I miss WFH

I WFH a lot of days now if I'm not on a jobsite. I'll concede it isn't great for mentoring the young people but it is great.. for me. 

What really puzzles me is the people who apparently have a soft enough workload to be able to berkeley off half the day. How?

Duke said:

KyAllroad said:

If I have to go in to work, so should everyone else (or us "essential" employees should get paid extra for actually going to work).

My wife and I had this conversation when one of her coworkers made that same point.

OK, so you have to go to work.  Guess what WFH people have to do that you don't:

• Provide their own workspace
• Pay for the internet and phone service making WFH possible
• Pay for electricity to WFH
• Pay for HVAC to make it comfortable to WFH instead of setting thermostat to unoccupied mode for 8-9 hours

So, yeah, I'm not seeing why in-shop folks should get extra money.

 

All of that is tax deductible. IIRC you can write off something like 25% of you home expenses if you have a dedicated home office. 

In reply to Toyman! :

Unless you work for yourself, not since 2018. They closed that deduction 

In reply to Toyman! :

Be very careful with that though.  As I remember if you dedicate part of your house and write off a percentage of your mortgage as an office expense it can cause issues when you sell your house.  Something about having to pay taxes on that percentage.

(per the post above, this might be current info either)

SV reX said:

CrustyRedXpress said:

It's definitely yet another way that knowledge workers are privileged in society and there are a massive number of things we as a society can and should do to make things easier for no-collar and blue collar workers. 

I'm with Duke. I'd really like to hear some of these ideas. 

Haha! Sorry guys, I love you lots but that would turn political real quick.

Apexcarver said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Unless you work for yourself, not since 2018. They closed that deduction 

You are correct. I'm surprised the congress critters haven't brought that back up. It would be an easy vote buy for them and it might actually be something they could agree on. 

Apexcarver said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Unless you work for yourself, not since 2018. They closed that deduction 

Plus, most folks don't have a dedicated home office, they have their dining room table, or a desk in a spare bedroom.

aircooled said:

Fish in a microwave is a HUGE no-no at work.

Putting a CD disc in a microwave for 2 seconds or so... that was just good fun (makes cool lightning streaks in the metal layer of the CD).

We occasionally got the "popcorn in the microwave for 20 minutes" fire evacuations.  Smell was not nearly as bad of course.

Previous job:  a guy warmed up chitlins in the microwave.  It was terrible.  

Our offices always had these "helpful" signs. Post-covid they have mostly gone away. I am assuming that those that WFH mostly now are the main culprits of either making the signs or the mess that causes the signs. I will continue to investigate.

My employer is pushing RTO big time right now.  Some of my team is 'Hybrid', I work with some people who are Remote, some are On-site.  

Some people handle it very well.  I think my team in particular has done an excellent job demonstrating what Hybrid can be.  They are around when they need to be, but able to leverage that flexibility of remote work as well.  

Some people handle it extremely poorly.  Those bad apples poison the whole bunch.  I think as a result we have upper management just dragging everyone back in rather than choosing to deal with the performance issues of each employee 1 on 1.  Additionally, I'm a firm believer that a lot of the remote workers who are underpeforming are also underperformers when pulled back into the office (although the gap isn't necessarily as large).

There are pros and cons to all of the different work environments, but I do think the statements in this thread implying that remote workers do nothing are pretty ridiculous.

Anyway, back to poop jokes.

OHSCrifle said:

What really puzzles me is the people who apparently have a soft enough workload to be able to berkeley off half the day. How?

If they were berkeleying off at home they're probably berkeleying off at the office too, a lot of office jobs are about looking busy.

The adage about the Japanese salaryman not leaving work until the boss leaves is true, but they're not actually working the whole time.

j_tso said:

OHSCrifle said:

What really puzzles me is the people who apparently have a soft enough workload to be able to berkeley off half the day. How?

If they were berkeleying off at home they're probably berkeleying off at the office too, a lot of office jobs are about looking busy.

The adage about the Japanese salaryman not leaving work until the boss leaves is true, but they're not actually working the whole time.

THIS.

We have/had a lot of people who would just walk from cube to cube for a good portion of their day doing "watercooler chat" thereby appearing to be doing work centric collaboration, but in fact sinking multiple peoples productivity. Not to mention the productivity of the person who's cube they are standing beside who is having to try to focus over their conversation.  

People are spending a lot less time on that stuff with Teams calls. Plus, they implemented end of day reporting of tasks worked on, which gave some degree of accountability. 

All in all, we have a far greater ability to get out heads down on tasks.  It does take some discipline, and yes, we do have bad apples that we have to address performance issues with, but one of the first lines of our remote work agreements is that it can be terminated at any time for performance issues. 

Duke said:

Apexcarver said:

In reply to Toyman! :

Unless you work for yourself, not since 2018. They closed that deduction 

Plus, most folks don't have a dedicated home office, they have their dining room table, or a desk in a spare bedroom.

 

Everyone I know that is WFH have dedicated offices set up. Most are in spare bedrooms or the FROG.

We have what my client likes to call "Mandatory Wednesdays".  It's become a bit of a joke, however...yesterday was one such "Mandatory Wednesday" and it was him, me, and maybe a dozen other folks.  We had our monthly staff meeting, which is intentionally set up to be on a Mandatory Wednesday, and there were more folks on the Teams call than actually present in the conference room.  

I've been on basically "hybrid" work for about the last 2 years- at least one day a week in the office, and travel as needed, which works out to about a month per year on the road.  Which isn't terrible.  My client knows if he calls me, I'll pick up the phone- or call him back when I'm done taking a E36 M3.  We also do a daily Teams meeting for our work group, so everyone has to at least check in first thing in the morning.  

