TS: People Should Work Together in an Office vs. It's A New World

terms of the debate are themselves open to rephrasing obv but taking off from the Pitchfork thread, where somebody who couldn't make meetings in NY (they live in Pittsburgh) is being let go after a corporate edict that you have to be present at meetings -- in the office, in NYC -- or you gotta go

Re the discussion on the Pitchfork thread: meetings with attendees spanning counties and states should offer a Zoom option. If it's a handful of people in the same county and not farther away, I'm less forgiving.

As far as the sacked Pitchfork employee: I don't know if her contract required her to work in another state or if it required flexibility on the employee's part. Sounds like a potential lawsuit.

College online courses should not offer a Zoom option. I teach a couple sections online and they're asynchronous.

I endorse hybrid work schedules btw if you work traditional hours: absolutely work from home a day or two a week.

if you want to work in an office you're a fuckin dork

Hybrid best of both worlds and we get the long promised three day work week socialism promised us

Actually seeing people face to face is good for my mental health but that’s me

Too much alone time makes me depressed

Actually liking my co workers helps, of course

i suspect real estate interests have been gaining ground in this battle recently but the real answer is fuck work, obviously.

if you want to work in an office you're a fuckin dork

― na (NA), Tuesday, September 23, 2025 8:32 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is true.

feel like this also maps onto people who "live to work" vs people who "work to live"

the case for "people should work together" is that it's good for people to be around each other -- I think both in a creative way and in say-that-to-my-face way. and I agree with this on both sides of the questions: humans are social animals, in the social milieu things happen that can't happen outside of it, soaking up notions on a Zoom or reading meeting notes is not the same as hashing it out with people that you see every day; people come up with all kinds of "look, I personally work better alone" / "don't like being around people" / etc responses and I am one of those people, as little being around others as is humanly healthy and possible for me thank but I think the argt that a shared physical workspace enables outcomes less likely outside it is valid.

the case against to my mind is always "this means you have to move to New York." I love New York. one of the greatest cities in the world. prohibitively fucking expensive, too. I gotta move to NY for your job? fuck you, pay me! it's well documented that just getting by in NY now requires people to spend way more of their monthly income than is practical or smart. why can't the NY office move to Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh kicks ass! You could buy a whole city block for what you're paying for that office and then the introverts can be in the same building and attend meetings by Zoom! I bristle, hard, at "oh but you gotta be in the center of the action, very antiquated thinking, the case for everybody being in an affordable city would be stronger but "be rich or fuck you" is terrible business.

feel like this also maps onto people who "live to work" vs people who "work to live"

― she freaks, she speaks (map),

Does it? Like Boring said, I like my co-workers/instructors. I like to see students. But then I live two miles from my job -- huge privilege alert.

on the other hand, and i never thought i'd say this, but being in the office two days a week has grown on me. there's a mental security achieved by wasting time there rather than at home.

I keep an office even though I could work from home. I do it because going to the place that's designated for work allows me to get more work done, the payoff in getting more work done pays for the office. I don't have any office mates though so this is only a useful data point for the "why would you want to work in an office?" question: because a space designated for work can be a boon -- shuts out the distractions of daily life, accumulates the history of "this is where I work," etc

Even when I'm not teaching, I hate writing and reading at home during the day. I gotta go to a cafe and see people, hence why 2020 and most of 2021 killed me in ways I'm still reckoning with.

if you want to work in an office you're a fuckin dork

― na (NA), Tuesday, September 23, 2025 3:32 PM (ten minutes ago)

actually, wanting to live a life outside of the home is cool

Working from home is marginally better than going in to the office, but it's a very poor substitute for not having to work at all.

I agree that there should be a social sphere outside the home for everyone to join in with if they want, without it being cripplingly expensive, however it shouldn't be a fucking office.

But then I live two miles from my job -- huge privilege alert.

I'm lucky enough to live twenty minutes walk away from mine. And believe me I am grateful, AND know my good fortune.

