The WFH Thread

[Incandenza]

My old director (she retired at the end of June) would still wear her blazer and shirts that she would wear to the office on all of our video calls.

The power company has scheduled an outage for us next Tuesday, between 9am and 7pm. Not sure what I'll be able to do. I'm salaried so technically if I do any sort of work for the day I've worked, and I don't need to take leave. My AD tries to avoid acknowledging that reality, though and wants us to be on an 8am-5pm schedule (I use to be 7am-4pm). At this point I'd also be fine if I got the go-ahead to work from the office, since I'd quite likely be the only one on our floor.

[Balderdasha]

My new job is likely to be entirely working from home, at least until early 2021. We're clearing out the home office accordingly.

[pebblethefish]

Any start date yet?

[San Bernardhinault]

I've just got the internets at my new house, so I guess I'm working from home again. I preferred having an excuse to do nothing.

[gt3]

I should imagine most people here have read this already:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...king-from-home

It is something that has certainly resonated for me. The first few months of this lockdown were reminiscent of my time working in Sierra Leone in 2017. That was sometimes a very lonely period – although I haven't had any guns pointed at me in Woolwich where I live (yet!) as I did in SL occasionally. Missing ones colleagues and the micro-interactions is incredibly powerful and hugely bonding. I've come to terms with it now, and recognise that this is my future for the foreseeable, with perhaps one day a week in the office (from September onwards it would seem).

[WOM]

Yeah, September might look very different IF the younger kid goes back to school and IF the older kid is working and IF my wife is back in the classroom, rather than teaching from home.

[lambers]

I had to go into the office today for the first time in two months (and will do regularly once per fortnight from now on), as the central operations team now need a representative from our department personally available to them during regular working hours.

It didn't persuade me that I want to go back permanently, I was no more productive than working from home, had no more interaction with people than at home (90% of conversations I had today were had via Teams with people still working from home), and the ops team didn't even pop their head through the door to say hello, let alone ask a question. And every time I moved from my desk to go to the loo or to get some air, I had to put on a mask and hand-gel, neither of which I have to do at home!

[S. aureus]

I've been conflicted on whether to set myself up properly at home. On the plus side, it would make parts of my job much easier if I had a decent sized monitor (rather than the laptop screen) and would no doubt be better for my posture and all. On the flip side is that I'd need to move some other furniture to accommodate a desk, and I don't really have anywhere to move it to (which is probably the biggest reason, that and pure laziness), plus I am currently profoundly uncertain of my working future. The latter is due to my own desires, rather than out of any fear that I'm going to be fired or anything.
I suppose on balance I should probably get the desk and all.

[ursus arctos]

Get the desk

It will be helpful to the kids even if you don't use it

[San Bernardhinault]

Get set up properly. You might only be using it for a couple of months. Although I doubt it: common sense says that California's white collar businesses should remain work from home until case counts are near zero (which would be probably 5 or 6 months if everything goes well) or there's a vaccine (which might never happen), and another half year of shitty posture and shitty conditions is a horrible idea for anyone. But even if you go back to work in early September due to stupid management decisions, you have something to return to of it flares up again, you'll be better able to WFH if you want to take days away from the office to look after your kids, and, as Ursus says, other people in your house will benefit from a good desk and monitor.

[Balderdasha]

Any start date yet?

No. This is not a fast-moving organisation. I originally applied for the job in April. I won't find out my start date for at least a few weeks.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Access to my office today- here’s my chair, screen, keyboard etc outside my office window

[Nocturnal Submission]

Looks like you've taken the curtains too.

Pebble will be jealous.

[Fussbudget]

I should imagine most people here have read this already:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...king-from-home

It is something that has certainly resonated for me. The first few months of this lockdown were reminiscent of my time working in Sierra Leone in 2017. That was sometimes a very lonely period – although I haven't had any guns pointed at me in Woolwich where I live (yet!) as I did in SL occasionally. Missing ones colleagues and the micro-interactions is incredibly powerful and hugely bonding. I've come to terms with it now, and recognise that this is my future for the foreseeable, with perhaps one day a week in the office (from September onwards it would seem).

