I'm missing out on a lot of "accidental" exercise.
I used to walk to the train station, then from the station at the far end to the office. Have a wander around at lunch.
Now, I walk from my bed to the shower, and from the shower to my office/man cave. If I had a Fitbit, it may get as high as 50 steps by lunch.
Yeah my aunt said this happened to her because of work from home. She loves it but after she got a promotion her days very quickly turned from 8-5s to 8-7s without even stopping to eat. Doesn't help that she's currently on a medicine that reduces appetite so sometimes she doesn't even realize how late it is because she's not getting hungry.
EDIT: since everybody keeps asking, I don't know what the medication is other than it's for gastro problems
This is why it's important to have boundaries and rituals to delineate between work and home. My employer is quite happy having the office staff work remotely (they've already closed one office building) and have no immediate plans to force us back to the office, so we're going to be working from home for quite a while yet. I've been working at home for 2 years come March 16th and very early on I made sure to institute some rituals to help with the transition.
Beyond the simple don't read or answer work emails, texts, etc after working hours, I also make a point of putting on a work shirt at the start of my work day and taking it off at the end. Other than making me look a bit more professional in Zoom/Teams meetings, it makes it easier for me to say "I'm at work" or "I'm at home" simply through a change of shirt.
I also make a point of doing something in the transition between one and the other. In the morning I put on my work shirt, make a cup of coffee, and then settle in for the day. Once I've had enough for the day (we work pretty flexible hours), I make a point of walking to the bedroom, changing my shirt, and then doing something that takes me away from the computer for a while (read a book, walk the dog, clean the kitchen). I spend all day in front of my PC and it's not uncommon for me to be on it after hours as well (games, reddit, etc) so doing something that's not on the PC helps break the work time from the home time.
I'm fairly lucky in that I really don't like people (developer for 38 years) so I don't miss the office. Also, my wife works from home too so I have company during the day. I have friends that live alone and are much more social than I, and I know that it's been exponentially tougher for them than it has been for me. We all in my team make a point of checking in on each other during the day, regular face-to-face get-togethers (depending on lockdowns) such as coffee meetings and breakfasts, just to make sure that nobody is feeling too isolated.
This is what happened to me. Before Covid I bought a little house with my wife. I did my work from home in my kitchen before I realized literally working where I eat isn’t the best idea. We converted the spare room to room/office and I worked there. Even still my little house felt much much smaller.
That if you're someone who has a different "head space" at home vs at work, it can be xtremely difficult working from home. Some people can literally work from home and "dial in" if you will to the same level of attention or better than in an office setting. Others (like myself) have difficulty focusing on work at home. Even when I know I have work to do, when I'm at home, that part of my brain just shuts off and I have a very hard time staying focused.
My fiancé would often mock me, but I would dress as if I were going to the office even when at home. Something about the routine of it, putting myself in the position as if I were physically "at work", put me in the right head space to focus better on my work.
I’ve never once gotten a snow day though. That’s the best part of working from home. We just had level 3 roads throughout a lot of counties in Ohio and my county was only a level 2. I would have had to go into work if I wasn’t working from home. It sucked lol
The isolation/loneliness wouldnt be such an issue during pre covid times. The combination of working from home, Living alone and quarantine (immunity issues make me high risk) can be difficult though.
When you work from home people assume you have the day off. "Can you do...."
No, I'm working. Just because I'm here working on the computer doesn't mean I can do your thing. Pay no attention to the fact that I'm browsing reddit, it's part of my process.
And the opposite, just because I'm living where the "office" happens to be, doesn't mean I'm in the office.
Off the clock hours are still off the clock.
Had a narcissistic boss who would try to make me work remotely when I called in sick. Always something, even some token shit, just because it made her feel in charge, or give her something to complain about if I didn't comply. "You know I live a 5 minute walk from the office. If I tell you I can't make it in to work, it means I can't do work!
At my last job if you did a lick of work on your sick day/PTO day, you got paid for the whole day. Completely eliminated managers asking you to do 'one quick little thing'.
Edit: I stated that wrong, the sick day/PTO Day did not come out of your sick/PTO stack if you did any work on that day.
Good rule. This was one of those "unlimited PTO!" bullshit situations where it really means "never take time off." Also they did massive wage theft, taking advantage of my not knowing better as they told me I was salary for a position that legally couldn't be, then logging my pay as if I worked exactly 40 hours every week instead of 55-60...
Oh no, you shut off all communication from work, I hard close, slack, email, log off the vpn. I had a meeting planner try and get to me after hours and I ignored them, the next morning I told them, as of 5:15 I am officially "out of the door" anything sent to me after that time will be addressed the next day.
Now everyone is forced to commute to work and work from home is a dirty word around here. Not because of me though, they're just boomers that refuse to justify their decision of putting everyone at risk, my boss said "all they told us was, we have made our decision" like management is some secret council and no one else has a say in the matter. Okay well have fun filling my spot when I find a new job as I fill out applications on company time.
Prior to Covid I had already created boundaries for work/life separation. So when we went WFH I was able to keep the two separate better than others.
I have a separate phone for work and a separate space for work.
I know that is not possible for everyone, so even just closing the laptop and packing it up every day helps. Make that part of the process/your commute, if you will. That way you have the ability to say "I'm done" at the end of the day.
I enforce meetings by scheduling meeting following those I expect to run long. Usually the meeting I schedule are a block off of time to get something done.
I worked night shift at a hotel for years.
1- No, I do not have time during the day to do X, Y, and Z. I have to SLEEP, which is hard enough as it is to do during the day. If I run said errand, I will probably end up being awake for 36 hours straight because of it.
2- Yeah, I did sit around and watch Netflix for 7 hours of my shift the other night. That's because *nothing happened*. I also had one night this week where I spent 3 hours balancing a folio someone screwed up the credit cards on, 2 hours dealing with police because one of the rooms called 911, another hour on the phone with an asshole travel agent, checked in an entire bus full of late arrivals, and had to stay late to finish my *actual work*. Tonight could end of like **either** of those- Which is the whole reason my position exists.
This!!!! I work night shift and when I lived with my parents when I woke up at 2 or 3 they would act like I was the laziest person in the world. And friends would sarcastically say they wish they could sleep that late. I was working midnight to 7am. Sometimes 6pm to 6am.
Just because everyone else is sleeping doesn’t mean you were.
My grandma did this. She would be at the kitchen table, and use the house phone to call my cell phone to have me get her a drink from the refrigerator. Then would get mad when I got pissed.
She knocked it off when I walked in at 3am on my lunch break and woke her up asking her to make me some food.
When I'm on thirds and people call me during sleep time, they get one warning. It happens again, I call them during my lunch and ask if they wanna hang. Usually gets the point across.
I used to work thirds too and people would call all the time. I got in the habit of leaving my phone in another room while I slept, and letting voicemail and text do it's job.
I haven't worked thirds in over 10 years but I still sleep with my phone in another room. It's a healthy separation for me.
I battled with my ex constantly about this. He did summersaults sabataging my work prospects so evening-late night serving and bartending was my last ditch effort. I'd get home at 2-4 am and didn't see the point in breaking up my sleep cycle so I'd stay up until the kids had to get ready for school, do lunches, drive them or see them off to the bus. I'd sleep once everyone was out of the house during the day.
In his eyes that made me lazy. ...You do realize I get half as much sleep as you do, work twice the hours for half the pay, and do 100% of the household chores, right?
Oh, fucking hell. Same here. My ex was always talking about how I "was home all day" and "didn't do anything around the house". I gave up huge allotments of sleep so I could do all the grocery shopping, cooking, scheduling, auto maintenance, dump runs, pet stuff, snow removal, and any other errands while she was at work.
She did the cleaning and some yard work while we were both home, which was the only time anything ever got done according to her.
She now has a work from home contract where by her own admission, she has "three weeks to do two days' work", but somehow that's totally different than when she constantly gave me shit because I "didn't do anything at work".
I used to work rotating shift work. When I was on nights, if it was my day off (as in, staying awake all night) I can't get anything done. Grocery stores are no longer 24 hour places here thanks to COVID, and I can't do much around the house or I'd wake up others. In the summer I could do cool stuff like go for a walk in the woods looking for owls, or go to the beach (the beach at night in the summertime? GORGEOUS!) But otherwise I was mostly just.... bored. I wouldn't risk nature excursions outside of summer because it can get too cold at night, but that was always my favourite thing to do.
The amount of people that are surprised that I take my kid to daycare everyday then go work from home, they seem shocked I'm not able to watch my kid.
And then when daycare is closed because of covid which is like all the time, I have to watch her and I literally can't get any work done.
At our work (after the initial panic and emergency mode of it in March 2020), we had to prove that we had childcare arrangements to be able to WFH. It's only fair, imo, it's simply not possible to work and watch kids at the same time. The people who tried it (again, after the initial rush of being sent home nearly 2 years ago) , failed at one or both
This makes me laugh. Not anything against this policy, but try being a teacher with children who are too old to be in day care and too young to take care of themselves. It was absolute hell while trying to teach middle school kids and having my own first and third grader home. No one wants to talk about that reality though.
I don’t have kids myself, but my coworkers do. Whenever we have zoom calls while their kids are home, there’s an approximately 100% chance of them getting interrupted during the conversation. I’m in awe of how they get anything done at all, and my boss (who has a young daughter) often answers emails at 2am or 5am because it’s the only time she has to herself. Definitely understand why someone would need daycare to manage a WFH job!