I am going to be working from home three days per week from now on and am going to have to find a way to not just have my morning disappear. It will be a challenge.

the fact that some people apparently identify going to work in an office w/ "having a life outside of the home" is sort of all you need to know. guess what, i have a vibrant and rewarding life "outside of the home" and if i had to schlep my ass into an office 5 days a week i probably wouldn't have the time or energy for half of it

for the rest of you, i am sincerely glad that some here find work to be rewarding and that you like face-to-face interaction with your coworkers. i don't think any of us are trying to take that away from you. we are just advocating for what gels with our work and our lives, and personally i don't want to hear smug corporate pieties about how working together irl is so much better from people who don't understand my lived experience.

sorry, i regret posting that in such a confrontational manner

if you want to work in an office you're a fuckin dork

― na (NA), Tuesday, September 23, 2025 3:32 PM (ten minutes ago)

actually, wanting to live a life outside of the home is cool

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, September 23, 2025 8:43 PM (six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is basically going to be another suburban / urban discussion i guess. about urban commuter culture. in the only city that exists, new york. but just a reminder that there are other places and situations. grimmer cities where "being downtown" offers very little. when i work from home i can literally run in the mountains for two hours in the afternoon, see a moose, come back and check my email and log off. that is a "life outside of the home" worth living to me. not walking to the hipster coffee shop. work from home means i can do more of the things i actually want to do, the kind of things that you hear people at the end of their life talk about how they wish they had done more of. most of these things mean "stealing time" so there's that. work from home essentially means it's easier for me to steal time when i want to, which is inarguably a good thing. xp CaAL otm. it bears repeating: fuck work.

xp yeah about 15% of the time, when i hear someone who is genuinely enthusiastic about their job and being in the office around coworkers, i am jealous. the other 85% of the time i'm incredulous.

I kind of got used to working at home in 2020-22 and didn't want to go back to the office. But now I go in twice a week and that feels kind of perfect to me.

There are certain aspects of my job that feel easier to do in person, such as brainstorming or problem-solving. I like being able to informally bat around ideas that I probably wouldn't have bothered calling anyone or setting up a meeting about. More than that, though, I like most of my coworkers and have come to really value the social aspect of being in an office and chit-chatting about whatever, especially since I don't get a lot of that outside the office.

That said, I don't want to go in every day. Much of my job as a magazine editor involves solitary tasks that I can easily do at home and for which I don't actually need to be around other people. Especially on a day when I really need to focus, I'm often more productive at home. The other thing is that I have a commute of about an hour each way (door-to-door), and on two of the days when I don't go into the office, I use that time by going to the gym. So I appreciate the flexibility that a hybrid schedule allows.

guess what, i have a vibrant and rewarding life "outside of the home"

Guess what, I don't lmao

I am a writer. It's not just what I do for money; it's the kind of person I am. And writing is by its nature solitary work. So what do I need to be in a cubicle for?

I haven't worked in an office since May 2017. Right now, I live in Montana but my "day job" is in Idaho. I have Zoom meetings every couple of days, and have been to the office exactly once, about two years ago when I first joined the company. (Boise is a nice city! I was very intrigued by the Basque cultural presence, and they have a club where metal bands play.)

I don't think anyone should be required to work in their employer's office. If they want to, fine. But if working from home doesn't have any effect on productivity (personal or company-wide), then let technology be your friend!

I could do 100% of my work from home, so it's annoying that I have to come to the office.

On the other hand, my office is literally filled with vintage pornography.

wouldn't you want to share those with coworkers?

Addendum: my job is paperwork intensive (less so since the pandemic) and I’m not bringing that shit into my house. Home is for home stuff

I only got to wfh during the pandemic, and sure, it was great to not have a commute and to browse other tabs during boring meetings. And it worked fine for those of us who already knew each other and had a good working relationship, but I can't imagine that being established if we had never met in person (or just a few times per year). And a lot of people who started remote had a hard time.

And I am absolutely not a 'live to work' person, I just want a job that I don't hate that lets me do music and the rest of life. But at my job it's a better vibe when there face-to-face interactions instead of just another message or scheduled video call to deal with.

I also work for a pretty unusual company, I like my coworkers, and I recognize that most offices/companies are probably way worse and not worth spending any more time at than necessary.

If there was vintage porn in the office... no, I still would prefer to work from home.

