In office, I’m a chatty bitch. I have a habit of maybe over-socializing. For sure, my productivity goes down in the office. Oh, and people listen to me just as much WFH as they did in the office when it comes to work stuff.
At home, I can just turn on some music and focus on what I need to get done. I can work on my 20+ jira points I have every god damn sprint. Meetings (ad-hoc or planned) already cause delays for me and I’m already working to much (the highest so far, has been a 16-hour day).
I don’t miss the ‘sense of community’ because there isn’t one. Plus, most of my co-workers live in different states, and many in different countries. There’s no in-person collaboration even if I’m in the office. It’s still everything done over chat/video call.
My company, like so many others, went back on everything they said about WFH. They used to say how great it was because they could find talent from anywhere instead of being arbitrarily constrained by location. Like, obviously, the best talent doesn’t just happen to live next to you. Then it moved to hybrid, for those all important in-person, face-to-face collabs and synergy and all the other bullshit LinkedIn BS you can spew. And now, they’re doing RTO full on and even shaming those who work from home or would want to. Full-on bully tactics in meetings too. Even started shaming the upper mgmt, because their excuse was “well, other companies are doing it” so I hit back with the “if other companies were committing fraud, would we?” a spin on the “well if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you” I grew up hearing all the time. I actually brought that up in a corporate meeting, they never responded, so I’m taking that as a yes… yes they would and will, so long as they figure they can get away with it (or the penalties don’t outweigh the profits).
And then I find out Tim Walz (Minnesota Governor) is also for RTO… so I emailed his office, letting him know just how utterly disappointed in him I was, and to not expect my vote ever again.
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. I’m just truly passionate about this. WFH, I’m far less miserable on a day-to-day basis. Working in the office, I was in multiple car accidents going to and from work (none of which I caused). I’ve been in exactly 0 since WFH. No longer spending 1-2 hours a day just traveling, so I can work remotely, in an office. If I ever win the lotto, I’ll be rich enough I could run for president and one of my pillars would be pushing businesses to utilize WFH if the position can do that. Fewer cars on roads, means less congestion for those who have to be onsite. There should be a noticeable decrease in vehicle-related accidents and fatalities.
Sometime in my 20s I just switched to water only. It wasn’t even a conscious decision really. Wasn’t like one day I woke up and was like I’m just going to drink water now. Just one day I’d realize that you have been like 2 years since I drank any soft drink. So I tried drinking some Dr pepper which I loved. It was disgusting. I had someone try to see if there was something wrong with it and they said it tasted perfectly normal. And it’s been that way for a long time now. I’ve tried little sips of new soft drinks that have come out that my friends like… And none of them taste good to me. Just room temp water, perfect.
I used to use mio to add a little flavor every now and then, but switch to Crystal light. I found the flavors to be more consistently good.