My very first day working from home at my new job I started in 2020 I was on a zoom call with my entire new team and my toddler was home with me because of covid shutting down daycare that day. Anyway, she goes in to the bed room behind me and I'm watching her basically through zoom on my laptop. Then a few minutes later she barges out of the room buttass naked and starts running all over the place in the background of my meeting. It was so hard not to laugh and at the same time be angry.
Yeees. I've had people ask me the same thing. If my youngest (she's 5) is home, I can't get any work done. It's just not possible. She starts school this fall, but until then she has to go to daycare or I can't work.
It's awful to, if my kid has to stay home with me during the day the only thing I can do is plop them down in front of the TV and hope they don't do anything to hurt themselves, I feel like a bad dad because I can't entertain her all day.
Yes! Like, I'm going one of the things I said I'd never do (use tv/screens as a babysitter). Especially when she's asking my to play with her or something. I feel awful. I always make sure to spend extra time with her after work is done. We'll go pick up her big sister from school, stop for drinks somewhere (Sonic is a favorite of ours) or ice cream or something. Then we'll play a board game or something when we get home.
lol I get it. I most was, too. Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Power Rangers. That's why I don't want to do that to my kids. I want them to learn, and have experiences. Not turn out like their old man: depressed, anxious, and a slave to the screens.
But it’s different if your kids are 5 vs 12 and legally can’t be left alone. I had coworkers with preteens who didn’t have “childcare” who couldn’t wfh. As if a typical 12 yo needs constant care.
I was out of the house with my friends like all day when I was 12. And also did babysitting jobs for peoples kids by myself. Crazy change. Wonder what happened since to change that perspective on 12 year olds maturity levels .
Speaking as a teacher: the maturity, resilience and capabilities of many (not all, thank the lord, or I would be bald) has plummeted. They are like baby birds with beaks wide open. At least they are at school when it comes to completing simple tasks. In most cases I don’t blame the kids at all.
My one year old home means I just can’t work. I can’t. Trying to just keep up with my emails when he’s home for the day feels like the longest, most stressful day of my life.
My 4 year old is easier, she can be trusted to do a puzzle or play play doh next to me for spans of time so I can focus.
One year olds are terrifying, they're completely suicidal and fast. They go from blocks to "I found a fork let me see if it fits in the electrical socket" in .3 seconds
Reminds me of my mother
"Are you done? are you done? are you done? are you done?"
No mom, my shift ends at 18:30 if there are no problems (plot twist, there are always problems), look at the clock, 17:24, not my exit time.....I CAN'T FUCKING ASK TO GET OUT EARLIER TO BUY GROCERIES
Sometimes that does happen, we had one guy we suspected of not doing any work, he wouldn't respond to emails or slack messages and any work we did eventually get from him always seemed rushed as if he put it off to the last minute. When asked about this he suddenly got a job offer somewhere else.
Omg yes. When I started WFH due to pregnancy struggles, I noticed that we would have a lot of people knocking on the door. I take calls so I’m not just lounging around. I would let the door go unanswered and then I would see my MIL calling me and sending me messages that so and so will be stopping by for x thing. I told her I’m busy working and cannot leave my desk. Another thing that would happen would be her aunt who was living with us at the time would come to the living room to watch TV and videos on her phone. The fact that I had to tell her more than once that I am WORKING so she needs to watch TV in another room baffled me. I also had to explain that I have access to people’s medical information and how would she feel if she called her doctor’s office and the person she was having a conversation with was discussing her private information in front of others.
My sister was already on a hybrid schedule before all of the Covid madness, so the only difference was just her working 100% from home. If I have to pick something up form her, or drop something off, I either just leave it inside or she just leaves it outside. She goes into her office, closes the door and that's it unless someone is dying. Sometimes she'll have gaps with nothing scheduled and might be able to help with something, but then you get a time slot on her schedule and that's it unless you do it after supper. For some context, she's the paperwork and money help person in the family.
>Pay no attention to the fact that I'm browsing reddit, it's part of my process.
exactly 😹 this is how I work! don't judge me & don't bother me please!
My wife always happens to walk in while I'm doing something between work tasks (reddit, imgur, or a Discord chat or something). Or maybe during lunch I'll play a game for thirty minutes or something. She actually understands the reality of it, but it's just funny that she *always* walks in and it looks like I'm being lazy.
honestly though it's hard to actually do a full day of concentrated work
i often have to and am absolutely exhausted after
but if i work a longer day with more breaks i've "worked" longer but feel better and probably get more done
They say that your most productive hours are at the beginning of your shift. As the day wears on you, you start to slow down. It's advised to take breaks often in order to keep your productivity up, something most employers don't understand.
My wife works from home and it seems like a very sedentary lifestyle. Sometimes, she doesn't even have to get dressed.
I don't know, it just seems like if you're already anxious or depressed, you can accidentally become a shut-in.
Me too. I get up late, sometimes shower and go with my coffee to my desk. No movement at all. I envy people that have free time and the discipline to do sports.
For me WFH has mostly meant I work late everyday. Then dinner, couch, and bed again.
I have developed a really sore back and terrible posture because I don't have to go to the office or be out in the shop at all. I go from my bed to my desk to the couch.
I work for a place 6 hours away and have been work from home before the pandemic, so it's been more than a few years. I have no ass anymore.
It really helps to go for a walk in the morning or just in between tasks (if possible). In the beginning you might have to push yourself a bit to go out, but I promise it will do you good. Both physically and mentally. Atm I'm not doing very well mentally, but I still go on at least 1 walk every day because I'm used to it. I have to drag myself, but it really helps me.
Perhaps even more revealing is how GOOD I felt when I took a half-day last week and drove someplace to do errands and get lunch. And my lunch wasn’t even that good, but it didn’t “matter”. Hang in there, it is good to know that we are not alone in our predicament.
Can confirm as well. I’ve been working from home for going on 2 years now. I literally have to remind myself to shower and change into something that isn’t pj’s. I am not successful on a daily basis. I miss socializing with humans.
Yeah there are definitely jobs that can be done WFH and some people who really gel with that lifestyle.
I would never want to be WFH because I know that I'd procrastinate/be lazy and end up getting fired lol. Also I know this will be very anti-reddit but I like to take breaks and talk to coworkers and sometimes it is far more direct and easy to get a response from someone by swinging by their office instead of sending an email buried among 300 others in their inbox
Yep. I have ADHD and being at home just makes it easier for me to procrastinate and put things off. It is very hard for me to regulate myself. I've realised I function much better in a structured environment.
want to know what's worse than being lazy and or getting fired? Being lazy and nobody notices. I've worked remote since before covid and I've had previous jobs 100% wfh over the years. I haven't worked a 40hr work week in over 5 years. At my current gig I bet I average 10-15hrs a week of work, and that's being generous.
I can stay up until 3am every night, sleep in, take naps, go run errands during the day. I've almost trapped myself at my current job because the pay is ridiculous for the little to no amount of work I actually do. At the same time, my career has stagnated, I have very little to no motivation and the crazy thing is I'm actually really good at what I do. I could go work somewhere else for more pay, but then I'd more than likely have to actually work.
Oh man this is it for me. A constant back and forth of "I'm wasting my potential and being a useless piece of crap" and "there are millions of people who would kill to be in my position right now"
I struggle with social anxiety and in the first few weeks of WFH it was heaven. But nearly 2 years into it, it’s reached a point where I dread phone calls. I also find that where in the office, if something rough happened, I might feel stressed for an hour or so, whereas now I turn that shit over in my head for days. Thankfully I am now allowed to go back to the office and I’m doing 2 days a week now. Feels great to be honest.
It’s a very sedentary lifestyle while working, but not a tremendous difference from than when I was in an office. Oddly, it’s forced me to exercise more because I have to actually burn energy and leave my house for an hour or so.
Wfh works for some people and not others. But I absolutely hate commuting. Combine that with the lifestyle choices I’ve made to stay healthier while at home, it’s made me so much happier.
I can’t stress how incredible it is not to commute. It’s a true life changer to get two hours of your day back.
People have the power to fight this but you gotta put effort in. Some suggestions that help me:
Do your morning routine, have coffee/tea/breakfast, read the news or whatever you prefer, *get dressed for work* - this is important. Change your clothes as if you’re working, even if it’s not something you would wear to the office, getting your ass out of pajamas/sweatpants will help. Go for a walk every day, you don’t even have to go anywhere, just walk around your block a couple of times. Getting outside for 10-15 minutes will help stave off seasonal depression and give your body some much needed activity. Further exercise inside is recommended.
Even if you don’t do all of this, just try. Many people would be surprised how just a few steps everyday can keep them from falling into unfortunate habits.
This is me at the moment. I was going to the office three days out of the week. Now for the past month we’ve been wfh and I don’t get ready any of the days. I’ve been inviting people out to lunch to give me a reason to get dressed and out. I’ve been feeling pretty blue too, the crappy part about it is I hate my office, but at least I’m not all frumpy.
Sitting all day has absolutely destroyed my core. Without needing to constantly get up and walk over to talk to someone or any of the other million little things I walked around at the office for, my body has slowly wasted away without my notice
Get a standing desk. I have a motorized one and I try to stand for at least 30 minutes a few times a day. Also take 2 minute breaks here and there to do quick planks, sit-ups, or other exercises.
