My favorite quote:
While employees in the office might kill time messaging friends or flipping through TikTok, remote workers take advantage of being far from the watchful gaze of bosses to chip away at personal to-do lists or to goof off.
Nearly half of remote workers multitask on work calls or complete household chores like unloading the dishwasher or doing a load of laundry, according to the SurveyMonkey poll of 3,117 full-time workers in the U.S.
Oh noes, people actually doing things that are useful for their families instead of even more computer time.
It’s insane that this is even considered strange or surprising. When I work from home, I take longer lunch breaks and I often stop working earlier, but I’m still three times as productive compared to sitting in an office.
At home, I actually get focused time to do something and think. At the office, this is extreamly difficult with all the distractions and noise constantly interrupting my train of thought.
If they’re mad about people shopping while working from home I have bad news.
People shop from their phones while working at the job site too. I see several of my coworkers doing this frequently. Shit, I’ve done it.
Sure, we can’t shower on site unless you’re a firefighter or something, or have a gym at workplace, but still.
Employers need to reign in their power hungry bullshit. You don’t own your employees, and if the work is getting done on time, you have nothing to complain about.
Gotta love how the articles frames it. While at work people “kill time” with tik tok but at home they “goof off” folding laundry
Corpo propaganda and normies larp it.
I feel like they’re just trying to use variety in their wording and either configuration would have upset you
I can tell you it wouldn’t… We usually do not have multiple words because they are completely and 100% interchangeable.
It is the exact same message manipulation when a cop outright murders someone the headline often says something super tangential like “Perp lost life in altercation with police”… words matter and you’d expect journalist to know this
I still think it’s overly cynical and not likely to be a conspiracy in this case but I do agree that it’s a general concern, highlighted especially now with the genocide in Gaza, so I don’t think you’re wrong to feel that way. I’m still choosing to be charitable in this case, however.
I still think it’s overly cynical
Definitely could be… I know this of myself and I have been working on it
I think many of us feel that way, given how the world has evolved in my adult life I don’t blame anyone.
I’m killing time right now because there’s nothing to do but yet I can’t go home and clean up the clutter that’s accumulated from being stuck at work all day with nothing to do.
Sounds like they take micro breaks, which is not only healthy, but can help with productivity.
Is anyone complaining about this?
Managera who have nothing better to do
Billionaires whose commercial real estate investments are tanking
Supply and demand is a fickle bitch.
Excuse me while I go cry a river for the real estate tycoons who will have to sell off their yachts.
Those refis gonna have to happen but fed lowered the interest rates for them… These clowns never lose as we are always there to bail them with policy or straight hand outs of cash lol
Jokes on you, I shop and shower while at the office as well.
Your office has a shower?
Yes. People who go to the office by bicycle can take a shower, for example.
That’s awesome!
My last office had a gym and a shower. It was awesome back when I to was “between wells” at my house and so didn’t have any water pressure for a couple of weeks.
(Oh the glorious day when my new well got hooked up and I could take a bath in my own home again!)
Yes. It gets used by people commuting long distances by bike and people who work out during lunch, or for anyone who needs to shower for other unknown reasons.
Exactly this. The office doesn’t magically make people work undistracted all day for that sweet sweet 110% productivity.
While employees in the office might kill time messaging friends or flipping through TikTok, remote workers take advantage of being far from the watchful gaze of bosses to chip away at personal to-do lists or to goof off
I could be at home rubbing one, trying to do a push up, or taking a nap in between calls. I’m stuck here pretending to look busy while shit posting or watching Youtube since everything is working. Think I’ll play Minecraft after my smoke break. I miss work from home…
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A good boss doesn’t give a shit about whether the workers do other things during work time, as long as the work is done satisfactorily.
At my last office job, years ago when I was young and lived with my parents and had very few financial obligations, I would always ask to clock out and leave whenever I ran out of work to do for the day. It was always busy mornings and slow afternoons. My boss thought I was insane for not wanting to get paid to sit there and fuck around on Facebook (her exact words.) But to me it was worth losing $30-60 to gain back 3-6 hours of my personal life every week.
