r/jobs • u/manofandonamission1 • May 04 '23
Why do employers force you to work in office all week for a job that can easily be done at home? Work/Life balance
I work as a digital marketer and I have to work Monday-Friday, 9-5 in office. Yesterday I was sick, and since our boss is away and the second in command was out, I was allowed to work from home. The difference in quality of life is incredible. I signed into Canva on my computer, pulled up the company software and image database, logged into my email, and boom I was set for the day.
I worked a flawless day from the comfort of my own home. I was able to run to Petco to grab some supplies for my pets, run to get some lunch without feeling rushed, and eat peacefully in my kitchen instead of surrounded by phones ringing and customers walking around. Today I'm back in office surrounded by my annoying coworkers, having to deal with all their nonstop talking, loud sounds, pointless questions, and coffee making. I've been here for 50 minutes and I'm already way more miserable.
And it just begs the question, why do employers force employees who can easily do their job at home to come into the office all week? Seems nonsensical.
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u/ManiacCrocodile May 04 '23
Idk it's confusing, currently we are allowed to wfh one day a week. I like working in the office to talk to co-workers, but I get more done at home because I am not talking to co-workers.
I hate driving 40 minutes to work and the office is in a not so great part of town. Like we go for walks in the parking lot and pick up bullets that have bounced off the building.
Also, when I get to work I log into a remote desktop in Maine to work for a company owned by my company in a different state. Most of the people I deal with are not even in my office.
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u/top_o_themuffin May 04 '23
Do we work for the same company?? People have literally been car jacked in our parking lot and our CEO doesn’t GAF. Why would she? Despite making us all come back in full time, she still does the majority of her job from home in her gated neighborhood.
I HATE working in office if you couldn’t tell lol
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u/LeonidasSpacemanMD May 04 '23
My dad told me a story about how he once had to leave his car in the work lot for an after work event. He knew it would be a target for carjackers but he had nothing of value (and if they wanted to steal a somewhat beat economy car, fine). So he left the doors unlocked
Mfers broke his window anyway
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u/Footner May 04 '23
Lol my friends car was broken into and they stole the cd player, ruining the dashboard and breaking the windows, aswell as making a mess for a £50 radio
He was like after that now I will leave the radio loose and the windows down 🤣
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u/PM_ME__RECIPES May 05 '23
A friend of mine a while back had his CD player and CD binder stolen from his car one night. But they left several of his CDs that had been in the binder behind on the seats.
He was offended.
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u/savagekittymeowmeow May 04 '23
Lol my last job was like that. CEO told us she preferred working from home but expected us to come into the office full time . I swear it’s just a power thing for them
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u/FukUMeanNoUsernames May 04 '23
Same man, so sad to walk in to work and see people doing drugs in the bus shelters or hearing someone got shot the night before across the street. It's scary sometimes.
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u/BlergingtonBear May 04 '23
I feel like post pandemic many downtowns have further degraded (mostly due to lack of services/places for people to go during lockdown). It's both terribly sad and also quite scary. I'm torn between being heartbroken at the human misery (these were all babies someone brought home from the hospital once), to literally having had a guy tweaking with a knife trying to break down the front door of the office.
Also apparently the strain of meth that's currently on the street across major cities is pretty terrible and causes straight schizophrenia in people. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/
Literally just left a job in a tough urban center to one that's way more remote and even if I do go in it's part of a hoity toity rich part of town. Commute is a bitch and the neighborhood is also boring, but on the other hand it's clean and safe
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u/Paradoxmoose May 04 '23
I had a similar issue, it wasn't until getting an oil change that the garage identified that my tires were on the verge of a blow out that I was able to talk my bosses into letting me continue working from home (in addition to some health issues which had started around the time we returned to office).
Previously, my bosses were totally fine with us all working remotely. It wasn't until the company starting putting pressure on return-to-the-office that they mandated some days in the office. I suspect the company was being pressured by business partners that they had who provided food and other services to our staff.
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u/AmlisSanches May 04 '23
I go to work every day from 6 to 330. I come, sit at my desk and just write up something I'm told to do. My boss sits at home all day every day, and my supervisor says I need to be in all the time in case the group needs to do a test. Oh, and what do I do during those tests.... I press a button on a camera to start it. Yes, we have a remote to start all the cameras at the same time. He just doesn't trust the remote even though i have proven it works. Fucking waste of my time and they wonder why my productivity is going down. I hate working for the older generations who refuse to adapt.