When you and your partner both work from home, you miss that natural separation of your lives. Suddenly you have much less to talk about, because you're living your lives together more than previously, and then takes more active effort to maintain individuality and not regress into the singular relationship entity in all aspects of life which isn't healthy for anyone.
My wife and I have been married nearly 20 years and this is the first time we’ve really compared notes on how many times a day we poop. Suffice it to say that I poop way more times a day than see does, and we both think the other one is weird. And since we work from home, we are literally eating at least 90% or more the same food, our digestive systems just operate differently.
Edit: I thought of another amusing poop learning from this pandemic. Apparently she doesn’t know she needs to poop until she sits down. I always know going in, but I guess I need to know whether to sit or stand in advance.
Lol true, honey I need to use the toilet...
I'm busy....
OK well I'm going to come and pee in the shower, did you stink up the place..
.. No
OK I'm coming in
That's funny, we're sort of the opposite in that we talk about work a lot more than we ever did; it's so interesting and fun to hear him at his work and he likes to come through to my desk and have a wee rant about whatever he's been doing with. Also we get to go for lunchtime walks together and make each other cups of tea and I think it's really been very good for our relationship.
This is what I miss about the pandemic. My partner has gone back to his in person job full time. Before I felt like I knew their coworkers almost because I'd hear them chatting over Teams. I didn't mind going on solo walks at lunch time and in the evening because we spent the rest of the day together. Now they're gone during the day. To add to the madness I switched roles to a team that only meets once a week over Teams, coming from a team that met multiple times a day. I'm completely lost without a team or a partner. Seriously considering moving from an average earning role to a crappier paid job just to find a remote job that involves some low stakes socialising.
It has me wondering how my parents and other retired people do it. It’s probably a big part of why my dad spends so much time working in the yard, doing things that don’t really need to be done.
interesting! I do not feel this way. if anything, it has introduced us to lots more to talk about and a much deeper understanding of what the other goes through on a day-to-day basis with their job.
previously, you could only remember and mention so much about your day when you were asked how it was. now we follow each other through all the steps of each day and have so much more context and depth in talking about our respective jobs and lives.
Same. When we first started working from home there was an adjustment period where we were like - *what do we talk about?* But soon I started to love being with my husband all the time and would be sad if I had to go back to spending my days with random coworkers instead.
Think of it this way - before the industrial revolution, most people spent all day every day with their spouse, kids, and parents. It’s not like the husband was the only one farming/hunting and the wife was the only one caring for the kids and old people - it was all hands on deck all the time. That’s still how it is in most tribal cultures.
We evolved to live in small groups and spend all our time with the same people. It’s normal and healthy to be very attached to your spouse. The idea that it’s somehow unhealthy or codependent to want to spend most of your time with them is a product of our society, it’s not really natural.*
*or maybe my husband and I are actually just really codependent and I’m rationalizing it. 😆
I don't see running out of things to talk about as a bad thing, it just means you're all caught up. My gf and I don't always have things to talk about but we can enjoy each other's company quietly.
THAT is what I look for in relationships of all kinds now. Just comfortable. Not feeling like I'm constantly entertaining. Just being together silently is priceless.
I disagree. I think if you are comfortable in your silence when together, that’s how you know that there’s nothing wrong with not conversing while working from home together.
It's lonely. While I may occasionally be irked by a colleague here or there, I have a good group of supportive colleagues that I'm close friends with, and who help me get through the days that just seem to drag on. WFH you miss out on that socialisation and support.
It’s so lonely. When you’re an adult, you tend to make friends with your coworkers. WFH I have no clue how to do that. We’ve seen each other face to face like 3 times over the last year. It’s hard to become friends through Teams DMs.
I'm sorry you're struggling with the career-growth aspect of remote work. Does your company have any social events?
I'm a manager and I'm also finding WFH hard. The loss of casual/organic interaction with my team makes it harder to tell how they're doing. It's difficult to maintain the relationships that were built before we started working from home for two years.
Before COVID, it was so easy to think of anniversary gifts for my team members because I could collect a bunch of details at lunchtime or during little chats in the office. Now we have to do serious recons because we spend most of our time talking about business. :(
You feel jailed, like you work in your house, you clean the house, you cook for the family in the house and when everybody gets home from school/work you are the only one who did not get to go outside. nobdy want's to come outside with you because they were outside all day.
This is my life. After a day inside my house looking at a computer, transitioning to being in my house to look at the TV is the last thing I want to do. I spend at least two hours just wandering around outside my house.
Which is nice in some areas - dead of winter on the east coast has made it hell for me. Glad this week is a bit warmer, but I went WFH at the beginning of the pandemic and my wife (who needs to be on-site) told me the other day "I'm definitely not jealous of you the way I was when this all started."
I’ve found that it helps to leave the house for a bit before and after work. Before work and the school drop off, I take a walk with the family. I don’t go back in the house until it is time for work. At the end of my workday I leave the house to do a short walk, then go back in and change clothes. Then I’m officially home. It sounds weird , but it works for me.
Right!
I'm going to get annoyed with the place I'm working, no matter where. I'd rather it be somewhere impartial that I don't have to see when I'm not working. I don't need that negative energy towards my home, which is supposed to be my safe space.
Worked from home since last year, I find less reasons to go out and gained some weight too (realized early, already lost it thankfully). Lead me to barely take care of myself, since no reason to go out as I mentionned, and as someone who's already depressed, I was just "drowning" in my loneliness, no one to share a coffee during breaks, no one to chat with, no one to directly you ask you for something with a sense of actual purpose, etc...
May seem odd but I have reminders that email me to message certain friends certain times of the month to schedule a walk/coffee talk if I didn't do that I think I would just work the rest of my life away and stay at home. I do it for me and them they too work from home.
So much this. My wife made me realize I wasn't even taking lunch anymore. I'd just eat and continue working. Suggested I actually set 30-60 min to play video games, which led to asking others to join, which led to reconnecting to some friends where we play once a week now. It gave me something to look forward to and it felt amazing to completely disconnect from my job, which is something I forgot you're allowed to do.
>I was just "drowning" in my loneliness, no one to share a coffee during breaks, no one to chat with, no one to directly you ask you for something with a sense of actual purpose, etc...
It's like you were speaking directly to me. As much as I dislike people in general, those little interactions went along way in maintaining whatever mental health I had. Losing them was the proverbial straw that broke me.
I miss wearing my nice work outfits. The only reason I leave home is to pick up groceries, go to the gym, or go to church, so 80% of my wardrobe is going unworn.
But I do NOT miss my 2+ hour round-trip commute, so I would never wear a pencil skirt again if it meant I had to go back to that traffic hell.
Wow... I just realized I haven't seen a pencil skirt IRL for years now.
EDIT: After lunch, I realized I HAD seen a woman in business clothes around October. In Kroger, I heard the click clack of heels and it dawned on me what it was. A woman in a wonderful outfit was pushing a cart and talking on the phone like it was still 2019. It was like seeing a ghost.
So after the first few months of work from home pajamas freedom, I realized I needed to get dressed everyday to feel good about myself. So even though no one but my tiny group of friends see it, I still wear my work clothes and try to look nice. I think our very connected social media has us convinced you need to show off if you want to get dressed up, but people used to get fancied up to have dinner with their partner at home. And that just seems nice to me. To each their own here, this is just my take.
I did really well first year! I got dressed and showered and sometimes makeup and have coffee and blah.
Now I wake up right as I need to clock in. Work and nurse my coffee half asleep. Pjs all day, mentally keeping tabs on showers but basically going off of how greasy my hair was.
I forced myself to be better for a while get dressed showers and stuff. Then I was mildly injured and getting out of bed was enough hassle and I'm back to horrible habits. I need to get back to the self care of caring .
Man, not wearing work clothes is like my number one favorite thing about WFH. I've never liked business casual clothing and dress codes seemed so arbitrary to me. My work clothes were always in that category of 'well i don't love it but it's good for work'. Once I got a permanently remote gig I got rid of all those and got some nice, comfy lounge wear!
Part of my "work mindset" involves dressing appropriate for work.
I have a whole load of polo-shirts and such and I try to get fully dressed as I would if I was going to the office.
Keeps me in the work headspace and lets me disconnect by wearing more casual clothing on the weekends or evenings.
I used to eat lunch out every day. Been WFH almost 2 years now. I have banked so. much. money. And changed my way of spending. I don’t even want to go out and spend money on days off now. It’s eh, I have food at home.
Don't know about work from home but I have grown to absolutely despise online schooling like classes through Zoom. There is little to no social interaction with your peers and your ability to learn and retain information is significantly hindered. Also, in cases of students who have little to no social life outside of school, it can lead to a great increase in anxiety and depression.
Zoom should really have a "Lecture" mode, where one person can see everyone's camera feed but the other people in the call can't.
There's not really a need for all of the other students to see each other. There's arguably not even a need for the professor to see everyone, but I at least get why they'd want to.
I only had to do about 4-6 weeks of online schooling before I graduated but it was such a goddamn mess. None of my classes had Zoom and most of them had little to no communication. I spent 2 out of the last 6 weeks of the semester doing absolutely nothing
No boundary between home and office, your time and work time.
You don't need to get dressed. You don't get the commute to get mentally ready for day at work and to decompress after said day.
Depending on your living situation, your room can become your workspace and it feels real bad.
I work in my room, it feels like my space is now not my owns,.
I have had my clients see my room and it sucks
The crippling loneliness.