Additional personal data point: If I did not work 100% remotely, I would not have been able to move to Montana. One day in late 2022, I looked at my wife and said, "I haven't worked in an office since 2017. I haven't been to New York since March 2020. Why do we still live in New Jersey?" and the process of picking a new place began. And since getting here, my life has improved immeasurably.

Also jeezus everyone is so testy. I’m not judging anyone or trying to imply I am superior to anyone!!! I also don’t “live to work” and I have a life outside of work! I am enormously lucky I enjoy my job and get satisfaction from it. I know not everyone does and I’m not judging anyone!

Working two days a week from home suits me, and I have the enormous privilege of living 15 minutes away from my job.

Get ready for the Adorno quotes in a few.

Also, the majority of jobs can't be done from home, so wfh entitlement always feels a little weird to me.

why can't the NY office move to Pittsburgh?

Well, another weird aspect of this is people making NY money remotely and buying up houses in smaller cities. They're lovely people but it's a new thing and surely contributes to the housing crunch here.

I benefitted extremely from WFH when the pandemic hit. My commutes had been killing me. WFH gave me a chance to breathe, decompress, focus on other things in my life that needed attention.

Because I have had a nigh-crippling social anxiety disorder all my life, Zoom meetings somehow gave me the chance to come into my own. I found myself able to participate in professional discussions with people I had never met before that would have previously left me stammering and flushed with embarrassment.

2022 - we returned to the office. Most folks had to go back 2 days, but I got an exemption for 1, because I have the worst commute out of all my coworkers and my job is still 99% just sitting in front of a computer. I liked eating lunch with my colleagues one day a week.

No such luck in 2025, when federal rules changed (my company is a government contractor). I've been going back 3 days a week since June, and it has its good points and bad points. Multiple days of commuting has definitely eaten into my spare time. On Sundays, I do a lot of meal prep and ironing, which sucks. I'd much rather wear whatever I climbed out of bed in than bizcaz oxfords and khakis like a fucking chump. Sometimes there are good opportunities for face-to-face collaboration, but mostly its just people toddling over to chit-chat with me, which is pleasant, but doesn't serve much of a business purpose, if you're looking at it from that standpoint.

But being there in person does add some structure back into my day that I didn't realize I needed. Doing all that meal prep and NOT having an office located directly next to my kitchen has put a clampdown on a bit of a snacking problem I had. And I do enjoy spending time with adults who are not my wife, as long as no one wheels out that "productivity benefits" canard.

afaict everyone here likes each other, i'm pretty sure everyone just feels strongly about this because it has such a major effect on their lives. i think it's kinda perverse in a funny way that all of this movement from remote work to office work to hybrid work etc. - this one issue - ends up drastically affecting the day to day lives of millions of people.

yeah I think this is a genuinely difficult social problem. I had a job for a while with a 1hr+ commute, which sucked horribly, but I also don't love being alone all day in my house and I dislike online and hybrid meetings.

but beyond personal preferences, workers determining their own working conditions is the goal. OTOH unionizing is pretty challenging when the workers aren't in the same physical location together (not that it's easy otherwise).

the only legit reasoning i can think behind preferring office work is ease of unionizing. idk

as a union guy this is otm

I’m organizing my workplace

The non-union workers at my job work a hybrid schedule, but us union members have to work in office because solidarity.

is that really the only distinction? that seems like something you could bargain for

a union at my university went on strike a year ago to secure more hybrid flexibility (successfully)

People do so many different kinds of work that it's hard to make a universal case for what configurations work best. But within the specific domains of journalism and communication work, which are the main things I've done for money, I've had a range of work arrangements. I was in traditional newsrooms of varying sizes for about 20 years, then in a municipal bureaucracy for another 7, and for the last 7 years I've been working from home. I liked being in newsrooms, I liked their vibe, but per unperson's point about writing you also really had to be able to shut things out when it came to cranking out copy. When I got to an alt-weekly with an office shared with just one person, that really did make writing easier. On the other hand, per JCLC and Alfred's points, I find it easier to focus when I'm out of the house. For me that usually means a coffee shop or bar (there's one bar here that's big and dark and super quiet in the afternoons and is one of my favorite places to write).