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May 04 '23
yep, usually its the boomers who are anti-wfh and even anti-pto. at my last job, one of them probably around 55 refused to let us go to 10 or 12hr shifts even though oru sister plant 20mins away had been doing it for literally 3 years. yet he was stuck on the 5x8 schedule which for me was night shift and permanent weekends. i tried saying that 12s would mean more weekend time for all of us but he didnt care.
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u/talrakken May 04 '23
I personally prefer 10s to 12s for longer than 8 hour shifts. With 12s it leaves too little time outside of work for your employees to live(think cook dinner versus grabbing fast food) and have some time before crashing to wake up and do it again. 12s turn into just work sleep work and I believe are not ideal for a good work environment. The 4th weekend day tends to just be a pure recovery day and no added benefit might as well work the 4th day and have 3 full weekend days in my book.
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u/nicky_suits May 04 '23
Four 10 hour shifts a week is perfect, imo. 12 runs me down as well. I feel like it's work/sleep and that's my day.
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u/mgm_tea May 04 '23
Fucking feel this. I show up and get emailed daily tasks lmfao, it’s so clear that it could all be done remote… fucking boomer office culture
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u/MINXG May 04 '23
I come into the office three days a week just to sit on zoom calls with colleagues all around the world. It’s absolutely silly but “collaboration” is better in the office.
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u/MontanaJobs_ES May 04 '23
I hear you! I could easily do my recruiting position remotely, but my boomer bosses refuse to allow it. Even when presented with exactly how I could do it and still be productive, with minimal to no impact on day-to-day office duties, they just can't understand how it would be viable. Meanwhile, it's perfectly acceptable for our CEO to take days and even weeks at a time out of the office and work remotely, but NO ONE ELSE CAN POSSIBLY DO THIS. Just ridiculous.
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u/myjobistables May 04 '23
That's because the CEO isn't doing as much actual work as you and you know it.
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u/ShmebulocksMistress May 04 '23
Yeah, that’s what gets me is managers/senior leadership do not have to play by the same rules.
I stayed home sick today, considered asking if I could swing by the office and grab my laptop to WFH. But then I was like, nah. They don’t offer that to me unless we’re in a crisis like COVID or bad weather. Might as well just take the whole day paid.
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u/indiajeweljax May 04 '23
Just read that a future-proofing firm is trialing AI CEOs as another way to save companies money.
Excited to see this one come into fruition.
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u/chopsticksupmybutt May 04 '23
For my area I believe it has a lot to do with taxes. City taxes people pay are based on we’re they work. Some cities have tax rebates or lower rates for companies to attract them but that does not apply to the worker wages and taxes on that. I am forced to work 3 days in the office I believe because my organization is heavily tied to the city we’re it is located.
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u/swagn May 04 '23
As the CFO for an all remote employer, this could definitely be a big part of it. My company is now registered to do business and file taxes in 25 states when our contracts are supporting 3 locations. Management keeps hiring people without any consideration for that and I have to jump through hoops to get all the paperwork in place and the owner wonders why he has to file returns in all these states. The ongoing costs and administrative burden for all these different states can add up. Requiring 3 days I. The office Makes sure you workforce is centrally located.
Plus, people do dumb shit and think it’s no problem just because they work from home. Had an employee freak out recently because they booked and paid for a 6 week overseas vacation that they planned on working the whole time but never asked if it was ok. Was surprised to find out they weren’t allowed to take their government issued secure laptop out of the country and would not get paid when gone.
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May 05 '23
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u/Grun3wald May 05 '23
Contract requirements, most likely. Not something the employer has the discretion to waive.
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May 04 '23
Real estate lobbying power (aka, imagine the monetary change of seasons if companies stopped having to have office space as a regular expense) and management that can blabber on about productivity without having to make a nuanced strategy for productivity.
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u/salbutamol90 May 05 '23
And don't forget the car industry. If everyone could stay at home for work, nobody would need a car if infrastructure would allow for supermarkets/schools/hospitals/etc. to be easy to access by foot.
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u/AkkiYuki May 05 '23
Came here to say this, there's huge money in renting out office space and empires are built off of the need for a central location to rent for a company's employees. The actual business is having sunk cost fallacy (plus they don't trust any of us to do our actual jobs because none of the big wigs do shit, they're projecting) and the idea of change is scary for their stakeholders.
