Whatever you've been doing during lockdown, you better stop it right now

[Klaralven]

Smile! We're all going back to the office!

Not if you work for Twitter, mind. Or, of course, if you have a real job such as construction, transport, shit-shovelling or – oh, I dunno – server maintenance. In which case… smile! You're already back at the office! Because you never left it!

...

There will be some changes, such as distancing measures, sanitary hand wash dispensers at every pod and free disposable masks for all, but this won't last for long. If you thought the risk of a third wave would put an end to the misery of hotdesking, prepare to be disappointed. The sudden availability of vast areas of office space at plummeting short-term rents promises an unlikely new boom in the co-working sector as hibernating economies re-emerge, blinking and staggering into the sunlight.

...

To coincide with the looming return to the world of carpet tiles and RFID entry cards, desperate marketing departments have been churning out survey results about workers' attitudes to this return to physical spaces for communal labour. While they all focus on most people's natural distaste for rush-hour commuting, some of them have uncovered a few brilliant examples of interpersonal intolerance in the workplace.

My favourite is this survey from Cartridge People (I know, I know) which says it found that nearly a quarter of all Welsh office workers are dreading having to talk to each other on their return. In Northern Ireland, only 3 per cent said they were bothered by this.

Make of that what you will.

The survey also reckons that 8 per cent of British office workers are not looking forward to the odour of their old workplaces, or indeed that of their colleagues. Now this flies in the face of what I'd been hearing during second lockdown, during which office-scented candles were all the rage, apparently.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/something_for_the_weekend/

[hlthe2b]

1. Definitely don't "Toobin" it.

[Larissa]

10. Ouch!

As in "tube stick?"

[Hugin]

2. Outside of some hospitals and pharmacies...

adequate PPE was not provided gratis in a workplace setting here in the US.

"sanitary hand wash dispensers at every pod and free disposable masks for all"

It was a little like school teachers and teaching supplies. You know, YOYO.

Management remains perplexed why the workers are hesitant to return when it is obvious the bottom line means more to them than the people doing the actual work.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Not Universally True

I retired from a multibillion dollar manufacturer.
The large facility where my office was located actually built outdoor shelters so workers (24/7) could leave the control rooms, remove their masks and eat. This is a huge place (around 120 acres) so the built 10 of these tents.
Those technical folks who had to be there were moved around to temporary desks in a big lunch room, so areas were half-filled. Also, they split up timewise. Some people working 5:30am to 2:00pm, others working from 2:15 to 10:45, to reduce how many people were there at once.
Masks were provided to everybody for more than a year. As to sanitization, this place buys ethanol & isopropanol in railcars, and in one area they produce a hundred million pounds a year of the active ingredient in household & institutional surface sanitizers. That was a non-issue.
I get your point, but not every company behaved like that.
Office staff that could work from home, did, BTW.

[Hugin]

25. I bet they're not having too much trouble getting the workers back...

at that progressive and adaptive organization either, right?

Unfortunately, this would seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

Good show!

[ProfessorGAC]

26. Correct

I've been told that across the entire corporation, excluding retirements, 4 people have left the company since the pandemic began. They employ 2,700. (Over $1.6 million in revenue per employee!)
The company always got high marks from OSHA & EPA, and was a founding member of Responsible Care. (All big deals in the chemical industry.). So, safety & environmental concerns have been "progressive", even though the CEO is a republican.
We'll see what happens if they start wanting logistics & accounting staff back on site! I haven't heard plans for that either way.

[Clash City Rocker]

3. My wife is a scientist

She is now getting grief from her employees when she tells them they have to physically return to work. These are people who literally can’t do their job if they aren’t in a lab. The pandemic gave many an opportunity to be lazy, and now that there are vaccines and they can safely return, they’re struggling to do so.

[Renew Deal]

5. I doubt they need to be back 5 days a week.

That’s probably why she is getting grief. Because they should have been let go of months ago if they absolutely couldn’t work remotely.

[TwilightZone]

6. That's quite the assumption.

The OP clearly noted that they can't do their jobs if they're not in the lab. Perhaps the work being done requires a full-time commitment.

[Renew Deal]

18. Why are we assuming the employer is right?

The truth could be somewhere in the middle. Or they could be 100% right.

[Klaralven]

7. They might have been on the Paycheck Protection Program

It was a program to keep people on the payroll even when they can't do their jobs at home.

[Clash City Rocker]

9. She's not asking them to go in five days a week

They don’t want to go in at all.

[Renew Deal]

17. Why are we assuming the employer is right?

[Clash City Rocker]

23. The employer is paying these employees to go in the lab

The employees are vaccinated, they aren’t in danger of getting COVID by returning to the lab and actually doing their jobs. My wife and others wear masks at the office anyhow, although they have also been vaccinated. They can’t do their full jobs from their bedrooms.

The employees haven’t quit their jobs, they still expect to get paid. They just don’t want to do their jobs.

I fail to see how this can be the employer’s fault.

[EX500rider]

24. It's not really right/wrong, it's I pay you and I want you to work in this location. nt

[DenaliDemocrat]

20. On the flip side, I am also a scientist

But I mostly crunch data or I am on location for data collection. I have projects all over the world. My productivity INCREASED at home without the disturbances of the office. My employer want me back. I’ll go, even though there is no reason for it. I will not work extra hours anymore though. Those days are over. After 8, I am going home.