But also: For an enterprise of any size, when you're part of a department or team or whatever, I do think there's a lot of value in some amount of personal interaction. You can convey so much more in a 5-minute in-person conversation than a whole chain of emails, imo. We're social animals, we learned how to communicate face to face, that's still a really valuable thing. And as much as people hate meetings, a well-focused regular meeting can be really valuable. Most of the offices I've worked in, we had some kind of weekly team meeting to coordinate and make sure everything was getting done.

Obviously there's a lot of work these days that can be done remotely, and there are people who will do their best work remotely (because they'll be happier), and it's dumb to impose some ideology on it.

my conclusion is that we need more "third spaces"

like, some of the tension between these two options is due to the fact that capitalism/privatization has dismantled many traditional 3rd spaces

Yeah. Another one I've found is public parks, when the weather's good. I can hotspot from all sorts of places. And there's a botanical garden here at the university that a.) has a covered pavilion with tables and chairs and electrical outlets and b.) is within range of the university's free public wifi. Fantastic.

i don't really have any thoughts on "third spaces" but i had more positive, non-capitalism-driven interactions with intriguing strangers on the trail run i did last thursday than i've had in a long time. shared smiles with a tan, very fit, radiant woman. shared nods with a goat-looking man taking a longer route than i did. shared awe with a twenty-something kid in full camo and a bow at the moose standing in the pond.

Sounds to me like the answer to if one or the other is better is “it depends”

it definitely depends which is what makes this a fascinating maddening and hilarious discussion

I'm in the office one day a week these days and my commute is a 30 minute walk each way (which I genuinely enjoy when it's a nice day).
I'm in a very large open plan office that I find to be actively hostile to actual work.
In person meetings are much better than virtual ones but we don't always have meetings on the day I'm in. It's nice to be able to talk to people you don't see when you work from home but that can also be very distracting.
Actually doing the things that I need to do is much harder in a busy and noisy environment and the days when there's no actual point to being in the office I get frustrated because I could have been more productive and more comfortable (physically and mentally) working at home
Some people on my team are in several days a week because it suits them better but I would find it very frustrating to be physically in the office most of the week

Xp to clarify this is for grading papers, which is work but I do not get paid for it so I try to be as efficient as possible to not prolong it. That means I need real or noise-cancelled silence. I also need to not be at home but only have my office on designated days/times.

My office is two cubes away from a guy whose mission is to cold call people and advise them on imminent threats to their computer networks and data. He can be quite loud while doing this. Sometimes listening to him do his job well despite his, er, “customers” being obstinate/clueless/rude/aggressive towards him is the best part of a long day in the office; other days everyone around him needs a time out. There’s no good solution - we’re all 5 days a week, 8 hours a day RTO together and there’s no room to give him an office of his own to talk at people in.

My mental health is generally better since returning to the office - I like who I get to work with and I like seeing them and going for coffee/lunch together - but commuting sucks.

I work with a single screen even when I'm in the office and there's a monitor. At home I often sit on the couch or in an armchair and work that way. The only time I use a monitor is editing my novel when I wanted to read the previous draft and type the new draft without copying and pasting, a technique I read as a piece of advice which I really believe in.

Have to agree with the people saying they wfh regardless of what the office is like. I was in the office for the first time in about a year this week and it was nice to see my new colleague. It was also nice to walk into central London after work, and I feel a bit weary about being in my neighbourhood every weekday, plus a bit isolated at home sometimes. That said, the office is quite unpleasant to be in, the horrible bright light, the high temperature, plus also tbh the need to be sat at a desk staring at your computer all day.

At home I do some work, then do some laundry, then do a meeting or whatever. I get the same amount done I just can also walk around the house or put music on or similar.

I am going to try to use the office a little more cos I think the contact is good, when you live alone wfh can mean you don't speak to someone irl until the middle of the week sometimes. But overall think I've gained more from wfh, and also, since my job is political and sometimes fractious, I think I'm better at doing it when I can patiently process stuff in my own home and respond calmly.