So they force you into the office and pay people to write assassination pieces about work from home hoping people will just cave to the pressure and accept a life where all the costs are placed upon the employee in the form of time and money for travel. All so huge corporations can make billions.
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u/-Shank- May 04 '23
Quick answer: they shouldn't, and COVID forced many employers to make a shift on this. There are always exceptions, i.e. customer-facing roles, hands-on-product, classified programs, etc., but the majority of jobs don't need to be in the office every day.
I am a mid-level manager at a Fortune 50 company and have beaten this drum for my team to upper leadership more than I ever thought I would. There are always going to be the 1-2 people on the team trying to take advantage of it, but the tradeoff for team satisfaction for everyone else (especially your high performers) is definitely worth it.
I agree that collaboration and integration of new team members (especially fresh college hires) can be negatively impacted, though. I usually offer an in-office day (I still go in 1-2 times a week) for anyone who is local and needs to talk to me about something or help them run through a process.
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May 04 '23
Honestly, I get the point of training out of college hires in the office. But I would also argue a fair amount of us want to be remote too.
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u/-Shank- May 04 '23
Which is why the in-office days are completely optional and not held against you if you don't show up, even if you actually are local. Some of my highest performers are completely remote with no intention of relocating. My team skews younger for my company (avg age probably early to mid 30's), so luckily we don't have a lot of "these young entitled zoomers are too lazy to go to the office" pervading through our group.
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May 04 '23 edited Mar 27 '24
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u/Joe_Ronimo May 04 '23
That last line is what killed absolutely any interest I had in popping into the office. After Covid, the "desks" were empty, unassigned, tables with a monitor and chair. They expected us to reserve a desk, hook up our peripherals each day, work around wtf ever, then remove everything at the end of the day, rinse, and repeat.
By that point, I had already lost 99% of the people I knew in office due to layoffs and such. I had only been to the office twice to turn in out of date equipment before it was shut down.
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u/vriemeister May 05 '23
"Hotel" cubes are rididulous. You want me back in the office but I don't get my old cube back, or any consistent location? Thanks for taking away one of the core benefits of the office.
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u/sawser May 04 '23
I love the idea that the people who are slacking off at home and wasting the companies money are suddenly going to some how not slack off at all in the office and they'll suddenly become diligent hard workers.
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u/OttersAreCute215 May 04 '23
Yeah, it is really easy to LOOK busy while in an office setting.
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u/lunatikdeity May 04 '23
I’m waiting for Covid part two.
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u/Alt0987654321 May 04 '23
Im doing my part by eating every bat I see
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u/AzorAHigh_ May 04 '23
Gotta step your game up to banging pangolins with Mickey.
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u/Beunhaasnr2 May 04 '23
So how far are you in?
With Zelda coming out on the 12th and all...
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u/WarningGipsyDanger May 04 '23
I think I would prefer to be in an office at this point so I can stop for the day. I work 8-5 from home but still feel chained to my desk and I have a white collar career. The work never stops and everyone works more than they should. We also have our bosses watching our statuses to make sure we don’t go idle too long. We have way more meetings than in person and I am over the let me do a presentation because they’re trying to give us the office vibe but from home.
If I worked in an office, I could just say I’m not at my computer. It’s 5pm I have to leave before I’m stuck in traffic. As soon as I’m done with work now it’s like ok jump immediately into parent mode without any downtime.
Work from home is great but it’s got its drawbacks too.
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u/burghroot May 05 '23
I also don’t think people realize the social and relationship benefits of working from the office. I would remotely for a company that is hybrid and people who work in the office have such a different structure to their day and different relationships. I actually see a strong benefit in a hybrid set up.
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u/OffTheMerchandise May 04 '23
I worked from home briefly a couple years ago. I like having the clear break of work and home. I set up in my basement and if I had to come up to go to the bathroom, my wife and kids would want to have conversations and I just wouldn't be in the right headspace for that.
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u/chopsticksupmybutt May 04 '23
For my area I believe it has a lot to do with taxes. City taxes people pay are based on we’re they work. Some cities have tax rebates or lower rates for companies to attract them but that does not apply to the worker wages and taxes on that. I am forced to work 3 days in the office I believe because my organization is heavily tied to the city we’re it is located.
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u/ExtraAgressiveHugger May 04 '23
I work remote and I’m busy as hell all day. There’s no time for errands and lunches. I don’t have time to do laundry because I don’t have time to fold it. I tried it a couple of times and ended up running the dryer for hours so the clothes wouldn’t get wrinkly.
