There are a lot of news articles about “back to the office”, but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let’s provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible.
I would like my work computer to do Windows updates lightning quick in the office. It currently takes weeks, in or out of the office. Stopping in for a day makes no difference, so there is no point. Now, if there was a point, I would go in.
What would get you in the office?
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- Reliable, fast and comfortable public transport.
- Private room or at least a semi private room so that I can get work done without disturbances.
- Increased salary to compensate for my lost time due to commuting.
A gun held to my head?
Money
Teleporter. (I hate commutes.)
An office in my city and within 10-15 minutes walking distance.
Free or affordable, clean, safe public transit that takes me no more than 20 minutes from the time I set foot out my front door to setting foot in the office, and a team/company that doesn’t care if I decide to work the day remotely for any reason whatsoever. I also like the other guy’s comment about the workplace being a nice, inviting place to be since my cube is barren and probably 20+ years old.
Also the rest of y’all need to stay home when you get sick instead of bringing that shit into the office.
Some cubicle farms are just sad. Coffee stains from 20 years ago, along with old fart smells.
I love staying at home when I am “too sick for the commute, but not so sick to answer a couple emails.”
Nothing pisses me off more than hearing some dude hacking up his lungs just across the hallway.
I’ll call in sick a few days later just because, and say there must be something going around. At least it will get me a few days away from the Sickies so I can potentially avoid getting it.
Careful what you wish for regarding cubicles. I would kill for a cubicle in our office. When companies implement these modern collaboration space ideas, it’s all about hotel desks, movable workstations, short or no dividers and open air spaces.
Having a cubicle to myself was fucking awesome. Now there is no privacy, no space to call my own, no place to simply have a phone conversation without everyone within 50 feet of me hearing every word.
Literally nothing. If my remote request is rejected, I’m quitting with nothing else lined up. If I can’t find remote work, I’ll retire.
62% more pay
And if you were in one of those companies pushing hard to get people back in the office, what pay cut would you be willing to take to make your job fully remote? (I swear I’m not in HR! )
I’ve taken 3 pay cuts so far. Had 3 pay increases since covid forced wfh and each time it’s been less than inflation. I haven’t pushed for more because I’ve been left alone and am one of the last employees here still 100% wfh.
I’m on salary, I already had somewhat flexible hours when I was in the office, had to start at a specific time but could leave when the bulk of my work was done and then would log on from from at the end of the day and tidy up anything that came in after I left. It wasn’t uncommon for me to only be in the office for 3-4 hours on a typical day and my commute was 45mins to an hour, so time wise I now I spend ~50% less time at work.
1 million dollars every time I have to be on the highway so 2 miles per day hahaha
Oddly specific
What would get me into the office? Physical force.
Absolutely nothing. I don’t think even money could do it for me at this point. Aside from all the obvious reasons to hate commuting and then sitting for 8 hours doing maybe 2 hours of work, I have never been healthier.
I have chronic migraines. Well, I used to(?). I haven’t had a single bad migraine in years. Yeah, I’ve still had a couple in the last few years, but they didn’t put functioning at a complete standstill. I wasn’t stuck in bed, hoping for death. The lack of artificial light is a big deal. The not having to stress myself out by commuting, then being stuck there is also another
On top of that, I eat 1000% better, easier. I can exercise instead of commuting. There’s literally no benefit to working in an office for me, but it has a metric fuckton of drawbacks.
How about a raise?
Read my second sentence. I literally couldn’t have spoon fed it to you any more.
sitting for 8 hours doing maybe 2 hours of work
This is funny, and something I’ve thought about and talked about with coworkers a lot. When I first started permanent WFH at the beginning of COVID, I used to feel really guilty about doing random chores and stuff around the house during the workday. I felt like I always had to be “on” trying to busy myself or whatever, even if there wasn’t really work to do.
Over time as we have done a partial return to office and I realized I do even less work on the days we go in, I have done a lot of reflection on the way we used to work when we were 100% in the office pre-covid. My conclusion is that on any given day most people were doing between 1-4 hours of actual work, and the rest of the time was spent wandering around, bullshitting, taking walks, browsing the Internet, etc. And everyone thought that was just fine. But a solid half of most days was literally wasted doing nothing productive at all.
So these days I have shifted my attitude to one that is focused on getting my assigned work done, and being somewhat flexible on meeting times and when I can accomplish things. In return I don’t feel guilty if I need to mow the lawn or do some laundry during the day. I have a smartphone and I get notifications. If there is something urgent I’ll drop what I’m doing to handle it. If it can wait, I finish up then take care of it. It’s greatly helped my sanity and I think it’s improved my work, too. We do go to the office once a week or so but I honestly plan to get almost nothing accomplished on those days and consider it a bonus if we do get work done.
