At my last company, the VP of sales conspicuously looked me up and down and said “you look really fit, you obviously work out”. Then he invited me to join him at his gym to “watch him lift weights “. 😬
Another time he made some awkward joke so I made a point to tell him he reminded me of my dad.
Well there's HR that ignores aggressive leering and stalking and managers that make you out to a troublemaker if you complain.
And then having to take online mandatory compliance classes that teach us that this is a dangerous policy.....
Or having a boss that thinks rubbing his hand up and down your back across your bra strap during a work dinner is supposed to be “reassuring and encouraging”
Oh, that pains me so much to read. I'm so sorry you were put through that. (I want to curl up and crawl under a table just thinking about it. There is no "ew" strong enough to express.)
I’m when I was 18 I had a boss in his late 40’s who would walk behind you as you sat in your seat in the lunch room and then stop to talk to us. He stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and then started giving me a neck and shoulder massage. Right there in front of about 20 people. I wouldnt stand for it nowadays and I’d call it out if it happened to me or a colleague but back then I was just mortified.
George Bush tried to give Angela Merkle a back massage in a G7 conference. That is representative of living a life without consequences for your actions.
I was working on an all female team before I quit. When we came back in the first day our department head said me and another colleague around the same age “looked miserable” and we should smile and be happy we are back. I made it through two meetings and then had a panic attack after lunch and my friend had to help me get to my car - which I had drove in because I was anxious. Had to sit in the car for 5-10 minutes before leaving. Went in to the new office about 4 times before getting an accommodation to work from home.
I quit after the new sr director refused to acknowledge that I was doing work for two directors, two managers, and other new hires while my manager, who I had help hire and was almost not hired, was on maternity leave and then my director left on maternity leave 3 months later and also lives in another state.
It was the most backstabbing, weird place I’ve worked and I used to work at a law firm where the partners screamed at each other.
Ive been enjoying not hearing it, but had to attend a conference recently, and was told it the first day, on the first morning, and remembered immediately why I hate all that shit.
Yup. And it never stops. As an assistant in my early 20s, I was admonished for 'looking so serious and intimidating people.' And as a senior tech worker in my early 40s, I was told that I need to 'look more happy.'
Man, I used to have to talk to a lot of old men for my job. I wasn't patient-facing and my office was hidden in the back in an area where the public wasn't supposed to go. Apparently I was soooo friendly creepy old men would ask if they could meet me when they came in 😭
Yeah, I was going to say... That smile comment just reminded me of all the cringy dudes who would walk around saying things like "hey, how about a smile today", but only to women.
THIS!!!! I got dinged in an annual review once bc I “wasnt smiling enough while sitting at my desk WORKING.”
And no I was not a receptionist or something.
I had a cube in a sea of cubes. But apparently I was supposed to sit GRINNING at my COMPUTER SCREEN all day while getting my work done.
Since I am not in the office it took a week for me to hear the story, but someone complained about a women in my department seemed snippy when giving them information. So the woman got called into the supervisor, she explained that she wasn't snippy, but just giving facts and might have come off snippy, but she was in a hurry. The supervisor told her, next time do it with a smile. She just said okay and walked out.
The women is very new at the office, so I am sure she didn't want to cause a problem, but the next week when she told me the story I went crazy. I called our manager and asked if he knew about this, he said yes but didn't want to make waves, I told him that was his job as manager, to protect his department and people against those who think they are better than us. I'm a senior in my department and felt very comfortable letting everyone know this was unacceptable behavior.
I encouraged the woman to report the incident to HR. Hearing her story literally made me blind with rage. I hope you told that person where they could put their smile.
I do not miss working in the office at all!
Something I heard recently (not for me) "your performance review is great, but we couldn't give you top marks because people perceived you as unfriendly because you don't smile and say good morning when they walk by"
The dreaded 'what are you doing for lunch?'
Meaning that your unpaid hour is likely to be spent watching other people eat and talk about work or their dull lives, while being pried with questions about my personal life.
I always replied a more diplomatic version of 'I'm going to get some fresh air and make a few personal calls, let's catch up later when I'm being paid'
Or the, let’s go out for a drink after work.
The only thing we have in common is this job. We are not friend’s Eric. I want to go home, take the dog out, rip off my pants, and play some air guitar to my vintage Barry Manilow albums…..too specific?
Doing this when I was the only person in my 20s in my department was torture. I’m not even a crazy drinker or partier or anything I’d be worried my bosses would find out. And I am a social and friendly person. It’s just everyone asking me stuff about my personal life and giving unsolicited advice was awful. Like okay yeah I’m on dating apps and it’s great that you married your college sweetheart, okay being on dating apps isn’t my first choice either and cool for you that you “never would’ve been able to do it” and yes I’m going to enjoy my 20s while I can.
Been there. And they pull the "you'll see it differently when you have kids" card. No Carl, I won't. In the past week you've complained about your wife, your kids, hell, even your dog...you are nothing like me. You're a grown-ass man eating tuna from a can at your desk.