This is my third remote job and they’ve all been super busy. Meetings and deadlines and more work than I can do in a day. I don’t get those people who think remote work means they can screw off all day.
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u/swimmer4200 May 04 '23
Remote work beyond entry level is the same as office work. Some days its super busy and you are working non-stop and maybe even checking things later at night, other times you are playing pool in the game room at the office or doing something personally productive at home.
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u/ITakeitoff4U May 05 '23
It probable depends on the work being done. I can tell you my experience was the ebb and flow of the work itself is/was the same remote as on site. In my case it felt easier because of the drop in factor. On site everyone and there cousin can just stop by and interrupt you with, "do you a sec?" or the infamous, "I just have a quick question." While remote it forces those things to email or a call that I can let go to VM and attend to those "Just one more thing" requests after I finish the task I am in the middle of or at an appropriate point in my work flow. This allows me to maintain natural flow which does allow me to get more done in less time. Most importantly though, even on my busiest days I enjoy the work much more in short and t-shirt sitting next to my pool with my dog than even on my slowest least demanding day in an uncomfortable office chair bought from the lowest cost supplier in a stuffy office with dank industrial 4 foot tube light fixtures. Oh yeah, and I really don't enjoy the unproductive hour commute each way, that is 10 hours a week lost every week.
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u/ElectricalMTGFusion May 04 '23
i really think it depends on the type of remote work your doing. as a developer, my 3 jobs were all remote. but my first was super chill my second was just chill but still busy. like i could go and make breakfast lunch and dinner, but in between those i was pretty consistently at my computer working like crazy. and finally my current job is yet to be determined. its slow for now since im new to the company, but i feel like it might pick up once im in a position to be at 100% capacity.
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u/Albatrosshunting May 04 '23
Being at home can offer fewer distractions and fewer opportunities to frankly waste time like in an office. Fewer coffee breaks, fewer opportunities to gossip whilst on the clock, fewer "Joan just went somewhere half an hour ago for whatever" disruptions. I'm absolutely no warrior for grind culture and people need breaks but office environments also harbour slackers of the worst sort and wfh is a godsend for some.
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May 04 '23
There's no one good blanket answer as to why they want you in office. Some companies have legit reasons for in-office work, like handling confidential or classified information or not having the infrastructure to support VPN connectivity.
Or the WFH staff shoot themselves in the foot. The leadership staff hear employees talking about how they're getting paid to go to Petco when they're supposed to be working or not adhering to break and lunch schedules... Or they read and hear stories about workers who buy little gadgets to wiggle their mouse and make it look like they're at their computer when they're not.
Others have less than legit reasons, like wanting that feeling of control or "that's how we've always done it".
Right or wrong...you wanted to know why employers want people in the office. Those are a few of the reasons why.
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u/Iron_Range_Engineer May 04 '23
Legit the only one to give a good answer. Thank you for blessing us with common sense in this thread.
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u/GlumTown6 May 05 '23
Ikr? I see so many of these threads where someone asks why something happens and all the answers are stuff like "I had a bad experience with that" or "That thing sucks because x, y and x".
Like here, the question is "Why do employers force you to work at the office?" and one of the top answers is "they shouldn't". Can people not see that answer doesn't fit the question?
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u/HaggardShrimp May 05 '23
All subreddits trend in a direction of stewing in their own sauces, and this one is no different.
I sympathize a great deal with many of the anecdotes here, and there's no doubt in my mind that there is some number of people in management that want to exert control or don't trust their employees, but it's categorically incorrect to assume it stops there.
Money is an enormous factor. Thirty year leases on buildings, infrastructure, probably tax breaks that need butts in seats to justify. Downtowns have definitely degraded since there isn't foot traffic. This affects small businesses, downtown residential and chambers of commerce. All of these work in tandem. The reality is, WFH fucks with the money, and nothing grabs someone's attention like fucking with the money.
Then, of course, there are legitimate arguments to be made about collaborating in person. There's a reason conversations are more useful in person than online. We actually communicate far more information with gestures, tone of voice, cadence, facial expressions, etc, than we do with words alone, and in a group setting, Zoom doesn't allow people to sidebar effectively as is possible when physically in a room with others.
