Post COVID dread : Return to the office

If you're in America - it's going to be a long time before it's safe to go back to the office OP.

Perhaps you can spend the next few months looking for another job that is open to working from home?

Right now, no one is hiring . But maybe I need to keep my options open.

I work for state government and was hoping to retire from there in 10 years. I just need to be patient and enjoy the time home while it lasts. I am expecting it will be like this through fall.

I’m with you OP. I also work for the government and am hoping they will allow at least part time wfh when this is all over. But “over” feels very far away anyway.

I knew you were all clinging to Covid as an excuse to work from home. Pathetic. Appalling. I have no pity and am quite offended to say the least.

In October my return date was set for July. If that happens, I will still work from home two days a week - and am hoping possibly three days a week. I am a little concerned about how the dog will adjust, since I only had her about 5 months before the shut-down, but she will have had three times that time with me working from home every day, since I will at least have been on work from home 15 months before I go back.

I am looking forward to seeing some people in person again, not that we will all be there on the same days. There are some things I do like about being in the office, so would not mind a hybrid set-up.

At the moment, no one knows how effective the vaccine is. That information is being gathered as the guinea pigs are being vaccinated. If the vaccine is indeed effective, figure on 4-6 months or less for life to return to something that passes for normal. Of course, if infection numbers remain largely unaffected, then all the guinea pigs got useless jabs and it's back to the square one and the lab.

Ahh, more government employees white knuckling towards their retirement reward from their second rate jobs. Now fearing having to serve out their sentences in the conditions they agreed upon.

Spare me as I conduct the proper amount of grieving.

President Biden (I love saying that) was indicating that relatively normal will be arriving by the summertime.

I work for a national non-profit, while the administration has set milestones for the return to the office, all have fallen by the wayside. Most other companies/orgs I am hearing about (that are able to function at 90% productivity with WFH) are throwing around Sept 2021 or when 80% of Americans are vaccinated. It's all about liability who wants someone to die and then have their estate sue because you made them come in the office? It does seem we will be able to do 3 days in 2 days out when the time comes.

[quote]I will miss my dogs, my lunchtime walk. Not having to carry my lunch and snacks to the office.

Perhaps Chrissy Metz has a spare snack purse you can borrow.

(Seriously, that is one of your concerns? Not wanting to transport food to the office? Wow!)

I work for a Fortune 500 company. Everyone is working from home except for some in IT and Customer Service. VPs and GMs are going in sporatically to get away from their families.

Once I get the vaccine I'll consider going back a couple of times a week. But not every day.

It's been great to shit in peace.

Everyone needs to go back to work. Otherwise, everyone will continue to annoy the people they live with, get fatter, and become beyond computer-dependent.

This thread is very concerning and has been forwarded to our legal department.

R11, I spit out my coffee at your last line. Indeed my friend, indeed!

So even though the past year has shown that many jobs can be done 100% at home, companies still want to make employees miserable by making them come into the office? Fuck that. Employees need to get some balls and revolt. I don’t know if the places you all work at ever send out employee satisfaction surveys, but if they do, you need to speak up about this if they have a comments section.

[quote]I work for a national non-profit, while the administration has set milestones for the return to the office,

We can tell that you do. "Set milestones," indeed.

I'm back in the office and loving it. Staying at home isn't for everyone.

[quote]President Biden (I love saying that) was indicating that relatively normal will be arriving by the summertime.

So once again we get conflicting information from government officials. Just a few weeks ago Fauci said it wouldn’t be until fall.

Calm the fuck down r18. You need to realize Biden hasn’t been in office for a fucking WEEK. The government is made of human beings, they are trying to clean up the biggest federal disaster ever in our history, so draw a line between 45 and 46. This isn’t going to be perfect, it’s a goddamn mess, so show some mother fucking support for your new President. YES, I am giving you a big hisssssssssssss.

Besides Covid, a lot may depend on when your employer's commercial lease comes due for renewal. If it's a recently signed multi-year lease, an employer is more likely to want to fill the seats that are paid for and sitting empty. If the lease expires in the interim months or is coming due for renewal in the relatively near future, they may compare Covid productivity to the the considerable costs of office space - and the work-from-home idea that they were never quite keen on may be seen in a new light.