I should get a certification as a yoga teacher in the next year, and there's no way I'd teach over on video. It would be irresponsible.

nice. glad you feel that way. i have a personal training cert and i see a lot of trainers doing online training. completely misses the point imo.

if nothing else, I like going in twice a week for the sake of variety. full-time WFH was making me feel like every day was exactly the same and I was just trudging along and nothing mattered.

also good motivation to shower and shave and look presentable at least some of the time.

been thinking about this since and if my days got less busy id definitely get a lot more out of wfh (cf lg's last answer), as it is its virtual meetings 9-5 and an grabbed lunch wherever i am

I’m mostly happy with the hybrid situation I have now (3 in, 2 home) but I absolutely detest commuting with every fiber of my being

Also, I started this job the week the pandemic shut down everything and had no problem integrating myself into the team, I think largely because I have spent so much of my adult life communicating with others in environments like this message board that I knew how to connect with people in that medium. It’s a different mindset/set of skills and, personal preference aside, I think we all have it by virtue of what we’ve done in this online space, let alone the others we inhabit.

In my world there are tasks like brainstorming that benefit from in-person collaboration. And there are solo concentrative tasks like writing and editing that benefit from me being very alone in a very quiet place.

I have been saying this for something like 15 years. It's not about how many days or which days or for how long or how often.

I am spoiled by my current gig of fully remote with periodic travel to be together (with a defined agenda for specific outcomes from those meetings).

I personally don't miss water-cooler chitchat about didja see that ballgame last night, but I get that some folks feel that it contributes to cohesion or whatever.

curious if the work at a coffee shop contingent just lives happily all the time doing everything on a single laptop screen?

Yeah I've been full-time laptop for the last seven years. A succession of MacBook Airs. Just bought the most recent one a few months ago, not to be a Tim Apple suck-up but it really is a good little machine. I use it for writing, managing websites and social media, conducting/recording interviews, etc. I love the portability, that I can functionally take my "office" with me anywhere I want.

curious if the work at a coffee shop contingent just lives happily all the time doing everything on a single laptop screen?

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, September 24, 2025

yup

personally don't miss water-cooler chitchat about didja see that ballgame last night, but I get that some folks feel that it contributes to cohesion or whatever.

less about cohesion, more about it's nice to talk to someone other than my wife

curious if the work at a coffee shop contingent just lives happily all the time doing everything on a single laptop screen?

I work from home, but yeah, my entire life — day job, freelance writing, book projects, record label — is all done on the same laptop (Macbook Pro, purchased in 2020).

curious if the work at a coffee shop contingent just lives happily all the time doing everything on a single laptop screen?

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, September 24, 2025

yup

Good screen/bad screen the same

Single screen cuts your screen time in half

I do single screen because I focus on a thing at a time; more screens are a distraction ime

It depends upon how much you’re alt tabbing i guess. But maybe if you’re alt tabbing too much you’re computing all wrong.

Strangely I'm constantly using two monitors at the office, but did the whole pandemic with one laptop screen and it was fine.

I just use a laptop at home, like right now... I work in the kitchen and don't really have room for a separate monitor. Also, at quitting time I turn it off and put it in a basket and try to get out of the house

if nothing else, I like going in twice a week for the sake of variety. full-time WFH was making me feel like every day was exactly the same and I was just trudging along and nothing mattered.

yes

i sympathize w/ ppl who have bad commutes. commuting in miami scarred me so deeply that it's one of the first things i bring up when people ask me why i don't want to live there. a standard "bad" commute on the subway is still so much better than the average commute stuck sitting in traffic by car. biking home from work instead of getting on the subway improves my mental health in a significant way. but even when commuting for me is bad -- a crowded broken subway -- i still find some value in that interstitial time. those are two explicitly defined 40ish min periods of my day where i basically can only listen to music (for fun as opposed to work) or read or do the crossword. i think my time management skills are such that when left to my own devices those little slices of personal time bleed out into the rest of the day in a way that i don't necessarily find productive or rewarding, i like the structure that is imposed on my time by a work day spent out of the house

at quitting time I turn it off and put it in a basket and try to get out of the house

Misread this as "...and get out the hose."

for about a year i was sort of a kept boy in washington dc and my bf bought us steel-frame bikes and riding that thing to work and home, even in the middle of summer, was fucking awesome.