I typed out a long reply, and idk where it went but the highlights are
I saw the bullshit of it back in the 90s when I started working. I had MANY arguments with my boomer mother about it. Of course her opinion was shut up, put my head down, and do whatever they say, to keep my job. My opinion was fuck that fire me.
I have never had a job (for someone else) where I couldn’t 100% complete it, accurately in 2 hours a day, max. Often less.
I’m self employed now, and I have never been healthier, happier, or more mentally stable. I have two chronic conditions, that can be/are debilitating, which have never been better controlled. I know I can’t be alone on that.
WFH is 100% better for everyone, and those that WANT to go back to the office, should work that out with their employer. WFH has shown to improve ever metric on the workers lives, and not to mention the reduction in pollution and road congestion.
To bring another opinion to all the other comments, each week I’m trying to go into the office more often than I already do (2-3/5 times per week currently) which I feel is not much, but after reading some comments, you guys must think I’m a maniac already lol.
Now why would someone do that? First, I got a new job like half a year ago and I absolutely love it. First of all, my current commute time is around 25 minutes, door to door, in clean public transportation. Second, we got free water, Softdrinks, Coffee, Snacks, even fruits and cereal in the office. So no matter what I need to energize, it’s there. At home, I usually don’t. Or I do, but still, it’s better to have ‘free’ you know?
Also, I love my colleagues. They’re very young on average, incredibly skilled and highly intelligent. Also from many different countries. It’s always fun talking to them and getting different insights on all kinds of things. We also usually take smaller breaks to play table tennis or table football.
Home office is great too, for days I really need to focus or have a lot of meetings. Or have private appointments, deliveries, or whatever. I can also take Homeoffice whenever I want and no one cares at all.
But still, it gets boring and lonely. Being in the office is great for my social factor and currently feels more like going to see friends, rather than working.
See you’re very clearly a textbook introvert so on-site work around people feels rewarding to you.
I also like going to the office to socialise. But I absolutely don’t plan on getting any of my actual work done on those days.
If I wanted to work, I would stay home.
See you’re very clearly a textbook introvert
Wtf how could you tell, it’s 100% correct
Whoops rofl I meant the opposite of what I typed.
Lol wtf haha. I’m not really an extrovert tho, I just really enjoy being around people and having fun… even though I can never start a conversation with someone myself, if I haven’t known them for years already.
I’m also awful at keeping up conversations, my smalltalk game is straight up non-existent. Maybe one leads to another or so. But when I warmed up with others I tend to love being around them. At least for a while, sometimes I need to refresh my social battery again, but I feel we’re all kinda like that
Fair fair fair. I’m definitely not going to tell you what you are, but this:
sometimes I need to refresh my social battery again, but I feel we’re all kinda like that
Is really textbook extrovert, haha. Like I love hanging out with people too, and chatting, and grabbing pints, etc. But because I’m an introvert, it drains me. So if I go to a big event, I need a couple of weeks to myself before I feel like I have the energy to do that again.
I mean it actually is the exact to me but I realized, if I do that I just drift off into it more and more extreme. Until I feel quite lonely so now I push myself to be less like that haha
Make it optional for starters, followed by compensation for gas for anyone coming in.
3x base salary at least. No-thought commute, so maybe provide transportation for me. I currently live what is about 1.5hrs away each way now and there isn’t a public transportation option.
Commute time should count towards my “8 hour work day”. No distracting desk drive bys. Provided breakfast and lunch or an optional lunch stipend or whatever to cover if I go somewhere near the office.
Not sounding great for the company? It isn’t meant to. It would be nearly impossible to get me to go back to the office, as it should be.
I’m not being unreasonable. I am at least twice as productive since working from home and even simple internal reports can prove that. I’m also 2-3x happier and less stressed, nothing can really replace that.
My doc asked me to buy a thing that graphs my blood pressure. I happened to be using it before and after I quit my increasingly toxic RTO job and landed a tricky interview with a job with ‘remote except where legally required’ in its union contract.
The graphing is neat. It goes steadily up, up, up, up and then goes back down starting on the day I quit.
- 50% raise
- Private 12x15 office
- Free pot gummies (for Fridays, of course;)
- Free transportation to/from office
- Every day is Bring Your Dogs To Work Day
Time. Can’t spend 3 hours a day commuting to work.