I still go in to the office on occasion. I don’t have to, but as other SR management types are going in, I have to make appearances every now and then.

Plus, I like my office. The home office is nice, but the real deal is much nicer. And everybody is real low key right now. I also like being there commando in my basketball shorts and flip flops.

That being said, I don’t get more human interaction unless there are set meetings. I’m on the other side of the building from everybody else who is coming in and we usually talk via the phones.

I’ll tell you who really wants you back in the office if you have them: middle managers. If they don’t have people to check up on, what good are they. I spoke to a friend at a previous employer and nobody there is getting to do work from home. Too top heavy in management. So glad I am no longer there.

My office is moving! The plans were there before COVID-19, of course. We've already outgrown the space we moved into about 5 years ago.

Stupid thing is, many of us were already WFH 2 or 3 days per week. We don't really need more space but whatever. My manager has said she doesn't expect us to go in every day. We all have at least an hour's commute to get to the office during rush hour. I've enjoyed having an extra 2 hours in my day by not commuting.

I've already agreed with my manager that I can work flexibly in future, once the majority of people have returned to work physically. I will split my time between remote and physical working and still get the benefits of both.

I realise not all companies are as flexible as this (or can't be) but the ones that can but choose not to - they really need to be dragged into the modern world. Flexible working is here to stay and if you don't make it work for your employees, sooner or later you won't be left with any good ones.

If my office doesn’t allow at least a partial work from home set up I’ll be looking for new work. I can’t imagine commuting everyday just to sit in a cubicle and be annoyed by everyone around me. I live alone and have zero distractions while I’m working.

I honestly can’t decide what I like/loathe more. Last week I went into the office every morning, and then worked afternoons from home. It felt like a decent balance. I guess at the end of the day, I just hate working. But it keeps me sane(er).

r26 yesssss the moral of this story is that I just hate working.

I stopped working from home the last part of 2020. While I enjoyed parts of it, I hated being on the phone more than I would in the office and doing annoying skype meetings with managers who just needed to fill their day, as r22 said.

I have also lost all the quarantine weight plus some since returning to the office, which is a huge plus. I am back to my college weight for the first time in 10 years.

R27 is right. At the end of it all, life isn't meant for just working. I feel sorry for those for whom their job is their identity. I get if you are the CEO/owner, extra-creative/innovative with significant input, or truly doing something out of love that may not apply.

For most I know, however, myself included - working is a means to and end. To do the things we really want in life.

Being able to save at least even an hour a day for a year towards my life (not commuting, getting up early/getting home late) has awakened that even more for me.

Will dread when I have to give that up again.

Fortunately I am in CA where our combined caseload and embarassing vaccine rollout will likely leave us not returning until 2022.

[quote] So even though the past year has shown that many jobs can be done 100% at home, companies still want to make employees miserable by making them come into the office?

That's how my company felt. They called everyone back in on July 1, 2020. No exceptions. I had delayed my retirement, originally planned for April 1, because all the hourly people were furloughed and we managers were needed to pick up the slack, but I took that as my cue to get out.

I went back shortly thereafter to turn in my keys, phone, and laptop and say goodbye and saw, in the common work areas, they had hung plastic shower curtains around people's desks (like that is going to stop transmission). Even though everyone was supposed to be masked, people were routinely sitting at their desks unmasked. I couldn't wait to get out of there. Between the hour commute each way and the lax standards, I would've been a wreck.

Even though I've been pretty much housebound ever since, it's a million times better that being in that office. Even before the pandemic it was awful, now it must be exponentially worse.

As someone who had the ability to work from home pre-Covid, I wanted to point out that working from home post-Covid is going to be different too.

You won't be stuck at home all day-- you can go to a coffee shop to work, or a library.

You can meet up with coworkers during the day at a coffee shop or someone's house to work collaboratively.

And you can meet clients, prospects or industry contacts for lunch or coffee or drinks.

Point being it will not feel anywhere near as isolating as it does now.

Actually the most productive WFH routine is when you plop your ass down and just work for most (not all) of the day.

So much of the former office day was pointless distraction, hence the inefficiency.

