Returning to the Office - Any Good Stories? Were You Glad Even Though You Dreaded It?

I prefer working from the office. It is more structured and you can communicate better in person. I'm surprised your company took this long to require some work from office days. My employer mandated 2 days a week in the office since September 2022. I typically go 3-4 days a week. Also we are allowed to dress business casual, unless we have a management meeting. On days I know there will be few if any people in the office I dress in khakis or jeans. The only real drawback is of course the commute, but I take the subway so outside of the additional expense for train fare it's not an imposition.

I don't have the patience for the WFO anymore.

HEY WORKIN HARD OR HARDLY WORKIN?

BOY HOW ABOUT THAT WEATHER HUH?

GOT ANY FUN PLANS THIS WEEKEND?

BOY WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!

YOU SEE THAT THING ON TV LAST NIGHT? BOY THAT WAS SOMETHIN!

YOU SEE THE PICTURES OF MY VACATION YET?

In theory I'm much more productive in the office. Unfortunately I've got two loudmouths seated next to me who a. don't have fuckall to do; b. gossip with each other for HOURS.

The days they're not in are truly heaven.

And NYC transit sucks balls worse than ever. Otherwise it's tolerable.

We are mandated 2.5 days a week in the office so I go in 2 days one week, 3 the next and rotate. We are in a shiny, brand new office building that was in the works almost a decade before COVID so we have to justify the expense somehow.

I like going in. The old office was all close office doors and no windows. Now we have views and floor to ceiling windows and open seating (“Millenials love it!!” We were told) and I like seeing people again. I was a skeptic but it’s nice to be back.

I've been working from home since 2020 and my company has no plans to make us return to the office. I love it. I do a job that doesn't require input or help from anyone so it matters not where I do it from, just that I do it. There are some people who opted to return to the office but it wasn't required. I'm just as productive at home as I was in the office and I don't have to deal with any of the stuff r3 posted. I used to hate that every other day it was someone's birthday and "there's cake and drinks in the breakroom!" I hated dealing with coworkers and the rush to get to the office on time. I've spent four years just rolling out of bed and working in my pj's and being able to toss a load of laundry in while I'm working instead of rushing home each night to get shit done.

Just now you have to go in three days a week? Where the f— has your company been for the last 2+ years?!

P.s. I retired last week, well ahead turning 65 …so, actually, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Know that if you’re afraid of just those three days, god help you.

R6 is a proud ribbon clerk!

You all are spoiled rotten and need to be back 5 days a week. WTF has changed for you since before Covid? You all had employment contracts. Fuck you and your child care. your toenails, your pets, your dying mother. I've heard it all! Get your lazy asses back to the office!

I don't want to work in an office anymore

I don't want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day.

R9, I have no idea what that is. I'm an award winning film editor.

Hi Elon @ R10

We are back 2 days a week for employees and 3 days a week for managers and above. Everyone is in on Wednesday, which is also now company provided lunch day. No charge for any food or beverages from the cafeteria during lunch hours - 10:45 am to 1:45 pm. It’s packed, so that had to expand the hours that are available for lunch. This has got to be costing them thousands of dollars per week. There are just over 900 employees that work at this office location.

At least all of you desk jockeys haven’t been replaced by cheap offshore workers or A.I…. yet.

^^ Overseas workers, I mean. Sorry, thinking about hot muscular men working on oil rigs again!

[quote]You all had employment contracts.

We don't have employment contracts in the US.

It took OP's AOL dial-up two years to process this thread.

I did almost the same thing r8. Loving it.

R13 where are you from—geez. It meas you do very little. As in standing behind a counter and doing very little. And slang for someone without much courage, as in being a lame bettor in poker. Duh.

I had never heard the term and I don't play or follow poker, 21. I'm born and raised in California.

Do you lack a basic working knowledge of American colloquialisms…we get it.

R10 = bitter, hateful and perpetually single.

Are you asking a question, r23? Your grammar is unclear.

HEY YOU REMEMBER I WAS TELLIN YOU ABOUT MY GRANDDAUGHTER ASHLEY HOW SHE ALMOST MADE THE VARSITY LACROSSE TEAM AT SCHOOL RIGHT? THE COACHES PICKED HER TO TAKE ONE OF THE THREE, NO FOUR, NO THREE SLOTS FOR SUBSTITUTES FOR THE VARSITY TEAM. NORMALLY THEY PICK JUST TWO SUBSTITUTES FOR VARSITY BUT YOU KNOW HOW THEY TRY TO LET EVERYBODY PARTICIPATE. WELL YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED! TURNS OUT HER BEST FRIEND KAIGHTLYNNE WHO WAS A NEW STRINGER FOR THE VARSITY TEAM, TURNS OUT SHE JUST BROKE HER FOOT! AND NOW ASHLEY'S GONNA START FOR VARSITY ON FRIDAY! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!

R18 how does it work in the US?

r27, contracts are for people in the US who are considered "freelance" but even then there is often not a contract involved. Most companies hire you, hand you an "employee handbook" that states you are an "at will" employee meaning you can leave at any time or be let go at any time. And most employers take advantage of that by laying off people without any reason cited.