DC’s great biking town

e biking from manhattan into brooklyn in the early evening heals me on a nearly daily basis

I worked in retail during the pandemic and for a few years afterwards. I got made redunant and took a job at what I thought would be a call-centre as a stop-gap, and then it turned out to be a proper office job, and now I have a job I enjoy in a lot of ways, insofar as I actively get to help people and improve their quality of life where I can. This job has me working at home 3-4 days a week.

I liked going to my shop to work, but a huge huge chunk of that was that I liked my colleagues a lot. People who've worked retail, food service, or similar jobs will tell you - some of the bonds you make in those jobs are lifelong, even if it is people you wouldn't immediately be drawn to or align with. It doesn't happy in every shop - I've had a few branches where I just got on with everyone "well enough" and made a few casual Facebook connections and nothing more - but some of my most enduring friendships have come from the shop floor.

I also really enjoyed my commute, although it was much easier when it was by train with its rigid timetables and comfortable seating. The bus was far less reliable and caused much more stress. I really enjoyed having time with my headphones to carve daily for new music - I'd try to listen to a new album every day I worked. I don't keep up with new music the same way because at home it is far easier to slip into TV habits.

In my current job I work a 35 hr week, and as long as I do between 7am and 7pm Mon-Fri, I can work whatever hours I want. If I want to log on at 7am one day and do 12 hrs so I can finish early the next day that's not a problem. I can even work less than 35 hrs a week if necessary as long as I don't ever "owe" more than 10 hours. This has made a huge difference to my quality of life, not least because of the care I provide my partner who suffers with chronic pain and fatigue. It means if they're having a good day I can be fairly flexible and enjoy eg a longer lunch or an early finish with them, but equally if they're asleep I can work on because I'd be sitting around by myself anyway.

Nobody in my org likes coming to the office. It's expensive to park, tricky to reach by public transport, and apart from the nearby supermarket there's not really a lot in the immediate vicinity. So nobody in my team comes in for more than six hours at a time due to the ability to flex hours. There's been days where I've turned up at 10am and people have left at 1pm, so the collaboration doesn't happen on a grand scale. It's very annoying having to get done up in proper clothes to sit under harsh lights for Teams calls all day. But even more annoying is when people seem confused that you meet them on a Teams call and discover they're in the office on a different floor, and you suggest joining them in person for the meeting. Our office is also very noisy, full of inane chatter that's often as loud as it is boring.

There's nothing in my job that I cannot do at home. Sometimes it's nice to go in and brainstorm with people around me, but the open desk policy and flexible working means it really is a lucky dip in terms of who and what help is available when you might need it. And we manage fine on the days we are at home. The weeks I only have to attend one day are the weeks my productivity is much higher, and it's the same for everyone else. Senior management have made it clear they don't really understand our job and our day-to-day work, and I believe if they did the return-to-office mandate would be dismissed.

It's not that I dislike my colleagues. But after three years, different roles, different teams, different departments - I'm just not really close to anyone. There's a few people I like, a few I will go for a drink or a bite to eat with occasionally. But the majority of people I encounter are just very different to me. Not in an "I'm not like other boys!!!" way, just a general every day way. Nobody here goes to gigs or nightclubs, nobody goes places I would go, nobody watches the TV shows I'm excited about, they're all very straight and heteronormative and there's minimal common ground. I don't need my workmates to be my surrogate friends and family - I have a rich life outside of work - but talk about bonding and unity just doesn't ring true for me. I like them all and I wish them the best but I know if I leave I'll never hear from many of them again.

I adore working from home for so many reasons. I can listen to music all day and it's great to be able to play a two hour NTS show or long techno mix. I can stop and start as I want. I can order things to my house and not worry about deliveries. I can set my own lighting, heating, etc. My toilet is always clean and unoccupied. But the most important thing - the reason I'll probably never leave - is that I can be much more available for my partner. Boxedboyf has fatigue, weakness and occasional seizures, and being able to down tools for a few mins when they need a bit of help and support is a gamechanger for both of us. It's never more than a few minutes, or if it is then I can log off, but it makes such a difference to his quality of life - and my own concentration as I don't need to worry and check in the same way.

