Our company was looking to move to Teams but backed out when they were worried about security risks.
The CEO has been surveying people around the company about how much time they’d like to spend in the office vs. remotely. I told him 2-3 days per week - he said that most other people he talked to feel the same way. I would prefer for meetings to be in person, especially the weekly 1 on 1 with the boss. But most days I don’t have meetings so probably makes sense to WFH those days.
I like seeing other people in the office, plus better internet connection and equipment, and not having my wife distract me. Plus there is a gym in the building, a hiking trail and a nice restaurant nearby I enjoy for lunch.
Over the years that we have lived at our house, my family has developed a friendship with our postal carrier. She offered to take our teenage son and my wife fishing on either Tuesday or Thursday of this week.
As of Tuesday morning, we still had not heard from her which day she would be coming. However, as the day went on, my wife started feeling terrible. (I’ll put it this way: It was not a good month for her.)
Our postal carrier called to let us know she was on her way to pick them up. Thankfully, since I was home and had just gotten to a stopping point at work, I could, at a moment’s notice, take the afternoon off and take my wife’s place for the outing. (With my son’s special needs, we wanted to make sure one parent tagged along.)
Had I not had a WFH arrangement, that would not have been possible.
This is one of many reasons that I plan to keep WFH for as long as possible.
Oh, and our company migrated to Teams last year. I’m still getting used to it, but it’s nice.
I think it finally clicked with me why I’m so confused by people who love WFH and never want to RTO. ALL of my socializing and friendships have happened at work. Without the office, I have no social life. How does everyone else have such a satisfying social life outside of it? I’m clearly missing something if I can’t make that happen in my own life. And what will retirement look like for me?
Just move in to a retirement community with lots of activities and you can meet other old people at that point.
Many relationships originate from shared activities so if you aren’t doing anything outside of work you aren’t going to meet people outside of work. Of course, that is really just the initial introduction. All relationships require some level of effort to continue beyond those shared activities, so while it may provide the initial introduction, you actually have to engage with these individuals in other settings if you want the relationship to be more than that (of course sometimes just interacting during those activities is enough).
This. And you need to share activities with the same person several times for a friendship to form, imo.
I tend to get involved in activities. I play bridge. I am an active member in a couple of hobbies that include doing stuff with other people. I am sometimes politically active. I have made friends through all these activities, as well as through work. And for a while during pandemic, I had only two free evenings each week because the other 5 were taken up by regular on-line activities with people I usually see in person.
If you are more of a stay-at-home type, it’s harder. I was friendly with a bunch of parents of kids in my kids’ classes when most of my non-work time was taken up with childcare, though, and I think there’s a lot of potential for you there.
That is a tremendous insight. I have always been the opposite, very little socializing with co-workers. I play bridge, I’m involved at sunday school / church, that’s a lot of people to be around. Seeing people face to face less was annoying during COVID but we kept things going, but if your friends are at the workplace you would see them a lot less.
If you’re the breadwinner and a busy mom, it’s not going to be easy getting away for some socializing but I think it comes down to locating a group or activity that interests you. I know that seems like captain obvious, but I wouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket
I don’t really socialize with co-workers, though I do talk w/ them. (Living 70 miles away from the office tends to cut into after-work hanging out)
I have multiple issues, the main one is all the missed opportunities to chat about work-related stuff w/ people in other departments. There’s not a lot of cross-pollination when you’ve got to be explicitly invited to a meeting. Even in the Zoom meetings, there’s less chatting compared to if we were all sitting around the same table, and we could have pairwise convos while we wait for meeting to start or after the end of the meeting.
I’ve been WFH for 20 years, long before anyone else around here did so. The whole neighbourhood used to leave and I’d be the only person here all day.
Eventually I learned to just take time out and get outside. Go downtown, get a coffee, go to the mail. Make an effort to see other people throughout the day.
As for socializing at the office, we just do that over zoom. I make the coop students listen to my wise man tales for about 1/2 an hour twice a week. Which is probably more true than I’d like, but really, I always make some time for socializing during zoom calls. how’s your day going, did you see this in the news, etc. Little different than if we were in -office.
Um, I have friends outside of work. It helps A LOT that my wife makes friends easily, as I am more Garbo than Kardashian. In the 20+ years we’ve lived in our current area, my wife has made friends with two disparate groups (both parents of like-aged children to ours), kept close with a college group (they go one annual vacations), and we have family in that perfect distance (not too close, not too far) that we don’t get in each others’ business yet see occasionally.
So, naturally, I am forced to connect with lots of husbands. Some of whom are tolerable.
Speaking of going back to the office, my badge was interoffice mailed to a mailbox that I’m almost certain doesn’t exist. Also I need the badge to get into the office to get the badge. I know this because the guy at the gate tried to keep me out the one time I tried going in there without a badge.
Maybe I’ll just never go back .
Edit: Going back kind of implies I’ve been there before. I have not worked at the/my office before.
I think the problem must be me. I put a lot of effort into connecting with people and it’s not reciprocated in most cases.
In normal times, if I didn’t make time to go stop by friends’ desks, I wouldn’t have any social interaction. I worked one floor down from a few work friends and I can count on one hand the number of times they came down to chat with me. I would visit them multiple times a week.
Now that half of us are back in the office on any given week, I’ve gone around and said hello to everyone I know at least once (this is the second week we have been in). Not a single person has sought me out to say hello.
It’s painful. And since I’m putting in all this effort and it’s fruitless, it must be that I’m weird or awkward or an inconvenience to people.
But it’s still better than working from home and feeling lonely AND isolated. Lonely by itself is much better.
“mommy groups” on facebook have proven fruitful so my wife has made a few “mommy friends”/couples via that, so I get a bit of free rider benefit.
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