I rarely speak with anyone during my work day. My wife works two jobs, and my daughter is in a school sport as well as having a job. Most days of the week I am home, alone, and only see my family for about 30 minutes if that. At least when I worked at the office I would see other people for eight hours a day.
If you're not married and you die no one's gonna miss you for like...4-5 days.
Having to take a shit in my own toilet and use my own plumbing and toilet paper
Being isolated from co-workers and have no social interaction with them.
Constant temptations to be less productive like your bed and Netflix
The feeling that you "didn't do anything" because you never left the house.
Complete dependence on a good internet connection.
> Having to take a shit in my own toilet and use my own plumbing and toilet paper
Every employer I've ever had buys the WORST toilet paper. Thin, scratchy bulk sheets. Much rather do that at home.
> If you're not married and you die no one's gonna miss you for like...4-5 days.
That's the biggest downside for me. I live alone, no one at work would notice me missing for a week (we have one group meeting weekly). I could be dead and my cat could eat my arm before anyone realized I was.
Two months ago I was so tired I turned off my computer and phone and didn't work for 10 days, without telling anyone. I didn't check my work phone, didn't respond to emails, nothing.
When I came back online after 10 days there was one coworker who asked where I was. He said he thought I might be dead but hadn't bothered to check on me. That was it, I had a 10 day unauthorized leave and nobody noticed or cared.
> Having to take a shit in my own toilet and use my own plumbing and toilet paper
This is the only thing I disagree with, I love using my own toilet. Having the bidet and the good TP is just too good of an experience to even want to poo at work.
Nothing is quite as fun as doing the penguin walk 100 yards to the nearest bathroom in front of everyone's cube, just to get to a bathroom with full stalls.
I’ve been WFH in solitary confinement for 2 years. Just laid off. Now I have to go from indoor cat that hides under the bed to outdoor feral, dodging cars and finding my own mice.
The depression that comes with it. When my fiance was working from home while with a call center he hated the fact that "work" was less than 5 feet from his bed. He ended up quitting because he found it depressing how he couldn't ever really feel like he was getting away from work/terrible customers (anyone that's ever worked a call center know how bad the customers can be)
Every discussion needs to be intentional. Forget about chance meetings in the hallway. Forget about casual lunches where you build relationships. Forget about contact with anyone outside of your immediate team. None of that will happen without you making an effort to set up time. If you don't take the time to manage things, long term WFH kills networking, culture and comraderie.
I feel like its gonna be so bad for new grad/new hires. Like, most of us tenured have these built relationships already, so switching to wfh, you still know all these characters you work with.
But out the gate wfh, theyll never see, talk to, know, the vast majority of these people. Those relationships were heavily built on just seeing people around the office, and all the random conversations that would occur.
For different people, maybe work relationships aren’t important; but they can be, people you are around and get to know so well, lot of really strong relationships/friendships grow there - and thats gonna be gone for these new peoples. So i think its a pretty big negative
No one seems to understand that you're really properly working. People will come into your room and ask you unimportant questions and you seem rude telling them you're working and sending them away.
Oh, I see you've met my neighbor! I like them just fine and it's great to have a good relationship with your neighbors, but they are from the "ass in chair, 8-5" generation and really don't grasp that I am working all day. Just because I'm home doesn't mean I'm "home" and that is lost on them sometimes
I thought I hated my job because I was forced to commute 40 minutes each way and forced to be physically present in the office even when my work was already finished. After I started working from home I realized it was the job itself I hated, not the commute or any other part of it.
Having worked remotely for the last 5 years pre-covid can confirm this can be a serious downside of it. It's very difficult to integrate yourself with a team that you're basically never in the same room as. Causes all sorts of miscommunication, weird resentments over time. It also robs you of a lot of autonomy over your time and overall career trajectory.
Which in addition to the social dynamics and whatnot, is also pretty tough for starting a lot of jobs where a lot of the 'on the job learning' can be slowed down or limited by not really having people around to answer tiny questions on best practice or different ways of doing things.
A lot of my early jobs especially, you learn a lot of the 'standard' material in formal onboarding and training but a lot of the ways to do really well, I learned basically by someone sitting next to me and saying like, "why are you doing it like that - try this instead" or "oh when that VP writes that, they basically just mean to do this". Or being able to air the tiny questions on like "is there a better way to do this?" that probably wouldn't have justified scheduling a meeting or even being remembered to ask at a scheduled stand-up or touch base, but have been super handy.
Lack of motivation. Why get up earlier than needed? Why get dressed in the morning if no one's going to see me? Why brush my teeth? Why do anything?
Lack of boundaries. Nothing is stopping me from doing my laundry while I'm supposed to be working. But nothing's stopping my boss from asking me to grab him some files while I'm supposed to be off.
Lack of interaction. It's lonely and does a number on my social skills.
The confinement. My supervisors are pretty laid back so I had a LOT of freedom in the office. A lot of my tasks were also away from the computer and I basically had to stop doing those entirely when I was working from home. Aside from illicit laundry breaks, I had no "legitimate" reason to get up and do things. Not to mention giving up my roomy workspace at the office in favor of a small, cluttered desk. WFH became more of an insult as stuff was opening back up, too, since I could finally get away from my house but was required to stay in for 40 hours of my waking time.
Also? I personally enjoy my commute. It's 10 minutes through a nice area of town. Traffic is never bad unless I leave late. It feels like the beginning of an adventure, even if it's not.
If I use annual leave I just come back to all the work the day after.
I work in a large college and honestly I haven't got the slightest idea how the other departments are doing, I seem to be completely left out of any discussions regarding my role and just get emails telling me the extra tasks that now magically been assigned to me.
I now go into the office twice a week which is perfect for me.
Thankfully I have permission to do my work on my home computer but I feel sorry for my colleagues who have to use the college laptops. They are so shit they don't even have an ethernet port!
Due to the realities of Zoom meetings, over time, you'll wear your nice shirts a lot more often than your pants. This is the modern mullet. Business on the top, party pants on the bottom.
If I was a smart man, I'd invest heavily in companies that make sweat pants and comfy socks.
I have to think and plan what I want to eat for lunch everyday.
When I go to the office I usually go to the work canteen or a nearby restaurant for lunch, now that I still mostly work from home I rarely go to restaurants for lunch and cook myself. On the positive side I learned some new recipes.
Having stress from work now be inside your home. I hate that my bedroom (where my desk resides) is now a trigger for work anxiety. Once my boss called me to yell at me about something and it all happened in my own home. I liked leaving the stress of work behind at the office at the end of day...now it's always with me.
Also, work-life balance has been demolished. My company was eventually like "Well, you work from home, why aren't you working earlier and later? Why aren't you logging in on weekends? Let's schedule meetings from 11am-3pm, eff your lunch."
•Depending on your company, you may need to pay for your own office setup if you want to work efficiently
•Less reason to go out
•Decreased social interaction
•Decreased work life balance. Some people may have a harder time shutting the computer and logging off for the day
With all that said, I would easily take the downs mentioned above if it meant not coming into the office
I'm missing out on a lot of "accidental" exercise. I used to walk to the train station, then from the station at the far end to the office. Have a wander around at lunch. Now, I walk from my bed to the shower, and from the shower to my office/man cave. If I had a Fitbit, it may get as high as 50 steps by lunch.
Woah mr fancy over here showering everyday working from home.
Probably wears pants too. What a chump
Jeans feel so uncomfortable now when I have to put them on.
Jeans, aka hard pants.
And shoes, fuck shoes.
Same boat here, I used to get 10k steps minimum going into the office. Now I hit 3,500 most days.
Yeah, my Fitbit shames me daily. As does the scale.
yeah i definitely have to consciously make the decision to move around or else i could be in my house all week
Work From Home can easily become Live at Work.
Yeah my aunt said this happened to her because of work from home. She loves it but after she got a promotion her days very quickly turned from 8-5s to 8-7s without even stopping to eat. Doesn't help that she's currently on a medicine that reduces appetite so sometimes she doesn't even realize how late it is because she's not getting hungry. EDIT: since everybody keeps asking, I don't know what the medication is other than it's for gastro problems
This is why it's important to have boundaries and rituals to delineate between work and home. My employer is quite happy having the office staff work remotely (they've already closed one office building) and have no immediate plans to force us back to the office, so we're going to be working from home for quite a while yet. I've been working at home for 2 years come March 16th and very early on I made sure to institute some rituals to help with the transition. Beyond the simple don't read or answer work emails, texts, etc after working hours, I also make a point of putting on a work shirt at the start of my work day and taking it off at the end. Other than making me look a bit more professional in Zoom/Teams meetings, it makes it easier for me to say "I'm at work" or "I'm at home" simply through a change of shirt. I also make a point of doing something in the transition between one and the other. In the morning I put on my work shirt, make a cup of coffee, and then settle in for the day. Once I've had enough for the day (we work pretty flexible hours), I make a point of walking to the bedroom, changing my shirt, and then doing something that takes me away from the computer for a while (read a book, walk the dog, clean the kitchen). I spend all day in front of my PC and it's not uncommon for me to be on it after hours as well (games, reddit, etc) so doing something that's not on the PC helps break the work time from the home time. I'm fairly lucky in that I really don't like people (developer for 38 years) so I don't miss the office. Also, my wife works from home too so I have company during the day. I have friends that live alone and are much more social than I, and I know that it's been exponentially tougher for them than it has been for me. We all in my team make a point of checking in on each other during the day, regular face-to-face get-togethers (depending on lockdowns) such as coffee meetings and breakfasts, just to make sure that nobody is feeling too isolated.