I’m expected to go in 2 days a week, and feel quite surprised by how much it bugs me. I like the people I work with, and my office is ok, but I despise the fact that I spend over 2 hours per day commuting, especially since I now know for a fact that I am more productive working at home. After 3 years or more working at home, it feels like a real burden to have to travel in every week. And I have developed a mortifying inability to be punctual. I leave at the very last minute and I am invariably a few minutes late. I do make up the time, but I am surprised how my habits have changed.

It’s irritating having to pack a lunch, rather than just walk to the fridge and grab whatever I fancy. I hate working in an office with air conditioning, as opposed to being at home where I can throw open a window for fresh air.

My main objection to working from home is that it has made to very clear that we are not all equal. The higher up the company ladder you go, the less people are visible. Many of the company directors just refuse point blank to appear in the office. Some of them haven’t been in since Covid, but people at my middling level have to appear every week!

R27 Employment agreements are common at the senior management /C-suite level. Absent a collective bargaining agreement, virtually everyone else is at will-as noted.

[quote]I had never heard the term and I don't play or follow poker, 21. I'm born and raised in California.

Same here, R22. I’ve never heard the term “ribbon clerks” used in this way before either. “Pencil pushers” is the correct term. Google “ribbon clerk” and you’ll see that R9 has her head up her ass.

I still rarely go in, nor am I made to. I got my highest annual appraisal late last year so I'm doing something right.

Shaving that neck beard's gonna be tough, huh?

Retired here, but when I was working in Before Times I always preferred going to the office. I liked strict separation of work and home and didn't want the former infesting the latter. Sure, public transit could be a pain, as could some co-workers. But I could meet friends who worked in the same area for lunch, and I could run errands/go to the gym/pick up something for dinner on the way home. Now that I'm home all day I have to go out to do any of those things; when I was working in an office I was already out and they didn't seem like a hassle. But, yeah, retired and don't miss working at all, so there's that.

For R31

The creepy thing about some of the big corporations calling remote workers back to the office last year was that, in many cases, they were doing it in anticipation of downsizing, so basically it was in hopes that less loyal workers would quit if they were called back to the office, which would minimize layoffs.

R35 When you have to cite a dictionary of slang to prove that a term exists, it’s probably obscure and antiquated, and perhaps so are you.

[quote]some of the big corporations calling remote workers back to the office last year was that, in many cases, they were doing it in anticipation of downsizing, so basically it was in hopes that less loyal workers would quit if they were called back to the office, which would minimize layoffs.

I'm retired now but my last employer did this 3 times in as many years.

First time: to force streamline staff in advance of securing venture capital funding for mergers and acquisitions. Return to the office rules reversed policies to force resignations, particularly in senior positions where workers had earned considerable trust and independence (and higher salaries.)

Second time: to trim again the employment rolls quickly returned to normal after the first time. This time as part of a big buyout/merger. The new (never stated on the record) was to fire)force out as many people as possible and replace them with a higher number if cheaper new university graduates.

Third time: newly merged, they reneged on promises of a post-Covid largely remote workforce because they had become heavily dependent on new, inexperienced university grads who required heavy new levels of supervision and training. The promises that allowed staff to work in remote locations far from an office were withdrawn and many people +both senior and freshly hired( were forced to resign.

All in 3 years. I foresaw a lot of bad decisions and a constantly changing field of new procedures and massively increased record keeping and progress reports so I retired before my 62nd birthday when I though I might work to 62, 63, or 64.

[quote] I know there are positives about being back in an interactive office setting

As a profound introvert, I cannot think of a single one.

R37 the post wasn’t made to prove the term’s existence, as that is objectively true. It was more to establish your own ignorance—also objectively true.

The phrase is neither new nor obscure. That is all.

[quote]And NYC transit sucks balls worse than ever.

Now that spring is here the stench of piss is even more pungent. Happens every year.

Hope you get fired

[quote]The phrase is neither new nor obscure. That is all.

Please, stop trying to make “ribbon clerk” happen, dear, ancient Mary. It’s not the hill to die on.

Nobody uses ribbon clerk from the last half of the 20th Century through today. Nobody except a big gay priss on the DL

“Ribbon clerk” is listed somewhere here:

^^ Actually, “ribbon clerk” is mention 4 times on the thread in R45. Replies 153, 189, 319, and 336.

**mentioned

Old dumbass

I retired and didn't go back until my party, earlier this year. But I was working mostly from home long before the pandemic. Two days a week at the office. My work day at home averaged about 3 hrs a day. At the office it would stretch to 10 hrs at times and I was too old for it. In the old days I didn't mind the rush to deadlines, I even enjoyed it.

My partner will work until the day he dies. Lawyer. Politics. We respect each other so far so good.

I like this term, ribbon clerk. It's fresh and colorful. Does anyone know anything about its origins? Its usage on DL?

Stick your head in the toilet r50

You like ribbon clerk because you’re a big woman screaming to get out

[quote]In the mid-80s, I had a job in retail working for a big queen who always referred to the staff as "ribbon clerks." - R 336

R9 Were you that big queen?

R42 you still work? Bitter, party of one….

[quote] Also we are allowed to dress business casual, unless we have a management meeting.

I hope you don't have to dress up for an in-house management meeting.

[quote] We don't have employment contracts in the US.

People in labor unions do.

R56 see R30