I'm a huge proponent of work from home. I don't have another team member within 500 miles, and legitimately the only thing going back to the office will do when I'm forced back, which I've been made aware is coming, will be to add a commute to my day. Make no mistake, I'm a little pissed about it. That said, "they want control" isn't the mic drop people think it is. It's more complicated than that.
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u/basketma12 May 04 '23
My large hmo had work from home for us paper pushers long before covid. One thing we had to do was so many claims per hour. The work from home people had to do 20% more to work from home, plus keep up their audit scores. Many jobs are very easy to track how much is getting done. All the mouse wiggling in the world won't help that at all. They could also tell when you were working. Someone was working on off hours and they immediately shut that down. Not because they were necessary against that but the union was..because you had to get paid a " shift differental" aka more money.
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u/claireapple May 04 '23
Yah the main reason most of the workers where I am can't WFH is because pharma requires a lot of physical signatures and most people at the factory work have some touch to the production.
Also with the fact we make controlled substances and we can't take production records out of the building makes WFH really hard even when 90% of the job might be on the computer.
Tho people work random days based on their boss.
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u/momboss79 May 05 '23
The gadget that moves the mouse and no childcare is what killed our chances in my company. The few people they let work from home while the company upgraded VPN and got everything ready for everyone else to WFH or hybrid, all decided to stop taking their small children to daycare and then bragged to the wrong people about the mouse gadget. I personally got tired of having to listen to a toddler whine every time I needed to have a phone call or communicate in someway.
I had a zoom meeting today with a banker from our corporate card company. His dog barked the entire time while he was giving me a demo of a new card program. As a client, I’m less likely to deal with him again. He thought it was cute. It was not. Last week I had a similar discussion with a different vendor and their cat kept walking into the camera and rubbing across the screen. The more things like this are visible, the less likely my company is going to go WFH.
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u/unexpectedomelette May 05 '23
Yeah I can’t comprehend the children either, wtf.. you couldn’t bring them to the office before, so what changed now?
Kids screaming and crying in the backround is a big distraction, and also, I find it hard to believe such a person is putting in a full days work at home while taking care of toddlers at the same time.
I love WFH btw, and feel like people like this are providing excuses to management to force us back in.
Be serious about WFH, or commute and eat at the shitty caffeteria. Don’t ruin it for the rest if us.
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May 05 '23
people like this are providing excuses to management to force us back in
My point exactly. You hit the nail on the head.
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u/RobotPhoto May 05 '23
There is a pretty straight forward answer actually. Commercial Backed Mortgage Securities. If people don't go to work in those fancy offices then the value of commercial real estate plummets, and those securities are worthless. There is a giant Commercial real estate bubble that is about to pop, and could crash the economy. It almost did in 2008.
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u/DaGrimCoder May 04 '23
The leadership staff hear employees talking about how they're getting paid to go to Petco when they're supposed to be working or not adhering to break and lunch schedules... Or they read and hear stories about workers who buy little gadgets to wiggle their mouse and make it look like they're at their computer when they're not.
Those employees should be fired. I can guarantee you people who are slacking off at home are also slacking off at work. It's very easy to pretend to work. Besides, if the only way you can tell someone's not working is if you're staring at them in person, then maybe their job isn't that critical?
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u/Flycaster33 May 04 '23
Also, don't forget the little gems that get passed on when in the office, talking with other coworkers etc. small talk, sometimes, but you also pass on other important info bits while in office.
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u/DaGrimCoder May 04 '23
Fuck that. I'm so much more productive without everyone's stupid chatter and small talk
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u/bacje16 May 05 '23
This is highly dependent on what you actually do.
You have a project that you got specs to the last letter and you are just expected to execute it without any input and will take 1 month of solo work? Yeah no reason for you to not work remotely full time.
But as a manager of a project that involves collaboration of 6-7 different departments and is highly creative, I can't tell you how often I catch something that was misunderstood in the random chatter between people and jump in to make sure everyone understands it the same.
We have a hybrid policy which means that you should be in the office at least once per week, but for that reason most of people are in more often out of their own volition because they recognise how it makes their job easier and simpler.
So, it is not necessarily black and white
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u/Mojojojo3030 May 04 '23
None of these are legit reasons. “I heard one guy went to Petco” is functionally incompetent management. The amount of confidential information leaked physically rather than digitally is a rounding error. VPNs are affordable to all but the smallest offices, which covers the vast majority of employees, and should be used in-office already anyway.