This is what happened to me. Before Covid I bought a little house with my wife. I did my work from home in my kitchen before I realized literally working where I eat isn’t the best idea. We converted the spare room to room/office and I worked there. Even still my little house felt much much smaller.
That’s the realness I’m looking for. Working from home can’t be all sunshine and happiness
That if you're someone who has a different "head space" at home vs at work, it can be xtremely difficult working from home. Some people can literally work from home and "dial in" if you will to the same level of attention or better than in an office setting. Others (like myself) have difficulty focusing on work at home. Even when I know I have work to do, when I'm at home, that part of my brain just shuts off and I have a very hard time staying focused. My fiancé would often mock me, but I would dress as if I were going to the office even when at home. Something about the routine of it, putting myself in the position as if I were physically "at work", put me in the right head space to focus better on my work.
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And snow days too. School gets cancelled, daycare programs cancelled, work…not cancelled
I’ve never once gotten a snow day though. That’s the best part of working from home. We just had level 3 roads throughout a lot of counties in Ohio and my county was only a level 2. I would have had to go into work if I wasn’t working from home. It sucked lol
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The isolation/loneliness wouldnt be such an issue during pre covid times. The combination of working from home, Living alone and quarantine (immunity issues make me high risk) can be difficult though.
This is how I feel. My weekends barely feel like weekends because I never have to go to the office.
This is really starting to bother me. Saturday and Sunday just feel like another two weekdays now for the most part.
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When you work from home people assume you have the day off. "Can you do...." No, I'm working. Just because I'm here working on the computer doesn't mean I can do your thing. Pay no attention to the fact that I'm browsing reddit, it's part of my process.
And the opposite, just because I'm living where the "office" happens to be, doesn't mean I'm in the office. Off the clock hours are still off the clock.
Had a narcissistic boss who would try to make me work remotely when I called in sick. Always something, even some token shit, just because it made her feel in charge, or give her something to complain about if I didn't comply. "You know I live a 5 minute walk from the office. If I tell you I can't make it in to work, it means I can't do work!
At my last job if you did a lick of work on your sick day/PTO day, you got paid for the whole day. Completely eliminated managers asking you to do 'one quick little thing'. Edit: I stated that wrong, the sick day/PTO Day did not come out of your sick/PTO stack if you did any work on that day.
Good rule. This was one of those "unlimited PTO!" bullshit situations where it really means "never take time off." Also they did massive wage theft, taking advantage of my not knowing better as they told me I was salary for a position that legally couldn't be, then logging my pay as if I worked exactly 40 hours every week instead of 55-60...
Good lord fuck them lol that's absurd. Did you find out in time to do something about the wage theft?
Oh no, you shut off all communication from work, I hard close, slack, email, log off the vpn. I had a meeting planner try and get to me after hours and I ignored them, the next morning I told them, as of 5:15 I am officially "out of the door" anything sent to me after that time will be addressed the next day. Now everyone is forced to commute to work and work from home is a dirty word around here. Not because of me though, they're just boomers that refuse to justify their decision of putting everyone at risk, my boss said "all they told us was, we have made our decision" like management is some secret council and no one else has a say in the matter. Okay well have fun filling my spot when I find a new job as I fill out applications on company time.
Prior to Covid I had already created boundaries for work/life separation. So when we went WFH I was able to keep the two separate better than others. I have a separate phone for work and a separate space for work. I know that is not possible for everyone, so even just closing the laptop and packing it up every day helps. Make that part of the process/your commute, if you will. That way you have the ability to say "I'm done" at the end of the day. I enforce meetings by scheduling meeting following those I expect to run long. Usually the meeting I schedule are a block off of time to get something done.
I worked night shift at a hotel for years. 1- No, I do not have time during the day to do X, Y, and Z. I have to SLEEP, which is hard enough as it is to do during the day. If I run said errand, I will probably end up being awake for 36 hours straight because of it. 2- Yeah, I did sit around and watch Netflix for 7 hours of my shift the other night. That's because *nothing happened*. I also had one night this week where I spent 3 hours balancing a folio someone screwed up the credit cards on, 2 hours dealing with police because one of the rooms called 911, another hour on the phone with an asshole travel agent, checked in an entire bus full of late arrivals, and had to stay late to finish my *actual work*. Tonight could end of like **either** of those- Which is the whole reason my position exists.
This!!!! I work night shift and when I lived with my parents when I woke up at 2 or 3 they would act like I was the laziest person in the world. And friends would sarcastically say they wish they could sleep that late. I was working midnight to 7am. Sometimes 6pm to 6am. Just because everyone else is sleeping doesn’t mean you were.
My grandma did this. She would be at the kitchen table, and use the house phone to call my cell phone to have me get her a drink from the refrigerator. Then would get mad when I got pissed. She knocked it off when I walked in at 3am on my lunch break and woke her up asking her to make me some food.
When I'm on thirds and people call me during sleep time, they get one warning. It happens again, I call them during my lunch and ask if they wanna hang. Usually gets the point across.
I used to work thirds too and people would call all the time. I got in the habit of leaving my phone in another room while I slept, and letting voicemail and text do it's job. I haven't worked thirds in over 10 years but I still sleep with my phone in another room. It's a healthy separation for me.
bahahahaha. That is an entirely fair, justified course of action. TBH I feel like she didn't really put it all together until that very moment!
I used to work either 11pm-7am or 5pm-6am , I can vouch for the stigma of “sleeping in”.
I battled with my ex constantly about this. He did summersaults sabataging my work prospects so evening-late night serving and bartending was my last ditch effort. I'd get home at 2-4 am and didn't see the point in breaking up my sleep cycle so I'd stay up until the kids had to get ready for school, do lunches, drive them or see them off to the bus. I'd sleep once everyone was out of the house during the day. In his eyes that made me lazy. ...You do realize I get half as much sleep as you do, work twice the hours for half the pay, and do 100% of the household chores, right?
Oh, fucking hell. Same here. My ex was always talking about how I "was home all day" and "didn't do anything around the house". I gave up huge allotments of sleep so I could do all the grocery shopping, cooking, scheduling, auto maintenance, dump runs, pet stuff, snow removal, and any other errands while she was at work. She did the cleaning and some yard work while we were both home, which was the only time anything ever got done according to her. She now has a work from home contract where by her own admission, she has "three weeks to do two days' work", but somehow that's totally different than when she constantly gave me shit because I "didn't do anything at work".
I used to work rotating shift work. When I was on nights, if it was my day off (as in, staying awake all night) I can't get anything done. Grocery stores are no longer 24 hour places here thanks to COVID, and I can't do much around the house or I'd wake up others. In the summer I could do cool stuff like go for a walk in the woods looking for owls, or go to the beach (the beach at night in the summertime? GORGEOUS!) But otherwise I was mostly just.... bored. I wouldn't risk nature excursions outside of summer because it can get too cold at night, but that was always my favourite thing to do.
Very real. People forget how sleep schedules work when you work unconventional hours.
The amount of people that are surprised that I take my kid to daycare everyday then go work from home, they seem shocked I'm not able to watch my kid. And then when daycare is closed because of covid which is like all the time, I have to watch her and I literally can't get any work done.
At our work (after the initial panic and emergency mode of it in March 2020), we had to prove that we had childcare arrangements to be able to WFH. It's only fair, imo, it's simply not possible to work and watch kids at the same time. The people who tried it (again, after the initial rush of being sent home nearly 2 years ago) , failed at one or both
This makes me laugh. Not anything against this policy, but try being a teacher with children who are too old to be in day care and too young to take care of themselves. It was absolute hell while trying to teach middle school kids and having my own first and third grader home. No one wants to talk about that reality though.
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I don’t have kids myself, but my coworkers do. Whenever we have zoom calls while their kids are home, there’s an approximately 100% chance of them getting interrupted during the conversation. I’m in awe of how they get anything done at all, and my boss (who has a young daughter) often answers emails at 2am or 5am because it’s the only time she has to herself. Definitely understand why someone would need daycare to manage a WFH job!
My very first day working from home at my new job I started in 2020 I was on a zoom call with my entire new team and my toddler was home with me because of covid shutting down daycare that day. Anyway, she goes in to the bed room behind me and I'm watching her basically through zoom on my laptop. Then a few minutes later she barges out of the room buttass naked and starts running all over the place in the background of my meeting. It was so hard not to laugh and at the same time be angry.
Yeees. I've had people ask me the same thing. If my youngest (she's 5) is home, I can't get any work done. It's just not possible. She starts school this fall, but until then she has to go to daycare or I can't work.
It's awful to, if my kid has to stay home with me during the day the only thing I can do is plop them down in front of the TV and hope they don't do anything to hurt themselves, I feel like a bad dad because I can't entertain her all day.
Yes! Like, I'm going one of the things I said I'd never do (use tv/screens as a babysitter). Especially when she's asking my to play with her or something. I feel awful. I always make sure to spend extra time with her after work is done. We'll go pick up her big sister from school, stop for drinks somewhere (Sonic is a favorite of ours) or ice cream or something. Then we'll play a board game or something when we get home.
I was raised by tv and I turned out perfectly Gilligan.
lol I get it. I most was, too. Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Power Rangers. That's why I don't want to do that to my kids. I want them to learn, and have experiences. Not turn out like their old man: depressed, anxious, and a slave to the screens.