Engineering (at least, my particular flavor of it) isn't really white collar, and isn't really blue collar.  If I had to "shade" my job, it would be something like "Soft Cyan".  And this is with a Master's degree.  

The bathroom sitch at our office is pretty decent.  They pay a Merry Maid service to clean it daily.  The shop restroom was just renovated and everything is very easy-clean hard surfaces.  I follow a policy of "courtesy flush" to maintain both bowl and air environment.  We also have urinals, for expedience of the #1 action.  

CrustyRedXpress said:

 knowledge workers

I lol'd

I read an article last weekend about the trend of WFH people actually doing two jobs at the same time. Pretty sure if I was in a position to WFH I'd definitely be doing that

CrustyRedXpress said:

SV reX said:

CrustyRedXpress said:

It's definitely yet another way that knowledge workers are privileged in society and there are a massive number of things we as a society can and should do to make things easier for no-collar and blue collar workers. 

I'm with Duke. I'd really like to hear some of these ideas. 

Haha! Sorry guys, I love you lots but that would turn political real quick.

I see no reason why "What are some things we can do to make things easier for blue collar workers?" should need to turn political. Why can't we have an honest discussion about solutions?

Let me tell you a similar story....

At my current workplace there are about 300 personnel in this building, there's three main bathroom areas, and lot's of high ranking gov't officials. 

The bathroom closest to my office had a morning pooper that would leave an absolute mess in a different stall each day. I'm talking barely anything made it into the toilet to include the paper. The cleaning staff here is run by a company that employs people with special needs and I felt terrible that they were being subjected to this dingleberry's antics. 

I had figured out who the person was. Then I wrote an email out to the whole building lambasting people for their bathroom etiquette and without naming names, called the individual out. That issue hasn't resurfaced again since. 

To this day the bathrooms remain pretty spotless. 

Peabody said:

CrustyRedXpress said:

 knowledge workers

I lol'd

I read an article last weekend about the trend of WFH people actually doing two jobs at the same time. Pretty sure if I was in a position to WFH I'd definitely be doing that

And then you have the ones that hire a Chinese guy to do his work while he surfs the internet all day. 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169528579/outsourced-employee-sends-own-job-to-china-surfs-web

A recent project was a $6 million renovation to an existing business. The business remained open during the work. There was 1 bathroom that was not getting renovated, but it was fully inside the construction area, so it was closed to the public. That meant the construction crew could use it. 
 

Someone (or several someones) was one of those jerks. I got tired of the nasty mess. 
 

I put up a sign that basically said "Don't be a pig.  If you can't keep this place clean, I will lock the door and get a port-o-john for you to use". 
 

That fixed it. Never had a problem again. 

SV reX said:

CrustyRedXpress said:

SV reX said:

CrustyRedXpress said:

It's definitely yet another way that knowledge workers are privileged in society and there are a massive number of things we as a society can and should do to make things easier for no-collar and blue collar workers. 

I'm with Duke. I'd really like to hear some of these ideas. 

Haha! Sorry guys, I love you lots but that would turn political real quick.

I see no reason why "What are some things we can do to make things easier for blue collar workers?" should need to turn political. Why can't we have an honest discussion about solutions?

Because a significant portion of those solutions would involve public policy. Probably federal programs and regulations. Such things would cost money. People will argue based on their politics about how those funds are raised and/or programs being administered by the public vs. private sector.

I'm not sure how a blue collar backhoe operator gets to work from home, therby becoming privileged.

I'm also not sure when "privileged" became a dirty word when describing someone who went to school, got an education, worked five days a week, and now has more cool stuff than somebody else...Now, Thurston Howell the third, well...

Real privilege is genetic anyway.

In reply to Duke :

Silly argument, all of those are things that are either already in place or so absurdly small that they bear no comparison.

And WFH employees don't have to pay for commuting costs (a much larger amount) or work clothes or the time commuting, etc.

With the direction this is going I can see this being locked by page 5. But here is something I have noticed. There is a lot of hostility towards people that WFH from people that weren't afforded that opportunity. It may be because of job role, company culture or something else but if someone didn't get to WFH it seems like they are of the opinion that WFH'ers are lazy and getting a sweet deal. I truly believe that "you can't have part of someone's life, you have to take the whole thing". That statement applies to jobs too.

My sister is a C-level executive at a large company, she flies on private jets all over the world, has a seemingly awesome compensation package, has a private secretary, etc. etc. It is easy to want all of that. She also has a strictly managed diet and exercise program, mandated personal coaches, late hours almost every day (including calls with SE Asia at 10 pm or later), massive pressure from other high ranking narcissists. You can't have the perks without the sacrifices.

Same goes at other levels, the before mentioned backhoe operator has to go to the "office" and can't WFH. Yep, he probably didn't spend 4-6 years in school, he also has far greater job mobility, gets to see new job sites and work with rotating people. Also get's paid for overtime. He also never has to sit in hours of meetings with a bunch of people grinding over work they spent weeks or months on and explain their reasoning for each decision. At the same time, they are on the backhoe when it is -10 and there is a water main break and when it is 100 and you are in the busy construction season. I am an engineer that WFH's currently but my father was a gas mechanic (significantly similarities to a backhoe operator) so I have seen both sides of that coin.

TLDR;

All the jobs have pluses and minuses. Sometimes that is flexibility, sometimes it is lack of stress, sometimes its huge paychecks. Assume the best in people (except those shiny happy people that E36 M3 on the toilet).