The boss and most co-workers were great, and the work wasn’t even bad when it was busy, but just physically being present there was soul-crushing.
Most bosses: hmm but if you worked instead of doing small important things for your family you could four double your productivity instead of only triple it!
Most bosses equate having fun with not working and so not having fun with being productive. However, most workers are in a twilight state of not having fun and not being productive.
twilight state of not having fun and not being productive.
Stop putting me on blast, man
The first hour in the office was spent staring at the screen wiggling the mouse from time to time when the screen saver came on because too tired from commuting every day. But, it was at the office so it was productive staring I guess.
Haha it’s so ridiculous that these articles never take into consideration that people in the office don’t have a lot of productive time.
I had the same, I would have a somewhat easy first hour, then spend 2 to 3 hours really focusing and then I’d basically be done for the day and would spend some time idling after lunch until I deemed it was an appropriate time to leave and “work some more from home”.
My best year billability wise was the first year of the covid lockdowns, I managed to generate something like 25% more just because of being able to work from home and cutting back on the travel time to customers and being able to multi-task occasionally when I had a quiet day for a customer. I’m glad I live in the Netherlands, hybrid/remote working seems like it’ll remain over here at least.
And they they go on about the free flow of ideas, innovations and cooperation. Please, we were all sitting there with headphones trying to isolate ourselves to get anything done because some manager would always be on a loud phone call and using a meeting space to work was forbidden.
Driving to customers or flying to the other side of the world for a meeting was such a big time sink.
It also reminds me of the story of Rotterdam harbour where they just couldn’t find any people anymore. Turns out that the cost of commuting was so high, people made more money doing lower paid work closer to home.
Turns out that the cost of commuting was so high, people made more money doing lower paid work closer to home.
This is true for a lot of people everywhere. It’s often ridiculous the amount of time and money lost from commutes that gets forgotten about.
For me commuting outside the city costs at least an hour of time every day, and $1+/hour in fuel weekly that I don’t get paid. For me WFH is like a $1.50+/hr raise that is far more convenient and stress reducing than a better paying job.
Ah the bullshit justifications of open office plans. If I want free communication with my coworkers I’ll go communicate with them. If I need to be left alone to focus let me
Starring in your own office movie.
Office Space is a documentary
And in the office there are people who literally hang out at the coffee machine for 30-60 minutes at a time, talking to everyone who comes by under the guise of “networking”.
The media gotta stop reporting on the laundry like it’s the equivalent of stealing from the company.
It’d be cool if the media did a piece about how companies are stealing the excess labor of their employees. It will never happen though because “the media” also steals the excess labor from it’s employees.
Maybe the solution to return-to-work is manufacturing a bunch of fake news about remote workers being significantly less likely to unionize and more likely to take an ass pounding from corporate overlords?
The thing is, you don’t even need to manufacture a good story. You could tell the true story of how companies have slashed overhead by reducing the amount of office space needed or how employees working from home turn out to be just as if not more productive than those working in the offices and happier with their jobs besides.
There were companies planning to move more jobs to work from home even before the pandemic because it’s a model that just makes more sense for a lot of positions. The return to office crowd could be beaten simply by pointing out the for most positions, working on-site is a needless expense. The problem is, the media isn’t willing to tell that story.
I worked with people who could easily spend 30 minutes scrolling social media while pooping.
Don’t shame my post-meeting decompression.
We have people here working maximum 1 hour per day, in the home office they can at least not stop others from working.
So, I work in a maintenance position that really isn’t possible to do remotely but we have a fair amount of desk work too. We’re in the process of setting up a workstation to program and new head ends for our systems. The first thing on everyone’s list when we were deciding on a location was “as far from everyone else as possible” because we all know that other people being around to make small talk is a distraction that will easily double the time it takes to get this shit done.
In every maintenance position I’ve had, every one of us has had our own secret workspaces where most other guys didn’t know to look for us just so that we could get some desk work done in peace. Co-workers are a distraction more often than they are a help and I think we’ve all known this for years.