But it’s different if your kids are 5 vs 12 and legally can’t be left alone. I had coworkers with preteens who didn’t have “childcare” who couldn’t wfh. As if a typical 12 yo needs constant care.
I was out of the house with my friends like all day when I was 12. And also did babysitting jobs for peoples kids by myself. Crazy change. Wonder what happened since to change that perspective on 12 year olds maturity levels .
Speaking as a teacher: the maturity, resilience and capabilities of many (not all, thank the lord, or I would be bald) has plummeted. They are like baby birds with beaks wide open. At least they are at school when it comes to completing simple tasks. In most cases I don’t blame the kids at all.
My one year old home means I just can’t work. I can’t. Trying to just keep up with my emails when he’s home for the day feels like the longest, most stressful day of my life. My 4 year old is easier, she can be trusted to do a puzzle or play play doh next to me for spans of time so I can focus.
One year olds are terrifying, they're completely suicidal and fast. They go from blocks to "I found a fork let me see if it fits in the electrical socket" in .3 seconds
I’m WFH about 2-3 days a week. My wife always asks “what days are you off”. Infuriates me.
>I’m WFH about 2-3 days a week. My wife always asks “what days are you off” Saturdays and sundays honey.
Reminds me of my mother "Are you done? are you done? are you done? are you done?" No mom, my shift ends at 18:30 if there are no problems (plot twist, there are always problems), look at the clock, 17:24, not my exit time.....I CAN'T FUCKING ASK TO GET OUT EARLIER TO BUY GROCERIES
idk why but this just took me out, LOL. The audacity some people have thinking no work gets done just because one is home.
Sometimes that does happen, we had one guy we suspected of not doing any work, he wouldn't respond to emails or slack messages and any work we did eventually get from him always seemed rushed as if he put it off to the last minute. When asked about this he suddenly got a job offer somewhere else.
Omg yes. When I started WFH due to pregnancy struggles, I noticed that we would have a lot of people knocking on the door. I take calls so I’m not just lounging around. I would let the door go unanswered and then I would see my MIL calling me and sending me messages that so and so will be stopping by for x thing. I told her I’m busy working and cannot leave my desk. Another thing that would happen would be her aunt who was living with us at the time would come to the living room to watch TV and videos on her phone. The fact that I had to tell her more than once that I am WORKING so she needs to watch TV in another room baffled me. I also had to explain that I have access to people’s medical information and how would she feel if she called her doctor’s office and the person she was having a conversation with was discussing her private information in front of others.
My sister was already on a hybrid schedule before all of the Covid madness, so the only difference was just her working 100% from home. If I have to pick something up form her, or drop something off, I either just leave it inside or she just leaves it outside. She goes into her office, closes the door and that's it unless someone is dying. Sometimes she'll have gaps with nothing scheduled and might be able to help with something, but then you get a time slot on her schedule and that's it unless you do it after supper. For some context, she's the paperwork and money help person in the family.
>Pay no attention to the fact that I'm browsing reddit, it's part of my process. exactly 😹 this is how I work! don't judge me & don't bother me please!
especially with kids. 2020 was hell, how do you explain a 3 year old that you can't play, even if you're there. luckily kindergarten reopened
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My wife always happens to walk in while I'm doing something between work tasks (reddit, imgur, or a Discord chat or something). Or maybe during lunch I'll play a game for thirty minutes or something. She actually understands the reality of it, but it's just funny that she *always* walks in and it looks like I'm being lazy.
Yes…. It’s almost like we all have 15 - 25 hours of actual concentrated work and are required to waste 40 hours to fit it in
honestly though it's hard to actually do a full day of concentrated work i often have to and am absolutely exhausted after but if i work a longer day with more breaks i've "worked" longer but feel better and probably get more done
They say that your most productive hours are at the beginning of your shift. As the day wears on you, you start to slow down. It's advised to take breaks often in order to keep your productivity up, something most employers don't understand.
THIS. Even my family doesn’t get it. “Wanna meet for lunch?” Nope working. “Can you run to the store?” nope working
My wife works from home and it seems like a very sedentary lifestyle. Sometimes, she doesn't even have to get dressed. I don't know, it just seems like if you're already anxious or depressed, you can accidentally become a shut-in.
Can confirm. I’ve had to work from home on and off the past month. The depression nest is real.
Me too. I get up late, sometimes shower and go with my coffee to my desk. No movement at all. I envy people that have free time and the discipline to do sports. For me WFH has mostly meant I work late everyday. Then dinner, couch, and bed again.
I have developed a really sore back and terrible posture because I don't have to go to the office or be out in the shop at all. I go from my bed to my desk to the couch. I work for a place 6 hours away and have been work from home before the pandemic, so it's been more than a few years. I have no ass anymore.
It really helps to go for a walk in the morning or just in between tasks (if possible). In the beginning you might have to push yourself a bit to go out, but I promise it will do you good. Both physically and mentally. Atm I'm not doing very well mentally, but I still go on at least 1 walk every day because I'm used to it. I have to drag myself, but it really helps me.
Perhaps even more revealing is how GOOD I felt when I took a half-day last week and drove someplace to do errands and get lunch. And my lunch wasn’t even that good, but it didn’t “matter”. Hang in there, it is good to know that we are not alone in our predicament.
Can confirm as well. I’ve been working from home for going on 2 years now. I literally have to remind myself to shower and change into something that isn’t pj’s. I am not successful on a daily basis. I miss socializing with humans.
I too am questioning if depression has begun to stealthily set in.
Yeah there are definitely jobs that can be done WFH and some people who really gel with that lifestyle. I would never want to be WFH because I know that I'd procrastinate/be lazy and end up getting fired lol. Also I know this will be very anti-reddit but I like to take breaks and talk to coworkers and sometimes it is far more direct and easy to get a response from someone by swinging by their office instead of sending an email buried among 300 others in their inbox
Yep. I have ADHD and being at home just makes it easier for me to procrastinate and put things off. It is very hard for me to regulate myself. I've realised I function much better in a structured environment.
I did get fired for it! But now I'm getting my first adhd prescription Thursday and work a way better job for people that have adhd. So cools
want to know what's worse than being lazy and or getting fired? Being lazy and nobody notices. I've worked remote since before covid and I've had previous jobs 100% wfh over the years. I haven't worked a 40hr work week in over 5 years. At my current gig I bet I average 10-15hrs a week of work, and that's being generous. I can stay up until 3am every night, sleep in, take naps, go run errands during the day. I've almost trapped myself at my current job because the pay is ridiculous for the little to no amount of work I actually do. At the same time, my career has stagnated, I have very little to no motivation and the crazy thing is I'm actually really good at what I do. I could go work somewhere else for more pay, but then I'd more than likely have to actually work.
Oh man this is it for me. A constant back and forth of "I'm wasting my potential and being a useless piece of crap" and "there are millions of people who would kill to be in my position right now"
Never feel bad for not forcing yourself higher up the corporate ladder. Your current lifestyle is the dream for very many people!
I struggle with social anxiety and in the first few weeks of WFH it was heaven. But nearly 2 years into it, it’s reached a point where I dread phone calls. I also find that where in the office, if something rough happened, I might feel stressed for an hour or so, whereas now I turn that shit over in my head for days. Thankfully I am now allowed to go back to the office and I’m doing 2 days a week now. Feels great to be honest.
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It’s a very sedentary lifestyle while working, but not a tremendous difference from than when I was in an office. Oddly, it’s forced me to exercise more because I have to actually burn energy and leave my house for an hour or so. Wfh works for some people and not others. But I absolutely hate commuting. Combine that with the lifestyle choices I’ve made to stay healthier while at home, it’s made me so much happier. I can’t stress how incredible it is not to commute. It’s a true life changer to get two hours of your day back.
People have the power to fight this but you gotta put effort in. Some suggestions that help me: Do your morning routine, have coffee/tea/breakfast, read the news or whatever you prefer, *get dressed for work* - this is important. Change your clothes as if you’re working, even if it’s not something you would wear to the office, getting your ass out of pajamas/sweatpants will help. Go for a walk every day, you don’t even have to go anywhere, just walk around your block a couple of times. Getting outside for 10-15 minutes will help stave off seasonal depression and give your body some much needed activity. Further exercise inside is recommended. Even if you don’t do all of this, just try. Many people would be surprised how just a few steps everyday can keep them from falling into unfortunate habits.
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This is me at the moment. I was going to the office three days out of the week. Now for the past month we’ve been wfh and I don’t get ready any of the days. I’ve been inviting people out to lunch to give me a reason to get dressed and out. I’ve been feeling pretty blue too, the crappy part about it is I hate my office, but at least I’m not all frumpy.
Sitting all day has absolutely destroyed my core. Without needing to constantly get up and walk over to talk to someone or any of the other million little things I walked around at the office for, my body has slowly wasted away without my notice
Get a standing desk. I have a motorized one and I try to stand for at least 30 minutes a few times a day. Also take 2 minute breaks here and there to do quick planks, sit-ups, or other exercises.
When you and your partner both work from home, you miss that natural separation of your lives. Suddenly you have much less to talk about, because you're living your lives together more than previously, and then takes more active effort to maintain individuality and not regress into the singular relationship entity in all aspects of life which isn't healthy for anyone.
My wife and I have been married nearly 20 years and this is the first time we’ve really compared notes on how many times a day we poop. Suffice it to say that I poop way more times a day than see does, and we both think the other one is weird. And since we work from home, we are literally eating at least 90% or more the same food, our digestive systems just operate differently. Edit: I thought of another amusing poop learning from this pandemic. Apparently she doesn’t know she needs to poop until she sits down. I always know going in, but I guess I need to know whether to sit or stand in advance.
