my city they were building several new office buildings downtown, I cant wait to see what happens to all that empty office space as there is 0 chance they will fill it.
I’m 100% WFH now, and I’ll never willingly work in an office again.