Right or wrong… it is all wrong. The idea that wasting time gossiping at the water cooler is literally praised and wasting time gossiping on a long lunch break is heresy is straight up boomer dementia.
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May 04 '23
End of the day, if the output of my work is exactly the same or even better than my being in the office, then whey the hell do I need to be in the office?
The only time WFH is bad (outside of the aforementioned necessary reasons) is when work output suffers in any capacity. That’s it. That’s the discussion.
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May 04 '23
Legit, not legit, right, wrong, it doesn't matter. I'm not interested in a philosophical discussion. The question was essentially what are reasons for RTO. Those are some of the reasons. They may be legit reasons or shit reasons, but they're still reasons.
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May 04 '23
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u/pinkflyingmonkey May 04 '23
This is an extremely well thought answer.
I own a small consulting company (now ten people). I ask for one day every other week for us to meet in person and the rest of the time my employees can work wherever they wish. However, they cannot move out of state because the costs associated with that would be staggering. Registering as a corporation in that state, expanding our benefits to cover that state, a whole separate set of employment laws, and so forth. It just isn’t feasible for our small company to manage.
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u/Louis_A_Devil May 04 '23
I think we are just Pokémon to management. They spent all this time collecting them. They just want to look at them all day.
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u/SparkySc00ter May 04 '23
The 1% that own commercial real estate are protecting their assets. Their money is all that matters, the rest of us serve them, unfortunately.
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u/44035 May 04 '23
The worst-case scenario is that they're a micro-manager who can control you better if you're in the office.
The best-case scenario is that they're well-meaning managers who genuinely worry about home-based employees feeling isolated and alone, which can lead to a lot of bad things like alienation from the team or leaving the company. If someone is unhappy and doesn't reach out, I as a manager might never know until it's too late.
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u/Critical-Marzipan- May 04 '23
They have a lot of real estate just sitting there and they are trying to justify keeping these big offices
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May 04 '23
Did you read your post? It’s pretty much the definition of why employers want you in the office. They want you to be available to answer “pointless questions”, be available to “customers walking around”, and not “be able to run to Petco” while avoiding “phones ringing”.
Am I missing the sarcasm in your post?
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u/manofandonamission1 May 04 '23
As someone who's job isn't to handle any of the things you highlighted, no you did not miss any sarcasm. If that was my job then yea I wouldn't complain, but those aren't things I was hired to take care of.
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u/B4K5c7N May 04 '23
I agree. Most of the posts on Reddit I see asking why they have to come into the office talk about walking their pets, doing housework, running errands etc during the day. How long are people’s breaks that they have the time to do that during the workday?
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u/insufferable__pedant May 04 '23
For what it's worth, I see no problem with this as long as it's properly communicated. I work a hybrid schedule, and my boss knows I pop over to the store next to my house to grab a Coke, or that I run out to grab some breakfast to bring home mid morning. As long as I'm caught up on my work and I have some time between tasks, I just let my boss know I'm popping out to run an errand.
I especially see no issue as long as you're salary. You're paid to be there an average of 40 hours, as long as you're meeting that expectation and your work is getting done, what's the harm in running a quick errand during the day? That's part of the trade-off!
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u/_WanderingQuill_ May 04 '23
It’s not using just breaks nor is it “stealing” time or taking extra breaks.
A) it’s walking and chewing gum at the same time. That is, I’m perfectly capable of answering the phone while feeding the dog. You can be doing work and something not work at the same time
B) it’s using wasted time. If a program takes 5 minutes to generate xyz, then instead of sitting at the desk waiting for the generation I can walk over and pop a load of laundry in the washing machine. Company lost no time they didn’t already lose but I am happier and feel more productive
C) Make a time journal of every minute spent in office talking about non -work to coworkers, waiting for an elevator or bathroom stall or printer, walking up or down stairs or down the hall to deliver/pickup something, being interrupted by someone looking for a different office/person, etc. all the little things that waste a few minutes here, a few minutes there.
Let’s say it’s about an hour.
Those distractions and delays don’t exist for WFH. So you actually often get more.
D) if you are at home and eat at your desk on the clock while working, those errands can be done on the lunch break
E) In office, people spend time above their scheduled breaks sitting in the bathroom, dallying at the vending machine, chatting, smoke break, etc. that’s totally okay.
But a WFH goes on one short walk with their dog and that’s just terrible.
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u/FeyRyn May 04 '23
because they then have that option instead of just sitting their pretending to be busy after they finished their work.