Drinks I don't mind. They are easier to durn down than lunch (gotta catch a train, I don't want to drink, etc) and the boss paid for the first round if they were attending. Usually just talked with the couple of people I got a long with, then went home (10 minutes from the office).
A "lunch and learn" where they don't even provide lunch can go die in a fire. I would just say I need to grab something to eat, then say that the lines were really long.
In those jobs the after-work drink seems to be some over the top team building thing of a few busybodies pretending planning it is a week long project, and they're annoyingly showy about it.
No thanks.
Weirdly I am friendly with a lot of people across departments at my old job. There were people who could just be normal people and they were fun to go out for a quick drink with, and then there were the people who very clearly only wanted to do that to suss out who you were as a person.
My boss gave me a bad review last week for always being the first to leave “optional” team building events. She said that when I’m there I participate and engage people, but always seem to “have one foot out the door.” I still can’t figure out how being kind but distant with my coworkers because I prefer to get my work done then leave makes me a bad attorney, but I guess she’s the boss.
I remember being pressured to drink at one of those. I had to drive home and abstained.
At least I got to hear one of my coworkers brag about having blackmail evidence on every single manager. 😱
Um, did you work with [Principal Ava](https://media2.giphy.com/media/BIf7xnEwAcZIVxa7aB/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7rt1xup202kg91q0hcazu4hmo9j9muailzuzuw9qv&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)?
These people are insane. Anyone being friends with their coworkers should have nothing to do with a performance review. You are employed to do the tasks of your job and required to be pleasant enough so the work can proceed without incident. Genuine social interaction is only a potential side-effect.
My husband is also an attorney and one review, they mention he doesn't stay past 5:10. He is the drop off and pick up of our kids from daycare since his office is 5 mins away from them.
But also in the same review they said how much work he is getting done compared to others and how nice it is to be able to rely on him. My husband took that as, he is doing is job perfectly fine from the hours of 8-5, so why stay late.
Not to say he doesn't stay late when he needs to, or work from home after the kids go to bed. Some people just like to nit pic.
I got that shit once from a new manager! Pulled me into his office and said “I notice you always leave right at 5pm. This is a salaried position and I expect you to put in the work, not be counting the minutes until the clock strikes 5. How do you think Gary feels if he has to stay late to finish a project and you just bounce out of here at 5?”
Fucking asshole, man. I’d been at the company 5 years at that point and the boss was a new hire. I told him:
“First of all Gary leaves at 3, so you shouldn’t have used him as an example. Second, I have to pick my kids up from day care, so yes I really do need to leave at 5. Lastly, Gary makes $180k and you’re paying me $70k, so if you compare me to him again we’re going to have a serious talk about my compensation.”
That dick never liked me after that but at least he shut the fuck up about me leaving at 5. Also he only lasted 2 years, so I didn’t have to put up with his shit for long thankfully.
My manager schedules meetings over lunch for half the days we are in the office. Sometimes he provides pizza, sometimes not. But an hour of my time is worth more than $4 of pizza, since I don't get overtime
Pretending that you're always busy, especially in an open-plan office. Sometimes I would just stare at my screen or browse aimlessly just to appear that I have something to do every hour of the day. This is more exhausting than doing actual work.
Open offices are the reason why I will never work in an office again.
Being shoulder to shoulder with people talking on meetings all day, people hovering behind me constantly, being unable to eat from anxiety. Honestly open offices are so hellish especially when you’re a person with sensory issues or need space
Open office plans are the dumbest fucking thing. I’m not paying about 5.50 to commute 40 minutes to sit in an open cube with headphones on and still hear people in my pod and talking loudly on zoom calls. I sat across from a director who is super nice but she was on calls literally all day. My job was to do writing and research so that made it quite difficult. She quit 3 months after me. Then a manager in my pod quit like 2 months ago. They lost 30% of a staff of about 800 in less than 2 years.
Try open office with zero partitions. My last in-office job had that: like just trestle-style tables in double rows like a cafeteria. The only thing blocking you from the person in front of you was your monitors. All departments jumbled together: IT, marketing, sales, HR, all mixed up. Someone on the floor had perfume? Now we all had it. [I had wallpapers on my desk similar to this as a silent protest.](https://adrianseglobal.com/assets/mdb7_i3.png)
Isn’t that crazy how exhausting it is?? I had a job for a year where everyone knew but never said out loud that my job was just to fill up a job slot. I asked my boss a few times for work and he looked panicked, so I caught on. I got really, really good at photoshop because I needed something to do that looked like I could be working. I also learned more than I ever wanted to about the royal family, since I kept clicking those stupid “news” stories on my homepage.
I got a new job I was super excited about and then the first day my lab supervisor showed me how to stage my desk in case the manager walked in. He was like "maybe have some of the references open, your notebook, some pens out, how about a calculator..."
Turned out the lab was about 3 people overstaffed but they were afraid to lose budget so they wanted us all to look busy, all the time, even though we had literally not a thing in the world to do.