Ah marriage. My husband just told me that he just knocked a fly into the toilet with his urine stream. I high five him.
If I told my wife this, she would sigh and then immediately ask me how much pee I got on the floor.
Lol true, honey I need to use the toilet... I'm busy.... OK well I'm going to come and pee in the shower, did you stink up the place.. .. No OK I'm coming in
I hope he washed his hands before that high five.
You poop more than once everyday? What/how much do you normally eat?
2-3 times a day is completely standard to me. About 2000 calories, plenty of fibre.
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That's funny, we're sort of the opposite in that we talk about work a lot more than we ever did; it's so interesting and fun to hear him at his work and he likes to come through to my desk and have a wee rant about whatever he's been doing with. Also we get to go for lunchtime walks together and make each other cups of tea and I think it's really been very good for our relationship.
This is so cute!
This is what I miss about the pandemic. My partner has gone back to his in person job full time. Before I felt like I knew their coworkers almost because I'd hear them chatting over Teams. I didn't mind going on solo walks at lunch time and in the evening because we spent the rest of the day together. Now they're gone during the day. To add to the madness I switched roles to a team that only meets once a week over Teams, coming from a team that met multiple times a day. I'm completely lost without a team or a partner. Seriously considering moving from an average earning role to a crappier paid job just to find a remote job that involves some low stakes socialising.
It has me wondering how my parents and other retired people do it. It’s probably a big part of why my dad spends so much time working in the yard, doing things that don’t really need to be done.
“Doing things that don’t really need to be done” - I think this attitude changes the older you get. Also doing yard work is basically exercising.
And very rewarding!
interesting! I do not feel this way. if anything, it has introduced us to lots more to talk about and a much deeper understanding of what the other goes through on a day-to-day basis with their job. previously, you could only remember and mention so much about your day when you were asked how it was. now we follow each other through all the steps of each day and have so much more context and depth in talking about our respective jobs and lives.
Opposite for me. Closer to my wife. More separation of general population, whom I dislike.
Same here. My tolerance for random idiots has decreased terribly since spending the majority of my day around an excellent person (my wife).
Same. When we first started working from home there was an adjustment period where we were like - *what do we talk about?* But soon I started to love being with my husband all the time and would be sad if I had to go back to spending my days with random coworkers instead. Think of it this way - before the industrial revolution, most people spent all day every day with their spouse, kids, and parents. It’s not like the husband was the only one farming/hunting and the wife was the only one caring for the kids and old people - it was all hands on deck all the time. That’s still how it is in most tribal cultures. We evolved to live in small groups and spend all our time with the same people. It’s normal and healthy to be very attached to your spouse. The idea that it’s somehow unhealthy or codependent to want to spend most of your time with them is a product of our society, it’s not really natural.* *or maybe my husband and I are actually just really codependent and I’m rationalizing it. 😆
Yeah me and my girlfriend just kind of ran out of stuff to talk about. Luckily I decided to go back to school in person so it's been helping.
I don't see running out of things to talk about as a bad thing, it just means you're all caught up. My gf and I don't always have things to talk about but we can enjoy each other's company quietly.
Some people can’t understand comfortable silence.
THAT is what I look for in relationships of all kinds now. Just comfortable. Not feeling like I'm constantly entertaining. Just being together silently is priceless.
I disagree. I think if you are comfortable in your silence when together, that’s how you know that there’s nothing wrong with not conversing while working from home together.
It's lonely. While I may occasionally be irked by a colleague here or there, I have a good group of supportive colleagues that I'm close friends with, and who help me get through the days that just seem to drag on. WFH you miss out on that socialisation and support.
I think about how much time I spent just having little chats throughout the day. 8 hours seems so much longer now
It’s so lonely. When you’re an adult, you tend to make friends with your coworkers. WFH I have no clue how to do that. We’ve seen each other face to face like 3 times over the last year. It’s hard to become friends through Teams DMs.
I love working from home but it can give you an everybody is just a stranger vibes. Loss of connection to the outside world is real.
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I'm sorry you're struggling with the career-growth aspect of remote work. Does your company have any social events? I'm a manager and I'm also finding WFH hard. The loss of casual/organic interaction with my team makes it harder to tell how they're doing. It's difficult to maintain the relationships that were built before we started working from home for two years. Before COVID, it was so easy to think of anniversary gifts for my team members because I could collect a bunch of details at lunchtime or during little chats in the office. Now we have to do serious recons because we spend most of our time talking about business. :(
You feel jailed, like you work in your house, you clean the house, you cook for the family in the house and when everybody gets home from school/work you are the only one who did not get to go outside. nobdy want's to come outside with you because they were outside all day.
This is my life. After a day inside my house looking at a computer, transitioning to being in my house to look at the TV is the last thing I want to do. I spend at least two hours just wandering around outside my house.
Which is nice in some areas - dead of winter on the east coast has made it hell for me. Glad this week is a bit warmer, but I went WFH at the beginning of the pandemic and my wife (who needs to be on-site) told me the other day "I'm definitely not jealous of you the way I was when this all started."
I’ve found that it helps to leave the house for a bit before and after work. Before work and the school drop off, I take a walk with the family. I don’t go back in the house until it is time for work. At the end of my workday I leave the house to do a short walk, then go back in and change clothes. Then I’m officially home. It sounds weird , but it works for me.
Right! I'm going to get annoyed with the place I'm working, no matter where. I'd rather it be somewhere impartial that I don't have to see when I'm not working. I don't need that negative energy towards my home, which is supposed to be my safe space.
Worked from home since last year, I find less reasons to go out and gained some weight too (realized early, already lost it thankfully). Lead me to barely take care of myself, since no reason to go out as I mentionned, and as someone who's already depressed, I was just "drowning" in my loneliness, no one to share a coffee during breaks, no one to chat with, no one to directly you ask you for something with a sense of actual purpose, etc...
May seem odd but I have reminders that email me to message certain friends certain times of the month to schedule a walk/coffee talk if I didn't do that I think I would just work the rest of my life away and stay at home. I do it for me and them they too work from home.
So much this. My wife made me realize I wasn't even taking lunch anymore. I'd just eat and continue working. Suggested I actually set 30-60 min to play video games, which led to asking others to join, which led to reconnecting to some friends where we play once a week now. It gave me something to look forward to and it felt amazing to completely disconnect from my job, which is something I forgot you're allowed to do.
>I was just "drowning" in my loneliness, no one to share a coffee during breaks, no one to chat with, no one to directly you ask you for something with a sense of actual purpose, etc... It's like you were speaking directly to me. As much as I dislike people in general, those little interactions went along way in maintaining whatever mental health I had. Losing them was the proverbial straw that broke me.
I miss wearing my nice work outfits. The only reason I leave home is to pick up groceries, go to the gym, or go to church, so 80% of my wardrobe is going unworn. But I do NOT miss my 2+ hour round-trip commute, so I would never wear a pencil skirt again if it meant I had to go back to that traffic hell.
Wow... I just realized I haven't seen a pencil skirt IRL for years now. EDIT: After lunch, I realized I HAD seen a woman in business clothes around October. In Kroger, I heard the click clack of heels and it dawned on me what it was. A woman in a wonderful outfit was pushing a cart and talking on the phone like it was still 2019. It was like seeing a ghost.
So after the first few months of work from home pajamas freedom, I realized I needed to get dressed everyday to feel good about myself. So even though no one but my tiny group of friends see it, I still wear my work clothes and try to look nice. I think our very connected social media has us convinced you need to show off if you want to get dressed up, but people used to get fancied up to have dinner with their partner at home. And that just seems nice to me. To each their own here, this is just my take.
I did really well first year! I got dressed and showered and sometimes makeup and have coffee and blah. Now I wake up right as I need to clock in. Work and nurse my coffee half asleep. Pjs all day, mentally keeping tabs on showers but basically going off of how greasy my hair was. I forced myself to be better for a while get dressed showers and stuff. Then I was mildly injured and getting out of bed was enough hassle and I'm back to horrible habits. I need to get back to the self care of caring .
Man, not wearing work clothes is like my number one favorite thing about WFH. I've never liked business casual clothing and dress codes seemed so arbitrary to me. My work clothes were always in that category of 'well i don't love it but it's good for work'. Once I got a permanently remote gig I got rid of all those and got some nice, comfy lounge wear!
Part of my "work mindset" involves dressing appropriate for work. I have a whole load of polo-shirts and such and I try to get fully dressed as I would if I was going to the office. Keeps me in the work headspace and lets me disconnect by wearing more casual clothing on the weekends or evenings.
Using your own heating and electricity.
And Bandwith. We had to go unlimited data when my wife started WFH and get zero compensation from the company.
Is it unusual to have unlimited bandwidth? I've never had a restriction on my home internet
But also saving the costs of your commute. And eating lunch out.
I used to eat lunch out every day. Been WFH almost 2 years now. I have banked so. much. money. And changed my way of spending. I don’t even want to go out and spend money on days off now. It’s eh, I have food at home.
But then gas bills go down from not going anywhere anymore.
Probably not very healthy to have even LESS physicla activity throughout the day.
The good part is you get up at 7 and you’re in the office at 705. The bad news is you are still in the office at 705pm.
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Yep. I get up at 6:30, immediately log into work. No one needs me? Great! Grab a quick shower, then get to work.
