and executives enjoying the lower expenses from WFH.
also likely still contemplating more remote offers, office downsizing, and other permanent expense cuts.
and executives enjoying the lower expenses from WFH.
also likely still contemplating more remote offers, office downsizing, and other permanent expense cuts.
So I guess technically we can be at the office but absolutely nobody is there even now. Thereās one guy that seems to be working in the meeting rooms the couple times Iāve gone in, but nobody in the actual desk environment.
Vaccine wise in Canada, itās looking like end of summer, maybe Sep before everyones vaccinated. Weāre behind other countries.
At that time I probably wonāt go back, maybe but probably not.
Unfortunately our co-op student who would like to work in the office is stuck. Theyāre here til August, so they wonāt have the opportunity to go into the office and interact. theyāre stuck in their basement at home with mom and dad. Sucks Iām sure.
My son is doing research at a university and curiously labs have pretty much remained open. So he goes into school most days; but heās generally the only one there.
Thatās the jokeā¦
I had to be up and out of the house early this morning for something non-work related and it made me grateful (again) to realize I donāt have to do it on a regular basis ever again, unless I change jobs. There was plenty of traffic (although still less than when I used to drive in to the office on the regular) and needing to be somewhere by a certain time in the morning really made me ānot in a good moodā this morning.
āYou see, a joke is when your audienceās response is a laugh, while this comment required a correction that Iām sure everyone appreciates.ā
ā twig
Rolling out of bed and crawling to the next room for work is way better than:
Getting up at least an hour earlier, taking a shower, putting on makeup (optional), having breakfast, cleaning dishes from the night before that you forgot to do, flossing and brushing teeth, getting in your freezing-ass car, and then driving/commuting 15-90 minutes to work.
I donāt think Iāll ever go back, even if I change jobs, and my lunch buddy lives only a mile from me. We still get together for lunch about once a week.
(Mind you, I do all of those things on the drive-to-work list,ā¦ eventually, over the course of the day. Plus, work out or take a walk.)
When I go into the office, I get to collaborate with my co-workers much easier. If someone has a question, itās a lot easier to discuss it than setting up a stupid zoom call to type it all into Slack.
My desk and computer are much bigger at work.
Itās easier for me to walk to get my lunch at work. If Iām at home, Iām pretty much solely eating leftovers. Plus I get more exercise that way.
The printer/scanner is much better at work than at home.
All my files are right here at work. We are still a little antiquated here and have a lot of stuff on paper.
And I get away from my family for a while. And away from my house.
My office was antiquated with still having paper files, but being almost a year into this pandemic forced us to move everything we do now to be electronic. Now going into the 2nd year of that and there is no longer a need to go to the office to even look at last years files anymore.
Didnt think being all electronic was possible for us prior to this pandemic forcing it
This is highly geographically dependent. For example, there is no Fourth of July in England. So the 4th of July is always on the 5th over there.
Iām already going back. WFH was awful for me.
Thatās because of time zones.
(Awaiting Miss Nitpick to miss the whole pointā¦)
I think going back partly will be useful from a career perspective, but Iām very happy working from home. In terms of office issues like desk size and that stuff I basically just got myself a pretty decent set up about a month in figuring itās a lot of time to be spending not happy with what Iām using. My home setup is better than what work setup I had previously.
Nope, twig was totally going meta.
And for me, work will be 4@W/1@H once we return. Company is trimming geographical footprint, so many offices will close and employees at those locations will be full time WFH. I am at the home office, though, and 4:1 is the standard WFH choice for that location.
Iāve speculated that post-pandemic, commercial real estate is going to change dramatically because companies now realize they can foist the office space onto the costs of employees. No need to keep huge towers in the financial district.
In Waterloo, Sun Life is already closing one of itās offices and the space is moving to condos (though that may have started pre-pandemic). Theyāve also got a huge tower in dt Waterloo that is likely to be barren of workers that could easily be condos in prime and in-demand location. So possibly office spaces get converted to condos. Same with retail locations.
And Iāll further speculate that single family homes with at least one home office are going to become more in demand. Spare bedrooms arenāt perfect long term.
Didnāt realize you were joking. I have heard people say things like that with both New Years Day and Fourth of July who definitely were not joking.
If agoraphobia doesnāt take me down first, we are still supposed to be going back to the office in June. My company is pushing it harder than most of the people Iāve talked to are comfortable with.
Long term you can put a desk and some monitors in a spare bedroom. My husband has a nice home office that used to be a bedroom. Architecturally speaking, whatās the difference between a home office and a bedroom? I guess thereās a closet he doesnāt use, but itās not like it makes the place worse as an office.
Yeah our house has one āofficeā which I use because itās on the main floor closer to the kitchen and laundry room.
My husband uses a bedroom as his office. I also hog the closet in the master bedroom for myself, so he uses the closet in his office for his clothes. His office is the next room over from our bedroom, so not far.
And since he travels a lot, heās often getting up or getting home at weird hours when Iām sleeping, so itās also nicer to have him get dressed in his office where he can have the light on and make light noise without bothering me.
Itās pretty rare for me to be getting dressed / undressed while he is sleeping.
Thatās what works for us. I think at first he was mildly irritated at my suggestion that I take the whole master bedroom closet, but heās come around. It also means his office is materially bigger than mine, but he also has more crap than me, so thatās fine.
Back when i used to travelā¦
Sigh
Yeah, back when i used to travel, if i planned to get dressed before my husband woke up Iād leave the clothes i planned to wear in the bathroom before bed.
I guess if you guys ever do any renovations you could build yourselves a larger master closet, with itās own light and door, so you both can use the matter closet without bothering each other.
If Mr. NA worked, we absolutely could not do it with this house. Our house was built in 1924, so we have no office, and itās never been renovated to add one. We have three bedrooms, and three kids, so right now all the kids are in one bedroom while I use the smaller one as my office.
We have a summer porch at the back of the house that I was using as an office last spring, but it became unbearable as an office when the summer came around, as it has no heating or cooling. Heating can be fixed with a space heater, but a window AC unit doesnāt work due to the dimensions of the windows and the room was just cramped anyway. Not to mention the only entrance to the space is off our single bathroom, which makes things awkward.
Anyway, with the kids at home 60% of the time for school taking over the entire downstairs area, there is simply no space for another work area. Iām already feeling panicked about how cluttered our house has become since school started.