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The working from home thread

I'm working from someone else's home this week. Having a proper workspace and two monitors (even though I can't work out how to use them both), and a coffee machine - make a big difference. Oh, to actually be in my own space and be able to set up a proper office. It's impossible to be organised on a tiny little table with no space.
 
Today was very difficult. As my house is quite small, I don't have room for an office so I work on the kitchen table. It's right by the understairs cupboard where I keep the litter tray, and my cat is very poorly. He must have used the litter at least 6 times and the smell was pretty bad, even with very liberal use of air fresheners.
 
We had the meeting, they want us back in the office after over a year if being WFH. But luckily only one day a week as they're rotating limited socially distanced desks with other teams. No discussion, no chance to make suggestions and not much notice. Nor much consideration that the govt guidelines for WFH haven't changed. And they want to firm up our hours when we've been flexi working for years. Because we got a low score in our engagement survey. Makes sense.

Think the senior managers/directors have all had their 2nd jabs now they're alright so get everyone back in.
 
I get to out of an actual, real, genuine site visit later this week. Remember them? Work has changed the system we use for ordering train tickets since March last year, so it took me a good half an hour to fathom my way through that.
 
Day 1 working from home.

opting for pyjama bottoms - comfy - and normal work shirt. I don’t have enough mufti that fits me to wear each day!

Plus I don’t want to associate my home too much with work!
 
I was almost late collecting child from nursery because of train cancellations and all I was thinking was I spent all day doing computer based work that could’ve been done at home 😬
 
After about a year WFH I am now back in work Monday to Thursday, actually it seems novel and I quite like it.

Luckily I have a lot to do so the time passes quickly.
 
They want us to move completely to "connected working" by November. What that actually entails seems to be somewhat vague, but I do get the strong impression that it involves more people coming into the office.

Judging from how empty the office has been the last couple of times I went in (I was the only non-supervisory member of my team in the building on both occasions), I think they'll find it harder to get people coming back in than they might have anticipated. Good.
 
Teams meetings are sometimes better than real life. Today I was in one which I wasn't contributing to, and a very large chunk of time was taken by one speaker talking at great length about something not entirely relevant. I got on with some other stuff whilst he rabbited, and the chair failed to cut him off.
 
Hopefully at some point they'll figure out if they want people in offices the offices have to be nice places to be but I suspect that's too complicated for management types to get their head around
It was raining heavily at lunchtime today which meant the too small staff room was busier than usual. I had my lunch at my desk, which is quite common really, but does mean that I don’t really get a break when today I would’ve appreciated it. It’s the little things like that that would make working from home preferable for me m
 
I was on a webinar today whose chair was keen to finish by the scheduled time. As we got towards the end she proposed a quick fire round of questions, and I immediately expected her to say "We really wanna see those fingers":

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I am presenting the monthly team quiz tomorrow, live via Teams. It’s a chance to actually speak to my colleagues (the ones who aren’t on holiday or off sick) as we mostly work in silos.

The rounds are on UK County flags, sport, music, cinema, random numbers and Foods of the world. Multiple choice to give everyone a chance!
 
Work has said in a vague way that we continue to wfh til June 21st and then dependent on restrictions ending, they will ease us back. Looks like more wfh for everyone tbf.

Mrs21 is retiring in about 3 weeks , she could have stayed on but she has found the workload stressful of late (we work for the same organisation but in different roles)

So she never has to go to the office ever again 😎 She won't even go in to give her ID & laptop ,and locker keys etc, she had already tasked me with this duty. 😃

She is also pleased not to have to endure leaving/retirement do because covid ...
 
I was gonna go into the office today... but then when the bus arrived, I found I had left my bank card at home, and it struck me how fucking pointless and stressful it is to commute into work. So I went straight back home and started working there.

I think I am going to fucking hate November.
 
Interesting results from this survey.

A survey of 1,022 UK workers, carried out by leading HR software provider CIPHR, has revealed that nearly three quarters (73%) of UK workers would accept a reduction in pay in return for being able to work remotely permanently.

In addition, only 15% of UK workers who have been working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic want to return to the workplace full-time.

72% of people would like to split their time between the workplace and working from home, with 11% wanting to work remotely full-time.

 
I did go into the office for a few hours on Friday , it was great being in the office again . I've made occasional visits over the past 15 months. I am going to go in at least once a week from now on , and maybe more. Still pretty empty there (it's an 11 story office block , 9 floors for us , I think maximum capacity is around 2000 , can't be more than 200 there atm.

Also finally getting a new work laptop, mine is ancient #andabitshit
 
we had a day in the office recently and I know that some people did bugger all work compared to what they normally do at home! but I guess some of that at least down to it being novelty so more chinwagging than usual. the thought of no office at all would drive me mad. sounds OK short term but long term being on your own (work wise) and at home all the time - no thanks
 
Interesting results from this survey.




I appreciate people are thinking about the reduction of commuting costs but screw taking a pay cut for it. There are plenty of costs associated with working from home.
 
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