Most clients I know are perfectly fine with the remote contacts. Saves time and money on both ends (my job has both sides over the entire Western US). So much lost time and disruption even for cities that are less than 2 hours away by plane.

It's upper management that needs that "human interaction for collaboration".... They can't wait to piece back our planned 2020 summer conference that never was so they can talk about themselves in front of a dedicated audience.

Inside NYC’s new high-tech, COVID-19-proof office towers

I'm an essential worker also. No one held a gun to my head when I chose my job, so why on Earth would I be offended that someone else has the opportunity to work from home? I work for a health care company and they have discovered that 70% of the staff working from home actually were more efficient - and we get to use the office space for diagnostic equipment/lab space which makes the company far more profit than a bunch of people sitting at their desks eating danish and drinking coffee. No complaints, no sick days, no last minute vacation days or taking the day out because your kid was sick - I think this experience is going to change the way many people work and approach their time off.

(R7) You wouldn't last long in a government job. Tons of work for little pay. We are not members of Congress who have huge staffs to do their thinking while our elected idiots are busy collecting their "dues" from the lobbyists. Votes are not cheap in 2021.

My company is still limiting to 25% at once in all offices. I have been to my office twice since the second week in March and I had to arrange it in advance. Most of the people who go in don’t have a great home set up and/or have little kids a home. More than once one of the guys had to do calls from his car.

My office’s lease is up in June and we are relocating to a smaller space with the expectation that many of us will continue to work remotely forever. Our current building’s response to the pandemic has been disappointing and unacceptable (A Purell station in the lobby, minimal signage, no upgrades to ventilation systems or restrooms which were promised years ago but new owner took over and scrapped those plans). So we’re going elsewhere with a custom build out.

I will probably only go in a couple of times a month. I already know that I won’t have a dedicated office there. I was asked if I would be ok WFH, which I am, so gave up my office.

As soon as I can get a contractor in here, I am going to remodel my home office. I want to add a window and possibly a door outside to get more light. Basically improve the lighting overall and create studio-type lighting for video conferencing (yes, I am vain).

How nice and entitled that you are worried about going back into the office, you fucking cunt. You do realize that most people HAVE to go into work and can't just sit in their ass and pretend to work at home. People who drive trucks so you can get your fucking organic produce have to go to work, along with the mailman who brings your mail, people like trash collectors who pick up your shitty garbage etc. What a god damn entitled cunt you are. Amazing that it's all about YOU when people are dying in droves. I hope you have to go back and are completely and utterly miserable.

I am amused that there are still WFH drones who think their jobs will last more than a year or two. Why should your companies pay First-World wages when you have spent the past year showing them that it can be done from Bangalore or the Phillipines?

R36 are you a truck driver?

Oh, r34, I had no misconception. I wasn’t under the impression that it was a great gig. The only positive thing I have ever heard about were the benefits and the stability.

I did it when I was young and didn’t pay attention to such things. The lack of enthusiasm and talent was stifling to me. I had just come out of a tech job where everybody was crackerjack and cutting edge. My coworkers in government just seemed like beat down cows counting down the days to retirement.

My own bathroom is heaven. Men can be slobs.

R19 Re-read what I wrote, and compare it to your response to me, then tell me who needs to calm down. Do you kiss your mother with that filthy mouth?

I doubt that employees will return to a workplace safely anytime soon. Although we have a number of vaccines, we still don't know the effect they will have on transmitting the virus. We cannot know how the virus will mutate. Whether it will become resistant to vaccines. Whether our health services will continue to cope.

It is here now forever. It's still too soon to figure out how we will deal with that.

R42 You absurd bedwetter. Are you going to hide under your bed for the rest of your life for a virus that has a death rate of only 0.3%?

I never want to set foot in that office again.

My productivity now teleworking is twice what it was in the office. Why? No constant interruptions! All of the fucking assholes wandering the hallways lost or looking for another section or co-workers who yap all day or the idiot who can't do his job so he has to come bug the fuck out of me for help.

It has been bliss to be able to work in peace!

Nobody bothers me, nobody wanders over lost asking to be led by the hand to another section, it's quiet and no goddamned trumptards running their jibs in their endless litany of grievances.

