Took me 3hrs to get in yesterday and same back obvs, still enjoyed it.

If it's a waste of time when you go in then that needs better organizing so the things you're doing are worthwhile. Getting benefit from face to face interactions at work surely isn't an alien concept. I guess it depends on if you like your colleagues as well to a degree.

Translation: DS is on the pull. There’s a fittie in accounts.

dude I just know behind my back all the gyal salivate I just don't look cos play it cool innit bare gash

You and me both H.

ADHD and working from home alone is a recipe for disaster. I've not been into the office for two months now and I've begun to climb the fucking walls. The stress is killing me.

I was chatting to my mate this evening. His nephew is having to relocate to Glasgow.

The nephew’s girlfriend works remotely, as do most staff for the company she works for. The company are introducing a mandatory minimum of one day in the office each week. The offices are in London, Leeds and Glasgow. Everyone on the team she works with are in London. So, they’re forcing her to be in an office in Glasgow, in order to be in the same Teams meeting she would be in with her team anyway, but now they’re all sitting at desks with worse set-ups than they each have at home.

The conversation moved onto the positives (nephew is just about to graduate so it’s not a bad time to relocate, he spent a few years growing up in Bearsden, so he can attend his beloved Motherwell more often, and visit his grandparents, Glasgow is a cool city for a young couple) so I didn’t get into why she can’t just commute for one day a week, but the fact that she will just be in a Teams meeting, and they are content with that, highlights that the mandatory office time is just bullshit from bosses who want to assert authority.

Meanwhile, my mate is delighted. He joined the company he works for early on in lockdown and, apart from a day here or there, has worked from home. Over the last while his company have bought smaller companies, and moved the staff into their own building, so my mate no longer has a desk, let alone his own office. Apart from occasional meetings, he’s entirely home-based.

My other half has days, weeks even, where I'm the only human she interacts with. WFH has semi fried her brain. New job incoming, thank god.

Yeah walking the dog bookends my work day and I have the garden office so it's like having the world's shortest commute.
Lock the office up and I'm done.

I'm also very fortunate that my bosses do not micro manage at all. I'm left to my own devices to get through my list of tasks as I see fit, tasks I've had a large input in setting myself. I work flexitime 7.5 hours a day with core hours of 10-4, lunch at anytime around midday. As long as I don't have meetings I largely do as I please. We also aren't a big meetings company, we have them as and when but they are casual in nature yet also to the point, no sitting through anyone's 50 page presentation, nobody would be impressed by it.

I do three days a week in the studio and two days at home. Creative industries though, innit. Benefits massively from having people together to chat, share ideas, and criticise each other’s work.

I also have to travel a lot to be with clients. That’s just part of the job. I’m regularly in places like London, Manchester or Aberdeen. Sometimes just for one meeting, sometimes for up to a week.

During covid times my team was made to work in Hertfordshire, which was a daily 2hr commute each way (longer when I had to walk 3 miles to get a lift at 5am).  Ball. Ache.  Then they forced us to work there permanently, despite the fact that the Canary Wharf office remained mostly empty.  During the consultation process they agreed to add the price of a yearly train ticket to our wages, plus a bit of extra 'stop making a fuss' bunce.   

About a year later the cunt in charge of all that left the company, they got rid of the Rickmansworth site (which was within a mile of his house ofc), offered a redundancy incentive to 3 people (which 3 people took) and moved the remaining 3 (myself included) back to the main office in Canary Wharf.  Here comes the good bit - they couldn't touch the boosted salary, so that's my wage now.  I worked a 6 day week for 10 years but I earn more than I used to with the double time OT included, and I haven't worked a Saturday since 2020.  Sometimes getting shafted works out.

Hybrid works well with creative studios I think. You've mentioned the positives of being in the studio but the newer wfh model allows time to get on with the nitty gritty as well without distraction or constant change of tact.
Ive definitely freelanced in studios where people have ended up working late because the boring stuff wasnt done in normal work hours.

We've moved back to three in the office and two at home. Like Pop, we're in the creative industry and it really is needed. I thought I was not going to like it, but I really enjoy it when the whole team are in and there is a buzz about the place. Still leaves time for focus when doing reports/pitch decks etc when WFHing.

We also have exceptions for that depending on team members, e.g. dev, it's not a one-rule-for-all thing.

Our place is a three-office, two-home hybrid week, though as I'm the only one in Glasgow it's flipped for me. Even then I'm often only going across once a week and they're fine with it, which is nice. I appreciate the flexibility, though when I'm the only one Teamsing in to meetings I definitely feel like I'm stuck on Thunderbird 5 while everyone else swans about partying on Tracy Island without me.

To be fair to them, if it's a government department chances are they are on a gov vpn for access to work IT, which means it probably has bandwidth issues. It's common practice to have your cameras off for meetings to reduce issues for the presenter, unless there is a need not to.

It’s not the cameras that are a problem. It’s the culture. Call a meeting for 27 people and only five show up. People choosing to stay at their desk on Teams instead of travelling one floor down in the lift to attend in person. Not one of the 22 dialled-in people having a single thing to say in the meeting.