[ProfessorGAC]

27. Both Sides Here

My first 23 years were in the lab. Even when I was a department head, I still spent at least a third of my time actually working in the lab.
So, for my first 23 years working from home meant I couldn't do 33-100% of my job.
The last 20 years was a lot of kinetic & dynamic data crunching. I could have done 80-90% of that from home.
But, when I discovered something that required a major change in operations, the "sales pitch" and plan building needed face to face.
Change is hard & without visits for progress updates, wheels would have turned to slowly.
So, for those 20 years I could have stayed home 50% of the time & almost nothing would have changed.
Of course, 20 years ago, I didn't have broadband internet, so this is hypothetical.

[Elessar Zappa]

14. Most employers

are going to have to get used to work from home. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the container. Plus, many people have been more productive at home.

[Renew Deal]

19. Your wife and any other working person in this thread should check out this article.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-going-back-to-the-officepeople-are-just-quitting-instead-11623576602

[paleotn]

4. My peeps and I are more productive....

out of the office than in. An interesting fact that backs up pre-Covid research. So, other than necessary in person visits, they're not going back unless they want to. Our space is worth far more as Ops space than offices and cubes.

[DownriverDem]

8. So true for me

I aggravated a nerve problem (back/leg/arm) that resulted in me not doing the stretches/tennis ball/yoga ball like I should have. This was because of too much sitting. I thought I was having a heart problem due to some chest pain which turned out not to be true. I had a chemical stress test showing no blockage. So I am back on track doing the things that have worked for me in the past. In some ways I feel dumb, but glad to get moving again.

[PatrickforB]

11. Here in the US we have 91 million people working from home.

55% of American workers want to work from home three days or more per week, while 87% of American executives are reconsidering their real estate strategies.

The writing is on the wall for teleworking, and for increased flexibility in work scheduling. Nine states are positioning themselves as remote worker hubs by offering economic incentives for people in high-skilled jobs to move there. Ford is now allowing 16% of its workforce to work from home permenantly.

Rather than raising wages and benefits for their workforce, Amazon is investing massive amounts of capital in new robotics, in theory to make the workplace 'safer.'

Businesses have to adapt to the new reality, and they are using capital and virtual technology to solve for geography, and for labor shortages.

It will be interesting to see this play out over the next few years - how, for instance, will a company based in Oregon handle taxes for teleworkers based in Maine? Or based in Indonesia? What will happen to wages? Will they still differ by geographic area, or will they level out as employers hire a more geographically diverse labor force? Will teleworking policies, such as the one in my company, call ony for remote workers to live within the state? And how will the emergent digital twin technology change things?

How will the legal system handle Worker's Comp? And what about Unemployment Insurance?

On a more personal level, how will office etiquette change? Will thoughtless people STILL schedule virtual meetings back to back, or will we come to expect a half hour between virtual meetings, so we don't get Zoom exhaustion? Will we still get to collaborate in person sometimes with colleagues? And what about meetings? Virtual? In-person? Hybrid?

Will conventions stay virtual or hybrid? And if so, what will happen to convention centers?

How will we repurpose all of the increasingly empty office space?

Lots of moving parts here, folks!

[Klaralven]

12. Taxation is a mess

New Jersey lawmaker wants more action to protect residents from New York tax officials

https://www.thecentersquare.com/new_jersey/new-jersey-lawmaker-wants-more-action-to-protect-residents-from-new-york-tax-officials/article_2d9066ce-b29a-11eb-8509-231cb5e7d3a0.html

New Hampshire v. Massachusetts

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/new-hampshire-v-massachusetts/

Companies should set up subsidiaries in non-tax states and assign their remote workers to those locations. Then the workers only have to pay taxes where they are actually working from.

[Iggo]

13. Our company just had its best year ever.

I understand my boss is the one who’s hesitant for us to come back to the office.

[Mad_Machine76]

15. I have to start back in the office 50% of the time starting next week

and back in the office full time after Independence Day and I'm already dreading it, not so much being back in the office but it just feels like a waste of time to drive 30-40 minutes one way through increasingly congested traffic (there is a local interstate that will be out of commission for EIGHTEEN MONTHS yay infrastructure!) for a job where I'm not really even there all day most days as I work for Child Services and split most of my time between paperwork in the office, going to client homes, and going to court. We have been working remotely for over a year now and been managing things pretty well, with court being held remotely and being able to manage paperwork and other duties fine remotely. I neither feel particularly motivated to return to the home, nor do I think that the job has ever really needed to have our butts sitting in an office most of the time when we're not doing other stuff. Yet, for now I suppose our Republican Governor (Holcomb-Indiana) wants to make sure that everything appears "normal" which is probably just as well for him as our Republican Supermajority Overlords stripped him of emergency health measures (heaven forfend we have to deal with a worst public health emergency in the future).

Anyway, I digress..........

[Iggo]

22. It's the commute. You're right. Complete waste of time.

Before the stay-home, I woke up at 5:30 (5:00 if I was taking the bus) so I could roll into the office at 7:00. Now I sleep til 6:30 (and you know sometimes it’s 6:59…lol).

Before the stay-home, I’d clock out at 4:00 and begin the 45 minute to an hour drive home (afternoon traffic is way worse than morning traffic). If I’m taking the bus home, count me out for dinner. We’re talking an hour and 15 minutes minimum, and that’s if everything goes perfectly, which happens about twice a year. Most days it’s an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes or more. And I am NOT a happy camper when I get home. Now I clock out at 4:00, and five seconds later I’m in my living room playing with my 5 year old nephew. A little fatter, but to say that I’m significantly less stressed would be the understatement of the millennium.

[Happy Hoosier]

16. I've worked from home for 17 years!

Just another day in the office!