One other thing about working from home is I can be annoyed in a less inhibited way. In the office, if someone in the organisation doesn't do their job properly in a way that holds me back or makes life more difficult for our vulnerable clients, I have to be diplomatic and bite my lip. I really struggle with my mood when I feel other people are being incompetent, espcially when I know it's borne out of laziness rather than ignorance, and when the red mist descends upon me I have to go for a walk or do something physical to let the tension out. Whereas at home I can simply shout some swear words at my screen and walk away for a moment.

My office is two cubes away from a guy whose mission is to cold call people and advise them on imminent threats to their computer networks and data.

Knowing what you do, I can see why his job's legit but how does he differentiate himself from the "hello I am calling from Windows about your virus" dickheads?

I haven’t worked an office job since 2021, the year when I wfh and was very depressed.

Now, one of my jobs literally requires me to put my life in the hands of my colleagues— you have to be able to trust someone when they’re belaying you, and if they drop you there’s a possibility of serious injury. It does build a camaraderie that I really appreciate.

nice. glad you feel that way. i have a personal training cert and i see a lot of trainers doing online training. completely misses the point imo.

― she freaks, she speaks (map), Thursday, 25 September 2025 bookmarkflaglink

With teaching the strange physical movementa you get in yoga you couldn't do it by teaching beginners through a screen. There are things you can see but not every angle as we teach a lot of alignment of the pose.

Video has given me access to yoga teachers in my 'school' from other countries but I know what I'm doing and the teacher does say you need to have at least 2+ years of practice already.

working off one laptop screen is diabolical

we may have solved britain’s productivity crisis lads

i hate multiscreen so much

I am using fewer than 2 monitors for the first time in my career now and it’s annoying af

One really big monitor would be fine

one big one is good, two better, three is best

i never want to be in a bathrrom with more than one toilet

I would like to say, I would enjoy going into the office a hell of a lot more if we were actually assigned desks

As it stands, our entire section is hotel cubicles; the population of the floor is such that everyone pretty much gets their own dedicated desk anyway, but it is t officially yours and someone else can take it if they get there before you, or use it while you’re not there and rearrange the monitors et al in a wholly irritating manner

In short, if executives REALLY want the staff to come into the office, make the office into a place they want to be rather than making them feel like replaceable cogs

I've gone into the san francisco office a couple times this year - wednesdays are popular - but there's nobody there, usually like five dudes who are super quiet... they all go lunch together at like noon but I don't eat that early

it's crazy how empty downtown san francisco still is.. a bunch of popular lunch places and coffee shops are just gone

i just looked up some data on the makeup and prevalence of people who WFH in the USA and this is what I found:

These findings are consistent with earlier research that showed the generally higher earnings of home-based workers and the disproportionately White composition of remote workers.

In 2023, 13.8% of U.S. workers usually worked from home — more than twice the 5.7% that did so in 2019, despite a decrease from 17.9% in 2021 and 15.2% in 2022.

In 2019, around 9 million people worked from home in the United States. By 2023, that number had soared to more than 22 million.

From this US Census community survey, report published Jan 16 2025 https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/01/work-from-home-inequalities.html

shoutout to the middle aged man blasting "i want it that way" from his phone on the train to work this morning

also this
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2025/01/work-from-home-inequalities/figure-1-work-from-home-inequalities.jpg

2013-2019 I worked in two open-plan offices where the executive assistant nearby was in charge of music and built playlists of about, say, eight songs. One of which was “Take Me to Church.” All day.

This is where working in libraries is a distinct advantage.

Here's something I was just thinking of: I've done a few remote jobs/projects that have lasted a year or two, and almost everything I've done since the start of the pandemic has been remote.

When I think of getting references from bosses/coworkers/etc., the ones I've never met in person wouldn't make for great references. The ones I've worked with and interacted with in person would.

why do you think that

In-person colleagues are more likely to have encountered you drunk.

(And vice versa, so perhaps there's an opportunity for mutual support pacts.)

You can’t bring donuts to a zoom meeting

Yes you can, and you can eat them happily while everyone else is jealous and threatens cruel revenge on you. (This may not be an incentive.)

why do you think that

perhaps they would know better if you were a toxic coworker.