I'm not allowed to work from home and it seriously pisses me off. Whenever I complain about this to my boss, she always gives me shit like "you're a school bus driver".

Boss calls me (the sole on-site IT person) on a sickday and tells me something important broke and I need to come and fix it (45 minute bus ride one-way). I know exactly what broke and I tell her if she goes into my office and turn my computer on then I can remote in and fix it in literally 5 seconds. She nearly screams at me saying that my contract doesn't allow remote work and I don't remember what exactly was said after this point but it was something along the lines of:

"It won't be fixed for another 5 days then because I'm not coming in today (Thursday, and I don't work Fridays or Mondays)."

"Ok bye"

"bye"

Guess it wasn't important

After four years of work from home, since the beginning of the pandemic, we'll soon have to start going back in once a week. I know, that's a lot better than many people that have been forced into 5 days a week or similar bullshit, but it's definitely one more day a week than I want to go in. DC area, too, so you know traffic is going to be a nightmare, as always.

I'd even be willing to go in quarterly or whatever for special meetings. But weekly? We've proven we can do this.

They're pushing this whole "hybrid" working and "rethink how you work!" and "it's all about teams!" But they didn't require any sort of coordination on coming into the office for teams, or anything along those lines - it's a free for all. So instead of sitting at home on a call, we're going to be sitting in cubicles on phone calls. It doesn't make any sense.

And even if they had decided teams should coordinate in-office days, my area in particular works with so many different teams that we'd still be remote for most of them. Or in the office every day, which would not go over very well.

But I'm sure the Popeye's (fast food chicken place) across the street will welcome us back. The one that has survived over four years without us. No one I know has ever gone there.

We're going to lose a bunch of people as a result. And hiring is a disaster that isn't likely to be resolved any time soon. It's gonna be a fun few years...

Counting down the days until I can retire. Unfortunately, there are too many, I'll have to deal with this. Or find a completely remote job.

As a middle manager in a corporate hellscape, one of my few joys in life is setting logic traps for HR and making them choose between admitting company policy is bullshit or directly instructing me to violate labor laws.

The policy is you can only work from home when it benefits the company, not you.

Which is weird cause the savings in not comming in to center is a win for everyone.

...you shouldn't have to respond in home hours regardless. Any time you spend on work during your life outside of contract is them stealing your labour.

I always refused to put work apps on my personal phone because they would make you agree to some bullshit where they could remote access your phone or potentially wipe it. So I would refuse and say they needed to provide a company phone for me if it was that important. Most companies are either ok with this or provide a phone, except for one company. This was a software company, and literally everything else about this company was a unicorn of a job. But for some reason they wanted me to have slack on my phone and also wouldn't give me a company phone. So I dug up an old phone, reset it to factory settings, and added slack to that so I could say I did it. Then I put the phone away and they never asked about it again. So I really don't know what the point of that was 🤷

Our boss was freaking out over people sometimes doing some private calls during work hours and at a certain point absolutely forbade it. So yeah, people would just end the call at 17:00 sharp and switch off the work phone. It took one week before that rule was rescinded.

Man we had someone in the army do this. Army doctrine is either outdated or very accessible to the poor, I don't fuckin know, but you aren't required to have a phone.

So this one weird junior Joe just decided he didn't need a phone. Got rid of it, and as a result never got the information he needed on army shit. I loved him for it, and by the law he was in the right. Can't tell him to get a phone.

Unfortunately I was his team lead, and every time my chain of command decided to put out bullshit last minute information over text I had to tell them to suck it and pvt NoPhone wouldn't be at their surprise formation.

Sometimes for important stuff I would have to drive to the barracks and knock on homies door to let him know there's surprise inspections or piss tests and shit.

The workplace should operate entirely without external communication. It worked since the dawn of man, and it should continue to work until the end of man if we want any semblance of work-life balance.

I'm on hybrid, but my entire team is all over the world, so I'm just as alone in the office as at home. The only difference is that in the office I'm bound by the train schedule, so I can't take out of hours calls. My coworkers and manager keep petitioning HR to let me work from home full time.

A previous job of mine wanted people in my team to volunteer for being on call overnight for a week at a time.

No-one did, so they forced us. I emailed all managers involved including HR I said that I would like to opt-out for various reasons like family, mental and physical health, and also that the pay was in no way adequate for what they wanted. Again they pushed, so I replied with I'll do it but would be unavailable most afternoons and evenings with my kids and things they have on. That I also won't be able to answer after going to sleep because I take my mental health very seriously and need quality sleep to function.

So the first night I slept peacefully as I normally do as I have my phone set to go to DND automatically. I got called in because I didn't answer a call that came in last night, I asked when it was, about midnight, and said well that's because I was asleep.

Go to the next 2 mangers up, say the same thing and they say that I need to answer. I explain the email stating that I would be unable to answer calls at many times including when asleep and how no-one replied with that being a problem. One of the managers was like, wait up, you flagged this; yup; can you send me the email chain; yup. Got removed and told I wouldn't need to worry about doing it anymore.

It found a new job shortly after that.

Doing home health was kinda instructive for me in this regard.

The only time you go to the office is to turn stuff in, do inservices/continuing education, or similar. But originally I would answer calls at weird hours because a patient would need coverage, otherwise they wouldn't be calling.

And then the management spent way too much money buying into some Disney corporate policy thing (literally, they paid money to Disney for the program) that changed a ton of rules in bullshit ways that made no sense for home health.

So, the next time they called, I didn't answer. Or the time after that, or the time after that. And, when you're one of three men working for a company that's partially reliant physical strength to be able to do the work needed for some patients, this alarmed my supervisor. She requested a meeting, and I went in. Mandatory meetings were paid though!

At the meeting, it was expressed that answering calls was part of my job. So I asked id I was being paid to sit at home and wait for calls. No, I wasn't "on call". So, you want me on call? No, just to answer when we call you. That's being on call, and we're supposed to get paid for that. No, this is different, we just want you to be available when someone calls out for a difficult patient. Soooo, you want me on call.

This went in circles for a while before I switched gears and directly said that answering calls when not on duty was not in place when I was hired, and that the employee handbook specified that being on call was considered a shift, and would be paid as such, and that maybe I should have been on call any of the dozens of times I did wake my ass up from sleep after workout two or three jobs in the first place, and that I never got paid a dime for doing so, so that was the end of it for me.

The response was that they couldn't stay operating if they paid everyone for being on call instead of us "supporting the company". My response was that maybe they could have if they hadn't shelled out for the Disney crap, or if the previous administrator hadn't been screwing around and embezzling, and that maybe it was time the company supported us.

Not surprisingly, I was one of several employees "let go to streamline services" a few weeks later, right before the company folded entirely.

So, you don't even have to have an office job to get treated like shit! Isn't that a relief? Isn't it?

In all of my IT jobs I would have been fired if I had signed into work accounts on my personal phone. It's a pretty big security risk.

Why did you, why would you, ever have work email and Teams on your phone in the first place?