You think that’s bad, wait until you hear about the shareholders and landlords.
They dont even have to pretend to work to get paid.
There is a class difference in there though… Some people own while others slave
Thats exactly what I mean. My aim is to point out the ridiculousness of them trying to moralise it, by making the people who ease off a little bit to put to washing on out to be lazy and undeserving of their wages etc.
That wrath for people not working or “slacking off” slightly while getting paid is only reserved for poor people.
The regime relies on plebs larping this bushit.
If tomorrow every fucking wage slave got a pair of balls and started acting like daddy capitalist, half of issues would be solved and parasites would be punished.
But instead of we got bootlickers serving as regime enforcers 🤡
I’m not sure I get what you’re saying tbh. I’ve probably read it wrong but it almost seems like you’re saying the way out of capitalism is to capitalism harder.
There is nothing capitalism about advocating for yourself but some how regime was able to convince people that only capitalist are allowed to do it and peasants agreed to larp at disadvantage to themselves… Adult people 🤡
When I used to work in office:
- Wake up at 7am, get ready to go and take a 1 hour commute in, usually there by 9:00
- Try to find parking, walk to office, morning break room coffee and chatter, usually settle in around 9:30
- Get interrupted multiple times by desk drive bys
- Take 2 hour lunch around noon with multiple coworkers because why not
- Get interrupted multiple times by desk drive bys
- Leave at 4 to try and avoid some traffic
Now that I work from home:
- Wake up and hop online to work, usually settle in by 7:30am
- No desk drive by interruptions
- Eat at my desk during meetings or while simultaneously working
- Sometimes start laundry or something during the day, but who cares?
- Usually work later than 5
Every time I get asked about going back into an office my response is “Why would you want me to be far less productive?”
To collaborate with the team, of course…
My friend’s job has hybrid RTO and it basically means half the team is still out when you’re in the office so they still meet on Zoom/Teams, haha…what a waste
Same here… we get one day in the office, I have tried to make the best of it but nobody cares, I find myself there with less than half the team to:
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hop around until I get a desk where everything I need works
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get interrupted by people not on my team all the time because why not say hi
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get complaints because all my meetings are Teams anyway and everyone is mad they hear a crowd when I am not unmuted
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Lose 45 mins of my life getting ready and another 1.5 in traffic (round trip) to work less in the office
You are missing the best part, the highly increased chance of dying from the most dangerous form of modern day travel.
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If anything, one should absolutely take care of mundane tasks with downtime between productive tasks. If their workflow allows for short breaks, it doesn’t make a difference to the employer if nothing is done or an unrelated task is done.
They pay people to complete tasks for their corporation. They don’t own the worker’s bodies or minds due to the virtue of providing a paycheck.
This concept of whole ownership of people really is baked into US social consciousness.
I can even imagine that some household chores can be done while “actively” working, like when you’re in a call and just listening to the other parties.
Yeah the US is a sick country. They think money and power is the meaning of life. And it’s very obviously not.
Maternity leave policy is all you need to know about the nature of the regime.
SAVAGE
This article can be applied the same way to Office workers. No they’re not working 100% of the time. What’s a problem is if they’re exceedingly unavailable or underperforming at their job and affecting others.
Shit, my desk used to be next to the kitchen. I made lunch and ran/emptied the dishwasher at the office and the bosses didn’t whinge about how I spent my time. I also did a bunch of my ideation on the office couch.
But do the same things in my home and it’s a problem? That tells me what the real issue is: the threat of agency.
I stay at home to work on cool projects and I go to the office to get through mountains of boring administrative tasks and socialize. The whole time at work issue being discussed isn’t as important as labour productivity.
My coworkers recounting the oh so cute exploits of their oh so cute grandchildren in excruciating detail is very productive, I’m sure. Definitely makes the extra long commute worthwhile for me.
In a lot of meetings I’m expected to be in I mostly just listen and jump in to answer specific questions. When working from home I like to be active with chores during the meetings, I’ll just take them on my phone. Sometimes I do motorcycle maintenance! It helps me concentrate much better than watching talking heads.