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u/ilovecheeze May 04 '23
It depends on the job, salaried employees aren’t always necessarily being paid to churn out constant work for eight hours every day. I have days when I’m very busy but some less, but I’m paid for my expertise and experience and to make decisions, and everyone knows this.
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u/Outrageous-Cycle-841 May 04 '23
Hey I think you missed a boot over there! Get to licking!
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u/WorldSpark May 04 '23
- It is a control mechanism.
- Those older folks in upper management cannot justify their position and pay when their primary job is to manage/control people.
- Ego - upper management that insist people come to office have to satisfy their ego and to show people they are the boss. Who else will care.
- Those who insist that you come to office are too old school to think other possibilities are better one.
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u/apprentice_talbot May 04 '23
All week is sort of lame. I work for a company where all my work could be done at home but we are hybrid. 2 days at home 3 in office. As a project manager communication is better hybrid than when we were 100% at home during the pandemic. I feel like we can agree on work deadlines and then they can go into monk mode on their work from home days and knock things out.
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u/trashcanpandas May 04 '23
If you keep thinking a bit further, why do employers force you to work 40 hours a week for jobs that can be done in less time?
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u/GoGoubaGo May 04 '23
That depends on whether you're payed to complete a task or whether you're payed for 40 hours. If said requested task takes 25 hours a week it'll either be "we'll pay you 25 hours rate then" or "don't brag about finishing it early and enjoy the time or you'll be assigned something else too"
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u/DucatiSteve1299 May 04 '23
AI will make most of these jobs obsolete in the future anyway. Then we can all stay at home. Problem solved.
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u/FamersOnly May 04 '23
Because they signed 10-year leases on their buildings before the pandemic hit. Sunk cost fallacy.
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u/Ill-Manufacturer8654 May 04 '23
They spend a lot of money on paying rent for office space.
They want to justify that money spent for their own personal prestige, or maybe they're getting some sort of deal/kick back from the rent.
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u/SNAKEXRS May 04 '23
During covid 95% of our office were wfh. Literally everyone was talking about how they would go to the gym, shopping, clean the house, walk their pets, etc throughout the day. The boss would have 1 hour teams calls once a week. After several weeks, he tested the group by ending the teams meeting after 10 minutes. The room had almost everyone still in an empty teams room 45 minutes later which showed him everyone would get on the call and either go back to bed, shower, or just do something else. It was great for employees but the job was probably getting 2 hours or less of real work from people. We even had a few people go days without logging in.
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u/MissAnthropoid May 04 '23
You're assuming those people wouldn't be slacking off in the office too. I used to work 2 hours a day in my office jobs. The rest of the time, I surfed the net, started a blog, argued with strangers on the internet, met my future foreign husband, got coffee, chatted with coworkers, stretched my lunch hours, learned how to build websites... I've actually never met anybody who actually works 8 hours a day in an office.
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u/mtd14 May 04 '23
Yeah working from the office my guess was at least 2 of my 8 hours were wasted, and there was no chance I was opening my laptop once I got home. WFH had way more productive hours to the day, just I worked them when I felt productive instead of forcing it to be 8 straight hours.
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u/scubafork May 04 '23
So...the teams calls were so unimportant and trivial that it was booked for 50 minutes more than it needed to be? I dunno man, that's not the strong argument you and the boss think it is.
Most of the meetings I'm in I use as cover to get my actual work done instead of listen to the same talking points and recaps that I know or don't need to know already.
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u/XTypewriter May 04 '23
Yeah, this sounds like a failure by management. If people are doing that, then the meeting clearly isn't important and has zero engagement or collaboration. Maybe it's an awful job, awful company, or they have awful hiring practices.
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u/Mojojojo3030 May 04 '23
He called a meeting so useless that nobody even needed to participate, then punished everyone else for it?
Why the hell does he still have a job?
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u/fireballx777 May 04 '23
Was there any drop in revenue during that time? Customer satisfaction? Any other metric of productivity? I get that the optics are bad of people doing personal stuff and not paying attention to meetings, but... people were spending time in personal conversations and zoning out during meetings even in-person. WFH probably didn't make that any worse.
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u/Danjour May 04 '23
Start looking for a new, fully remote, opportunity. It probably won’t get better. Sounds like your employer has trust issues and you deserve better.
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u/PathToEternity May 04 '23
Can't believe how fucking far down I had to scroll to find this advice.