R36 you sound completely unhinged. You should not have this much resentment for people who are perfectly capable of fulfilling the duties of their roles from home, just because you can't. The bitterness will consume you.

Not sure if you're also R37 or if they are similarly unhinged. Being capable of working from home/remotely does not mean you are going to be outsourced. That is a completely illogical assumption rooted in no kind of reality at all and represents a completely backwards and outdated mentality. I hope you are not in any position of authority or responsible for any employees in a workplace as you are toxic and extremely ignorant.

Biden has put OSHA in charge of making sure the workforce is adequately safe against COVID-19. So, it seems no one will be forced to go not the workplace until OSHA standards are verified and met. God knows how long that'll take. So enjoy workings remotely for the time being.

Cheers!

^F***king autocorrect.

I work in a cubicle once a week. The requirement is masks in common areas but not at our desks. Is this typical? I feel like when I am in the office I am essentially working in a maskless environment.

"I'm back in the office and loving it."

How? Covid hasn't even peaked and there's no mass vaccine-immunity yet.

Are you over 80?

With all due respect, I have little sympathy. I never got to work a day from home. You had a nice long break, and you’ll get over the adjustment back to the office.

Upper management is worried about the lack of oversight on newbies. They don’t really know the company culture, they don’t reach out if they don’t know an answer (sometimes making it up) they’re not as productive, they don’t have those over the cube wall calibration conversations and they aren’t available as much as they should be due to home distractions . The tenured peeps have been Corp slaves for a long time and know that taking time for lunch is frowned upon. I’m never going back. I’m close to retirement and they need me more than I need them.

My company closed their brick and mortar offices permanently. There were 4 offices spread across the U.S. - all shuttered. We all work from home now, never to return to the office. They even sold off the office furniture, work stations and the buildings are up for sale. The company is doing great, but after a couple of months of everyone working at home without no decline in productivity or loss of business, they realized they could save a lot of money by eliminating the office.

I’m greatly relieved I don’t have to interact face to face with most of those assholes and cunts. As long as you meet certain goals, they pretty much leave you alone.

R45 If you don't think the opportunities of huge payroll savings through home working are being discussed at board level, you're crazy. Why pay expensive city wages when you can just tell everyone to move to Wyoming, or Kansas, or some god-awful island in the Phillippines, and work from there? It won't be a sudden shift, but it will start happening over the next couple of years. Good luck with that suburban mortgage!

R45 You make assumptions that are wrong, I'm retired and thinking about the people who are not. YOU are the entitled cunt that I'm talking about, forget all the people that ALLOW you to wfh of course. So yes it seems to be all about you and fuck everyone else.

I've been going into the office 1-2 times a week since Labor Day week. I like getting out of the house and some semblance of normal work environment. From my company most still don't go in, and some days I am the only one on a floor of about 50 cubicles and offices. MY company indicates that we may never go back to 100% work from the office in the future. Employees will have a choice of how much they want to go into work or work from home. Post COVID I will probably work from the office 3-4 days a week and at least one day work remotely from home.

My job, a long term temp. assignment, ended two weeks ago. I was the only one going into the office, but a lack of work for a company in bankruptcy anyway cause them to decide to save money, and they were kind enough to give me 6 weeks notice.

I had been there for 7 years, expecting to be out of there years ago, so when the pandemic began and they said they would keep me on as long as they could, I began to save money. Now I'm on unemployment and getting the extra $300 as well, so I have no worries and I'm actually enjoying a rest while everything in society still struggles to get back to normal. Since I know it may be a while before exactly what I'm looking for, I'm not even really accepting calls from recruiters, most of whom I suspect are scams or things that I do not want to do. I'm 4 years from early retirement, so I don't feel that I need to go somewhere where I would be miserably unhappy.

Why would anyone other than office workers care if office workers work from home? It was happening before the pandemic and no one cared then.

R57 Because it devastates businesses in the center of cities. Also, it ruins evening entertainment - theatre, concerts, gigs, whatever. You might say 'Well I'll just watch movies and order from Amazon' and I would say 'Enjoy your sad little isolated life'.

I didn't leave the small town where I grew up to come to the center of one of the world's greatest cities, just to sit here staring at a screen at home, wondering if I should move to a suburb so I can sit in a larger room while I stare at my screen.

