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I am "admitting" no such thing. This was an extreme hypothetical scenario that has nothing to do with the real world. What is happening is that you and two others (refer to post #1590) are putting words in my mouth. Go back and re-read what I wrote. None of it is applicable to the real world. It is a made up extreme.
Hmmm? No personalization is allowed, no N-95's, but then they are allowed to wear gas masks? Are there different sets of rules?
It's actually not a hypothetical situation. When my office started letting people in, it was only for a few hours at a time and only one person could be in the office at a time. Then it was one person per department at a time. We gradually moved up to 30-40 % employee capacity when we opened back up to see limited clients. We have been that way since last July. Now we just got notified we are going to full staff by the end of the month.
If your office has locked everyone out, it would make sense that they will gradually bring people back too. You will likely be pretty alone at first. Be prepared that your work life has changed forever. The only socialization I enjoyed at mine was the potluck lunches we would have. Those are done. I don't foresee them ever coming back. There are people that are so paranoid to be around others they will come to a full stop in the 6 ft+ hallway and flatten themselves against the wall if someone has to pass. My point is NOTHING IS NORMAL in the office anymore.
We have multiple offices leased by different companies in my building. The gas mask wearers work for someone else. My boss must have noticed and set the rules he did so we wouldn't scare people with PPE.
That's another thing...everyone I know regardless of where they work have talked about how their bosses have turned into little dictators now because they can. It's completely dependent upon your boss. Mine is a very nice guy but has strict no questions asked rules now. PPE is one, if we go on vacation he has to be notified where we are going and if we even leave the area beyond a 100 mile radius we need to notify. When we had the inevitable Co-Vid exposure in the office we shut down for 2 weeks and he required we get TWO tests before we could return.
I hope you realize the WFH folks avoid most of this. They are smart to want to stay home. When you are exposed in any way you have to quarantine and not go anywhere for two weeks. My dog was sick and I couldn't even go to the vet. I was scrambling to make other arrangements. If I worked at home that week it wouldn't have happened. To this day any days I go in I have to bring work home in case I wake up to a text that we had to close the office again. Hope this explains some major hassles we are experiencing. WFH is a blessing, believe me.
No one has brought this up, but I am wondering if retirement issues are part of why some companies are not enthusiastic about WFH. They may worry some will put off retirement for too long as they can do their job indefinitely from the comfort of their homes.
It's difficult for me to imagine the above scenario is that prevalent. Of course, there are two general cases:
1) experienced employees retiring who take with them a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge, leaving the company worse off.
2) "dead wood" retiring who have been shirking their responsibilities and phoning it in, who retire leaving the company better off.
I suspect #1 is more prevalent, but it probably depends on the industry.
Nope. I said this as an extreme hypothetical, not as the situation I find myself in. I have not been completely devoid of human contact for a year and do not support anyone being required to return. This was an extreme scenario that is beyond anyone's real world including mine. You have attempted to set an intellectual booby trap by inquiring about my response to an unimaginably extreme hypothetical and then claiming that it is my viewpoint and I'm a hypocrite. That is no less intellectually dishonest than I would be if I claimed to support free choice but then demanded a universal office return.
You say that because this is an extreme hypothetical that no one of us on this forum has been in, including me. I think if you were forced to live in the desert for a year you'd change your tune. But it is totally irrelevant for the remote work discussion since it is a hypothetical extreme and not a description of either real remote work or solitary office work.
Extreme hypothetical? Have you bothered to read your own posts?
Seriously some of us recognize the signs of distress you are putting out through these scenarios and are trying to get you to see through them. Some have suggested you seek counseling. No one is making fun of by saying that. They are seeing you in distress and trying to help you.
Since no one on here knows you, that's all they can offer. Please take them up on it. For your own mental health.
I could write a super-long post on how businesses misconstrue the meaning of collaboration. I define collaboration as two or more employees working on one task together for an extended period of time such as a week or more. In reality what I have seen in all of my pre-pandemic, face-to-face employment is employees working on individual lower level tasks that role up to a combined effort where the manager will go around and check with everyone to see when their piece of the puzzle is finished. That is not collaboration.
Your definition above is also true about "teamwork."
A book first published in 1977 titled "Games Mother Never Taught You" https://www.amazon.com/Games-Mother-.../dp/0446357030 was targeted at women entering the professional workforce. I recall one comment in the book: a survey of 100 women, asking them to define "teamwork", yielded results that were very much "everyone helping each other out." A survey of 100 men, asking them the same question, yielded results that were "each person focusing on doing his/her job."
The author suggested this was due to men participating in team sports more often than women. In a team sport such as football, the offensive tackle, being a team player, focuses on being the very best offensive tackle possible (as in the men's definition of teamwork). The offensive tackle does not try to help the quarterback throw the football (an implication of the women's definition of teamwork.)
Of course, that was in a different generation - but having a common understanding of what teamwork means and what collaboration means is highly useful.
The following article relates to some of the management challenges of working from home:
A Year Into Remote Work, No One Knows When to Stop Working Anymore
Workers are exhausted from nonstop working from home; many managers want to get everyone off the treadmill and breathing again
The daily alarm Katie Lipp sets isn’t meant to wake her up. It reminds her to go to bed.
The employment attorney in Fairfax, Va., said she has tried a range of techniques to set boundaries while working long days from home running her law practice during the pandemic. Few measures work as well as the 9:45 p.m. alarm she started setting last month, though she admits to snoozing it occasionally to fire out one last email.
“You never feel like what you’re doing is good enough, so you get stuck in a trap of overworking,” Ms. Lipp, the mother of a 5-year-old, said...
A year into the Covid-19 era, many can relate. Employees say work-life boundaries blurred, then vanished, as waking life came to mean “always on” at work. Experts warn that working around the clock—while slipping in meals, helping with homework and grabbing a few moments with a partner—isn’t sustainable, and employers from banking giant Citigroup Inc. to the software company Pegasystems Inc. are trying ways to get staff to dial back.
and
Quote:
An analysis of census and survey data published last fall found that Americans spent 60 million fewer hours commuting and spent much of those hours on additional work.
There is much more to the article - click on the link above to read it if you're interested.
It's difficult for me to imagine the above scenario is that prevalent. Of course, there are two general cases:
1) experienced employees retiring who take with them a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge, leaving the company worse off.
2) "dead wood" retiring who have been shirking their responsibilities and phoning it in, who retire leaving the company better off.
I suspect #1 is more prevalent, but it probably depends on the industry.
Yeah, I was just speculating about different problems that could come up. So many companies that bragged about how great their WFH staff is doing are now backing off from it. They may foresee future issues.
IME I have noticed it's the little things that can accelerate retirement. One of my coworkers started needing to use a cane and it became too stressful to come in every day. If WFH was available he could have put off retiring.
I personally am struggling with night vision. My vision is 20/20 but I have always struggled seeing to drive at night and it's getting worse. I have used vacation time to leave earlier in the winter or when it's raining. WFH would eliminate that problem. I am not the type to take advantage of a situation, but I bet others might.
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