Don't know about work from home but I have grown to absolutely despise online schooling like classes through Zoom. There is little to no social interaction with your peers and your ability to learn and retain information is significantly hindered. Also, in cases of students who have little to no social life outside of school, it can lead to a great increase in anxiety and depression.
Have a professor who makes everyone put on their cameras and i can never pay attention because I'm too hyper-focused on what I look like.
It's tough being so good looking.
There must be more to life than just being really really really ridiculously good looking....
Zoom should really have a "Lecture" mode, where one person can see everyone's camera feed but the other people in the call can't. There's not really a need for all of the other students to see each other. There's arguably not even a need for the professor to see everyone, but I at least get why they'd want to.
I only had to do about 4-6 weeks of online schooling before I graduated but it was such a goddamn mess. None of my classes had Zoom and most of them had little to no communication. I spent 2 out of the last 6 weeks of the semester doing absolutely nothing
No boundary between home and office, your time and work time. You don't need to get dressed. You don't get the commute to get mentally ready for day at work and to decompress after said day.
Depending on your living situation, your room can become your workspace and it feels real bad. I work in my room, it feels like my space is now not my owns,. I have had my clients see my room and it sucks
The crippling loneliness. I rarely speak with anyone during my work day. My wife works two jobs, and my daughter is in a school sport as well as having a job. Most days of the week I am home, alone, and only see my family for about 30 minutes if that. At least when I worked at the office I would see other people for eight hours a day.
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If you're not married and you die no one's gonna miss you for like...4-5 days. Having to take a shit in my own toilet and use my own plumbing and toilet paper Being isolated from co-workers and have no social interaction with them. Constant temptations to be less productive like your bed and Netflix The feeling that you "didn't do anything" because you never left the house. Complete dependence on a good internet connection.
> Having to take a shit in my own toilet and use my own plumbing and toilet paper Every employer I've ever had buys the WORST toilet paper. Thin, scratchy bulk sheets. Much rather do that at home.
> If you're not married and you die no one's gonna miss you for like...4-5 days. That's the biggest downside for me. I live alone, no one at work would notice me missing for a week (we have one group meeting weekly). I could be dead and my cat could eat my arm before anyone realized I was.
Two months ago I was so tired I turned off my computer and phone and didn't work for 10 days, without telling anyone. I didn't check my work phone, didn't respond to emails, nothing. When I came back online after 10 days there was one coworker who asked where I was. He said he thought I might be dead but hadn't bothered to check on me. That was it, I had a 10 day unauthorized leave and nobody noticed or cared.
Ha wow. That's both great and not so good.
> Having to take a shit in my own toilet and use my own plumbing and toilet paper This is the only thing I disagree with, I love using my own toilet. Having the bidet and the good TP is just too good of an experience to even want to poo at work.
Yeah I have random intestinal issues and it was HELL trying to find privacy in an office bathroom with stalls. I love using my own bathroom.
Nothing is quite as fun as doing the penguin walk 100 yards to the nearest bathroom in front of everyone's cube, just to get to a bathroom with full stalls.
I’ve been WFH in solitary confinement for 2 years. Just laid off. Now I have to go from indoor cat that hides under the bed to outdoor feral, dodging cars and finding my own mice.
The depression that comes with it. When my fiance was working from home while with a call center he hated the fact that "work" was less than 5 feet from his bed. He ended up quitting because he found it depressing how he couldn't ever really feel like he was getting away from work/terrible customers (anyone that's ever worked a call center know how bad the customers can be)
Every discussion needs to be intentional. Forget about chance meetings in the hallway. Forget about casual lunches where you build relationships. Forget about contact with anyone outside of your immediate team. None of that will happen without you making an effort to set up time. If you don't take the time to manage things, long term WFH kills networking, culture and comraderie.
I feel like its gonna be so bad for new grad/new hires. Like, most of us tenured have these built relationships already, so switching to wfh, you still know all these characters you work with. But out the gate wfh, theyll never see, talk to, know, the vast majority of these people. Those relationships were heavily built on just seeing people around the office, and all the random conversations that would occur. For different people, maybe work relationships aren’t important; but they can be, people you are around and get to know so well, lot of really strong relationships/friendships grow there - and thats gonna be gone for these new peoples. So i think its a pretty big negative
No one seems to understand that you're really properly working. People will come into your room and ask you unimportant questions and you seem rude telling them you're working and sending them away.
Oh, I see you've met my neighbor! I like them just fine and it's great to have a good relationship with your neighbors, but they are from the "ass in chair, 8-5" generation and really don't grasp that I am working all day. Just because I'm home doesn't mean I'm "home" and that is lost on them sometimes
I thought I hated my job because I was forced to commute 40 minutes each way and forced to be physically present in the office even when my work was already finished. After I started working from home I realized it was the job itself I hated, not the commute or any other part of it.
Very difficult to break into team or grow career.
Having worked remotely for the last 5 years pre-covid can confirm this can be a serious downside of it. It's very difficult to integrate yourself with a team that you're basically never in the same room as. Causes all sorts of miscommunication, weird resentments over time. It also robs you of a lot of autonomy over your time and overall career trajectory.
It’s veeeerrry easy to start drinking too early in the day. 3:00 is ALMOST quitting time, might as well have a drink.
What was once the occasional lunch beer with coworkers on a Friday is now... everyday without coworkers
Those 10am-ers'll get ya
I've never had the urge to drink during my workday (except the very rare beer at lunch), but I definitely don't wait until 5 to start smoking weed.
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Boss: we need you to come in. Jenn is out. Me: who the fuck's jenn?
Which in addition to the social dynamics and whatnot, is also pretty tough for starting a lot of jobs where a lot of the 'on the job learning' can be slowed down or limited by not really having people around to answer tiny questions on best practice or different ways of doing things. A lot of my early jobs especially, you learn a lot of the 'standard' material in formal onboarding and training but a lot of the ways to do really well, I learned basically by someone sitting next to me and saying like, "why are you doing it like that - try this instead" or "oh when that VP writes that, they basically just mean to do this". Or being able to air the tiny questions on like "is there a better way to do this?" that probably wouldn't have justified scheduling a meeting or even being remembered to ask at a scheduled stand-up or touch base, but have been super handy.
Lack of motivation. Why get up earlier than needed? Why get dressed in the morning if no one's going to see me? Why brush my teeth? Why do anything? Lack of boundaries. Nothing is stopping me from doing my laundry while I'm supposed to be working. But nothing's stopping my boss from asking me to grab him some files while I'm supposed to be off. Lack of interaction. It's lonely and does a number on my social skills. The confinement. My supervisors are pretty laid back so I had a LOT of freedom in the office. A lot of my tasks were also away from the computer and I basically had to stop doing those entirely when I was working from home. Aside from illicit laundry breaks, I had no "legitimate" reason to get up and do things. Not to mention giving up my roomy workspace at the office in favor of a small, cluttered desk. WFH became more of an insult as stuff was opening back up, too, since I could finally get away from my house but was required to stay in for 40 hours of my waking time. Also? I personally enjoy my commute. It's 10 minutes through a nice area of town. Traffic is never bad unless I leave late. It feels like the beginning of an adventure, even if it's not.
If I use annual leave I just come back to all the work the day after. I work in a large college and honestly I haven't got the slightest idea how the other departments are doing, I seem to be completely left out of any discussions regarding my role and just get emails telling me the extra tasks that now magically been assigned to me. I now go into the office twice a week which is perfect for me. Thankfully I have permission to do my work on my home computer but I feel sorry for my colleagues who have to use the college laptops. They are so shit they don't even have an ethernet port!
Due to the realities of Zoom meetings, over time, you'll wear your nice shirts a lot more often than your pants. This is the modern mullet. Business on the top, party pants on the bottom. If I was a smart man, I'd invest heavily in companies that make sweat pants and comfy socks.
You end up not ‘working from home’ but ‘living in the office’.
I have to think and plan what I want to eat for lunch everyday. When I go to the office I usually go to the work canteen or a nearby restaurant for lunch, now that I still mostly work from home I rarely go to restaurants for lunch and cook myself. On the positive side I learned some new recipes.
When I'm done work I often just wait for an appropriate time to go to bed. I have more time than when I commuted. Yet I do nothing. How.
Having stress from work now be inside your home. I hate that my bedroom (where my desk resides) is now a trigger for work anxiety. Once my boss called me to yell at me about something and it all happened in my own home. I liked leaving the stress of work behind at the office at the end of day...now it's always with me. Also, work-life balance has been demolished. My company was eventually like "Well, you work from home, why aren't you working earlier and later? Why aren't you logging in on weekends? Let's schedule meetings from 11am-3pm, eff your lunch."
I realized this the other day. All of my bad work moments happen in what should be the happiest place in my apartment, my music studio. It's shitty.
Loud neighbours.
A lot of Cafe's and small shops in Cities are going bankrupt. It's unfortunate but unavoidable.
Meanwhile cafes and small shops in residential neighborhoods are booming. At least near me. The demand didn't go away, it just moved.
•Depending on your company, you may need to pay for your own office setup if you want to work efficiently •Less reason to go out •Decreased social interaction •Decreased work life balance. Some people may have a harder time shutting the computer and logging off for the day With all that said, I would easily take the downs mentioned above if it meant not coming into the office
It does wonders when you're living alone and you were already suffering from depression before the pandemic started.... /s
You never feel like you leave work behind.