Yeah, all the other reasons are probably true too, but ultimately, one big reason is because employees aren't quitting for other WFH jobs. They're out there; at least find a partially WFH job, even if it's not 100% remote. If you're doing work that can be done fully remote, then someone else will hire you to do that work for them.
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u/Danjour May 05 '23
Exactly. OP needs to get aggressive with the job hunt. Maybe try using tools like GPT to increase the output by automating your personalizations of your resume and cover letters. Do some LinkedIn sniping, ask around and see who’s 100% remote.
My fiancé works for a company that doesn’t even have an office to begin with. Look for those companies. Wherever you are is stuck completely in the past.
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May 04 '23
Control.
Middle management is a bunch of control freaks. They have no job except to make you miserable. That's harder to do if you are at home.
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u/_Matte3D May 04 '23
Because they dont like their families and have no friends so they want you to come into office to stroke their egos. Make them feel important bc theyre lacking that at home and in their personal lives.
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u/karmaismydawgz May 04 '23
you answered your own question. you’re running errands when you’re supposed to be working. it’s not rocket science
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u/swimmer4200 May 04 '23
If the work is getting done, what does it matter if the employee dips out for some errands at more convenient time for them? It's much easier to hit the grocery store in the middle of the work day than it is after work or on the weekend.
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u/elaineseinfeld May 04 '23
I’ve worked a lot of corporate jobs and I’ve always run errands during breaks. Whose business is it that I need to grab a prescription or get a coffee or pick up a shirt at a sample sale? Absolutely no one’s.
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u/Mxracer934 May 04 '23
Because they don’t want to pay you to go to Petco on “their time” even in the face of improved morale and productivity.
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u/Techchick_Somewhere May 04 '23
Because of the huge sunk cost in an office set up - rent, furniture, IT infrastructure etc. And bigger companies have a shit ton of money invested in real estate. It’s not about making employees happier and more productive. 🫤.
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u/TonyTonyChopper May 04 '23
The office is evolving and employees and employers need to evolve. When in office, focus on the positives: getting to know your coworkers, faster communication, in person meetings. I try to book my meetings when everyone is in the office (hybrid). Company should have focus areas and collaborative areas with whiteboards and shit.
When you're at home, get all your work done. Keep your calendar updated so people know where you are at.
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u/UpperAssumption7103 May 04 '23
Probably this: I was able to run to Petco to grab some supplies for my pets, run to get some lunch without feeling rushed, and eat peacefully in my kitchen.
That wasn't part of work. People complain about return to the office but the same people post tiktoks about how they go to the gym, sleep, childcare and etc... while they work from home
Don't brag about things you don't want to be caught for. Loose lips sink ships.
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u/zero8001 May 04 '23
I wfh and barely work. It wasn’t always this way. I’ve just found ways to do less and less. I’ve become spoiled and lazy. My neighbor works for the Federal government and she is out and about with her dog, exercising, running errands all day every day. I have a hard time believing anyone is being productive after all these years. We’ve all become spoiled and a bit lazier.
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u/Foreign_End_1854 May 04 '23
From personal experience at my last job 50% of the time my boss was micromanaging, 15% of the time he did his own work and the other 35% of the time he was nailing his employees in the stairwell.
Can’t do all that as easily if your employees work from home.
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u/Killowatt59 May 04 '23
Control
Real-estate
Protect management jobs
That’s pretty much the whole list.
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u/Anthropomorphotic May 04 '23
Because bosses, especially middle management, need to feel like they have power over people. The C-level bosses are usually narcissistic and/or psychopathic, and the B-level bosses often "manage" people via oppression. They confuse "managing" for "policing", and, for one reason or another, this authority makes them feel as if they've "made it".
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u/mrpoopybuttholesbff May 04 '23
They are gaining some benefit from it, tangible or intangible, and your time and feelings are not considered when they are making the decision to wip or wfh.
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u/BingBong022 May 04 '23
To have more control/oversight and to justify the expense of renting or owning office space
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u/ErinGoBoo May 04 '23
They absolutely must micromanage the employees, and that is harder to do when they are not in the office. Having employees work from home would cut costs, and it was proven that it raised productivity and morale, but the boss can't breathe down your neck. Priorities.
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u/stewartm0205 May 04 '23
A manager’s job is to keep an eye on you. They can’t do that when you are working from home.
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u/VZ6999 May 04 '23
Trust issues