R58 people will still want to live in cities for nightlife even if offices aren’t fully staffed. Especially young people. When bars and Broadway are back, it will be a lot closer to what it was before. There’s a reason subways were packed during rush hour and it’s because all the office workers were going home. The two aren’t that related.

There is something to be said about leaving your home and going into an office to do work, to get you in the frame of mine for a work project. If you hate your work staff, then you want to avoid them.

R59 Yeah, they are related. So much of nightlife is people heading out after work. Bar then restaurant then wherever, or quick bite then theatre or concert, or what have you. Bars won't be back if the suburban workers never come into the city.

R61 you’re ignoring the huge population of people that live in the city specifically for the nightlife. And if rents continue to go down, even more young people can move in. Suburbanites go home at night to their families.

Either way, this is happening and we will all have to adjust.

if the company you work for is selling furniture, they are in financial trouble. Ii guess a small business could shut down all offices and ride out the pandemic. If the CEO survives, then they can lease space again.

R53 Outsourcing isn’t exactly a new concept. And if you think all office jobs can be transferred overseas, you’ve clearly never managed people in “offhshore” roles.

I’m an attorney and have managed teams of lawyers in Manila and Bangalore. For certain administrative tasks they were fine. But they weren’t up to anything even slightly challenging. Basicallly, the work they were able to do without mistakes wasn’t even legal work. One thing at issue with both teams was the quality of the email responses - they were often unclear. Legal correspondence must be clear, concise and authoritative.

I’m still working from home but we will have to go in a few times a month once eveyone is vaccinated. The ability for groups of people who work together to meet, get to know one another and form strong relationships shouldn’t be discounted.

I don’t want to go in every day, but a few times a month is fine.

I thought that business and government sector hate the work from home model. Now, I do not think it will be ripped out because of the pandemic problem. They will limit it to one day a week probably. I can't imagine they will let people work all these shifts from home.

My company was actually embracing a WFH/in office arrangement (3 days in office and 2 days remote). The idea was to reduce the office size by reducing the number of cubicles needed. Most managers liked it because they too get to work remote. Most of my co-workers have 45 -60 minute daily commute, pre-COVID-19. I'm 18 miles away from the office and it took me 55 minutes!

However, our Sales teams have outgrown their space so we are moving again this March.

We have been working from home 50% of the time since August, rotating staff each week to be physically there. Since most of us will be fully vaccinated by mid February, our partial working from home ends then.

I’m concerned that the workload has devolved to adjust to our lesser presence. I know I get more done in lesser time from home. In the office there are far more distractions.

R67 Just how do you get vaccinated by February? What do you do?

R67 where are you that you will all be vaccinated by mid February?!

I work in healthcare.

I have a corner office (yes, with four windows). I will Clorox or Lysol everything including the blinds. The phone and desk will receive semi-daily treatment. The two chairs facing my desk will be removed. Employees can stand.

You guys don't know just how much can and will be outsourced and sooooo much more than before. Since this started so many employees here in the Romanian multinationals are doing the work of two people at home. Used to be just IT and engineers but now administrative tasks, marketing, etc is increasingly moving here. The multinationals from the US are hiring like crazy.

Only one problem is that a survey was done and while most employees in the US said they preferred work at home, the locals, the Norway office and Holland said they prefer going in at least part time. Probably because the commutes are shorter and city centers more dense and lively.

Some jobs can’t be outsourced. When I worked at a law firm they were trying to outsource the legal work. Even e discovery. It didn’t work.

Clerical jobs though, are on the line. Not because of outsourcing but because they’ve become unnecessary.

I have been going into the office two mornings a week since last April. I don't know if I will ever voluntarily work in office full time ever again. Obviously if I have no other options I will but damn will it be like eating ground glass.

I also think of things like, if 25 percent of the regular workforce worked from home, what is the positive affect on traffic, pollution, road repairs etc? This could be an opportunity to figure out ways to heal nature.

R19 Calm down Jill!

Isn’t it interesting that whenever companies want to cut costs they eliminate jobs and reduce salaries and benefits, but they don’t want to get rid of office space when so many jobs can be done from home, which would save them millions (no rent, maintenance, utilities, groundskeepers, etc).