I sympathise with people who feel like this, but the people in that article sound like they work in very different offices from any I've ever been in. I actually snorted out loud when I got to this line:

Progressive employers are racing to find ways to recreate the joys and perks of office life.

Also the lass who is using a pile of records to prop up her laptop at the right height is going to end up warping them.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The joys and perks of office life.

Hahahahahahahaha

[Snake Plissken]

The bit about balancing a laptop on vinyl got to me as well. That’s not a problem of working from home, that’s a problem of only being able to afford to live in a shoebox.

[DCI Harry Batt]

My chair has started to play up a bit. If this had happened two weeks ago, while all the DSE / equipment stuff was going on at our place, it would have been easy to sort. Now it's going to be a pain.

[Felicity, I guess so]

The curtain used to be in our dining room- very thick velvet and ideal for transporting fragiles. It was a lot darker green in its curtain days

[Moonlight Shadow]

I sympathise with people who feel like this, but the people in that article sound like they work in very different offices from any I've ever been in. I actually snorted out loud when I got to this line:



Also the lass who is using a pile of records to prop up her laptop at the right height is going to end up warping them.

I was also left puzzled by that article. There is something wrong when someone's life is so reliant on being with work colleagues for their mental wellbeing. Sympathy for those in cramped flats or shared flats mind.

[ad hoc]

No, speaking as someone who hasn't had colleagues for 15 years now, there is an adjustment to make, and I think it is understandable that some people struggle with it. I know I did for a time. It's not that people need the workplace or the office to have relationships and conversations and human interaction, it's that this is what the majority of us are familiar with, and making the transition to something different is not something which comes naturally.

[HORN Reborn]

Thanks, gt3, for that link. I hadn't read that article (or a number of related ones linked to on that page) so was surprised at the extent that young people seem to suffer when WFH.

WFH is something I've done on and off for a few years. Each episode begins with me zealously striving to prove that I'm not taking the piss, though things tend to drop off if I don't have much to do, whereas if I was in the office I'd feel inclined to simply find something work-related to do.

Similarly my sense of isolation grows the longer I WFH. I remember once getting to the end of my tether so driving 200 miles to spend a day in our Milton Keynes office. Ironically I turned out to be the only one onsite that day.

Having said that, the office I normally inhabit is full of people I couldn't care less about. That feels an astonishing admission as I actually consider myself a people person. The one work friend I had left the business 11 months ago and I seriously could have bawled my eyes out the day she said goodbye.

Ergo feelings of isolation are only assuaged by being with the "right type" of people.

[pebblethefish]

My chair has started to play up a bit. If this had happened two weeks ago, while all the DSE / equipment stuff was going on at our place, it would have been easy to sort. Now it's going to be a pain.

We had one of those desk assessments sent to us while we've been WFH. A lot of the questions were a bit irrelevant - "Does your chair have a swivel mechanism?" Well, no. It's a bed.

[Nefertiti2]

had an intersting conversation the other day with someone who works as the boss of company commissioning designers. They said that the biggest problem they now faced was that when they asked a designer to do a project they did exactly what was asked of them.

Previously they would moderate the brief because of the conversations they had and the work was usually better because it had more influences.

[DCI Harry Batt]

ptf - I answered mine on the basis of work-provided equipment, so essentially said that everything was unsuitable. I don't want them have a record of my saying everything is fine.

[S. aureus]

I can certainly imagine that the loss of interacting with people at work would have been very hard for a reasonably long period of my life. I pretty much don't make friends with people who I am not in close proximity to for a lengthy period, as I am very slow to open up, which has limited my circle of friends to people I work with through most of my life. Thinking about the people that I have regular, reasonably lengthy interactions with now, apart from family all except two are current or ex co-workers who I generally have known for a long time (15-30 years). The two exceptions were friends of my wife who I'm still close to.
There was a long period early in my working life where not going into the office would have been extremely isolating, plus my mental well being back then wasn't great.