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The policy is you can only work from home when it benefits the company, not you.
I’m learning that the hard way. Started working for this company 2 hours from home,because I could WFH 3 days a week. Now they want me to come in 4 days a week. So I’m looking for a new job now. Which is a shame, because I do like the job.
What does your contract say? With this back to work bullshit I made sure my contract explicitly said I was remote.
Doesn’t mean they won’t change their mind but maybe I’ll get severance instead of fired for cause of they have a back to the office push.
Good tip, I’ll double check that
keep me updated!
Keep us updated!
We need the update more than a windows user need a rollback.
And my axe!
most hires don’t get contracts
edit: in USA. we get offer letters, take it or leave it. your job duties can change on the fly, no “contract” to abide by. do the job or leave/get fired. there is some negotiating room, but not a lot
Huh? All jobs come with an employment contract.
You must not be in america. We’re lucky if we get breaks.
Land of the free and all that. Free from paid healthcare, a decent public education, a strong voice in government, an impartial justice system, employee rights… With all this freedom, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
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.
Doing the Lord’s work there, Sonny!
if it’s the latter, just get it in writing.
That’s the goal.
Theres something enormously satisfying about asking the question “And are you willing to give me that in writing?”
Then watching them squirm as something in their brain goes full Ackbar “ITS A TRAP!”
I would love an example, but can accept you can’t produce one without compromising yourself.
The current argument I’m involved in is about an online platform that people can use to give recognition to each other. HR is telling me to give my team negative performance reviews for not using it regularly.
They love to remind me that there’s an app that everyone can install on their phone. The thing is, my team aren’t allowed to use their phones at work. So, the goal is to get them to tell me in writing that using this online platform is mandatory and that my hourly staff has to do it off the clock or face repercussions which is illegal.
God among men
I wouldn’t go that far. There are people on here that would call me a monster for just being middle management.
Yet you continue the struggle against the chaos of bureaucracy protecting your team. That’s a hero st the very least.
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 🤷
I really don’t mind these days as long as they have a MDM so I can have it on a separate profile, but without that I’m totally with you.
What’s MDM?
Mobile device management. Basically software to manage mobile devices owned by a company.
Or work profiles on BYODs
How does the separate profile keep the company from factory resetting the whole device?
Because they can only see, install, or wipe things inside the work profile. It’s all sandboxed.
Quick edit: This is for Android. I have no idea about iPhones.
It’s less cognitively taxing for me if you just comply with whatever I’ve decided
I love this.
Zeitgeist material
We did it, classic
I don’t like the font.
Would be less cognitively taxing for them if you did.
Amazing
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.
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”.
They’ll hire remote drivers from India soon enough.
I’ve traveled in India - there’s no way that would produce anything but piles of dead children. My money’s on being replaced by AI first.
The same AI that was doing those Amazon go stores?
I am in a weird position, as a software developer, I work for a tiny company and they’re against work from home, but they’re absolutely amazing and accommodating in all other areas and I have no complaints.
So I had car issues and was able to work from home 3 days a week, but it still pisses me off that I have to go in those two days. They say it’s so we can communicate and ask for help, but mostly it’s a silent office and we can’t even wear headphones. Often I can go in and if I’m in a mood there is no communication all day long (I am the chatty one and will engage in debates a lot). Yet I’ve had to take a 3 hours public transport route to work (car issues) just to sit there and not talk.
I’m torn because they’re amazing in every other aspect and super understanding about my mental health issues and leaving early and making up time etc. we don’t have targets and are just trusted we will work hard, I struggle as I overthink and put a lot more pressure on myself than my employer does, but I can’t change the way my mind work.
Headphones as a reasonable accommodation for a disability eg ADHD/Autism/etc might be a good option if it applies to you
can’t wear headphones
Wow, imagine coding without podcasts or music…
Why no headphones? Is management a bunch of Nazis?
I’ve once visited an office that was like this. Was a publisher with a big IT department. Large office room, perhaps 40-50 desks. No headphones allowed. I don’t remember the reason. I would go crazy, it was not a quiet office.
I have no idea tbh, on the headphones side; they’re not Nazis (I don’t think).
What if you just…wore headphones? Will security escort you put with a baton?
No but I’m sure the bosses would ask me not to do that.
You won’t be able to hear them! Problem solved.
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?
The response was that they couldn’t stay operating if they paid everyone for being on call instead of us “supporting the company”.
That’s the heart of the matter. They wanted you to support the company, without the company supporting you.
…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.
Many IT jobs require an on-call rotation. Even when not on call, an SME can be called in an emergency. Time spent on call-outs typically either pays overtime or gives comp time. The infrastructure has to keep running, that’s just how it is.
Why did you, why would you, ever have work email and Teams on your phone in the first place?
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.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
This reminds me of a work-to-rule or a “White Strike.” It turns out that every company, even those that supposedly operate off of “unskilled” labor, utterly rely on employees making a ton of judgment calls and often working outside their job description. When employees start working to the letter of their job description, the whole operation quickly grinds to a halt.
“Other duties as assigned” is a bitch.
That’s what gets struck in a white strike.
If it’s literally in your job description, as it has been in my last several positions, does it qualify?
A white strike, like all strikes works because of collective action, not because of some tricky technically lol.
You make them assign the task to you, don’t just do it because it’s necessary. Each task that is not part of your actual assigned job needs to be assigned to you. Every time. If they want you to do it every time it’s needed, ask for them to update your job description to reflect it.
It’s called a white strike because you are burying them in paperwork, but not walking off the job.
Here we call it “standard operation” and it’s also a kind of “white strike”
Same in Brazil. It’s a most effective form of strike - you still get paid, the company still hemorrhages money. Another common one among public transit is when bus drivers still go around their route but don’t collect payment.
That happened
deleted by creator
Did what?
deleted by creator
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.
How do they keep track of you if you’re alone in the office? I’m just curious.
We have access cards to unlock the office doors; this is tracked. Everyone is required to be in the office for a certain amount of days per month, and a monthly report is always generated. I found when the fewest people are coming (nobody on my floor), and that’s when I come in, given that my entire team are digital nomads, so I’d communicate with them via Slack anyway.
Gotta love jobs that treat their staff like children.
Which is weird cause the savings in not comming in to center is a win for everyone.
But how am I supposed to control my workers if they work from home?
Lol same energy as How am I supposed to make sure my partner doesn’t cheat on me if I don’t GPS tag him?
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.
pvt NoPhone
Love this bit. Gonna steal it :D
As retired Army, this is freakin’ phenomenal. I hope that dude is doing well today.