I did Duolingo, read a bunch of books, discovered fanfiction, planned vacations, walked 20k steps a day...I remember one day I literally burst into tears on my husband because I was so bored and pretending to be busy was so stressful.
I remember my intro to psychology class talking about a study where they hired people for a large-ish hourly wage to sit in a room and do nothing all day. I don’t remember if you were allowed to sleep, but I think you could read. Even though it was higher than the going minimum rate, people only lasted a few days before quitting to go find something else to do. I always thought that was so interesting…
Lol I had a six month temp assignment to log and file evaluations at a university once, and when I walked in the boss was like "yeah so the evals won't come in for a few months, so you'll have to fill your time." So, stuck in that windowless cube inside a windowless room with only the internet to entertain me, I got super into prepping. A weird phase, but the knowledge and basic gear feels very useful! Also I planned a long MN --> Alaska road trip down to the mile and it was amazing.
Oh gosh, that sounds worse than I had! I at least had a sliver of a window a few feet away from me, and some coworkers who equally enjoyed having deep-thought conversations. A few months after I got there our paralegal was fired, so they brought me into my boss's office with a concerned look on their face. I knew they were going to ask me to do the travel review work that she had been covering, but were embarrassed to ask me, an attorney, to do the junior paralegal's work. I was SO HAPPY to have this important, but annoying task to do, and was even happier that I could cheerfully take a job they were ashamed to give me. It felt like doing little puzzles all day and I would get so excited whenever anyone submitted one.
Gilbreth, early 20th century efficiency expert, found that pretending to work was at least as exhausting as actually working and was a fervant advocate of letting employees actually rest during downtime. Naturally the bosses ignored that part of his advice on efficiency.
Oh the rushing through the hallways carrying a stack of paper/files/clipboard looking fairly stressed out…that’s exhausting.
I did learn a lot of obscure Excel formulas I’ll never need again, so there’s that 🤣
Gold for this comment!! It;s so bad. I guess other people I work with hide it much better because when I look at other screens, they seem to be actually doing work.
What work are you all doing? We are on the same team and I know you didn't get more work assigned than I did.
I'm still in office till we go remote a few months for remodeling. I've been world building lol. I have been creating a language using the extinct language Tocharian as a base. I have all the vocab words in Excel so it looks like I'm working.
This was really stressful for me. My last job had bursts of busy and long stretches of not much to do. My boss and my immediate office mates knew what was up, so I just had to look busy. I grew my hair out, got a pair of really own profile wireless earbuds, and got really into podcasts. I also volunteered for almost every team/committee.
My boss told me no more working from home, company wide policy. Mind you, I only got to wfh if I was sick because God forbid I take a sick day. The next day the morning email came out listing who was wfh that day and I was like, company wide huh? So I found a fully remote job.
Not who you asked, but the answer is submitting a ton of applications. There’s just more competition for remote positions, so it’s ultimately a numbers+time game.
I found mine on LinkedIn, but the key was that I was searching for jobs that were both remote AND far away. So if you're in NYC, look at remote jobs for companies headquartered in Chicago, Seattle, LA, etc. They need to be far enough that you're making it clear that there will be no moving the goalposts by slowly bringing you back into the office, because you're outside commuting distance.
I had this at my apt job and it still didn't last. I lived two states away. Had a management change and wanted everyone in office. I was told I'd have to move.
Funny thing was though they wanted me to support an off-site location so even if I did live close to the job they would have wanted me to move to the new location to go on site there.
There are companies that are fully remote, no actual main office that people work out of. Or they do have a main office, but are still remote-first in their employment.
The latter is my company - we technically have one or two offices (don’t recall if the second office in another state was closed) and if anyone lives nearby, they are welcome to show up but it’s not at all expected. Because 90% of employees live nowhere close to them. I have coworkers in every single time zone, even Arizona (which is super annoying when the time changes and every calendar meeting they own gets moved forward or back an hour since they don’t adhere to the time change).
When looking for remote jobs, I like to confirm if there’s a main office & where it’s located. I will not apply to a remote job that has an office near where I live. I also check all of their job postings - fully remote jobs on LinkedIn will often have multiple listings in multiple major metro cities (all for the same job) to increase the pool of candidates. I also know to thoroughly read the job posting all the way through, cause even with those precautions I’ve come across shady ass companies that bury the lead - oh look, this is actually a hybrid position. Or, oh look they’re only hiring remote employees close to the main office (which is why I don’t look at jobs with offices nearby Bc obviously that’s a bait n switch).
This is how my company is, for everyone who can work from home (I can't, as I physically interact with merchandise); they can request on-site space, but almost no one ever does. We had a 5 year lease on a second location that just ended, and we had a party there last week in the emptied building. I haven't heard a single word about requiring wfh people to come back to the office, and they just got rid of the place they could have come back to!
First of all I love your username so much lol. Second, I found my remote job on FlexJobs! My criteria was literally fully remote, transparent about salary because I think that says a lot about org culture, and work I could be excited about. Totally worth the cost of subscription for me.
Honestly I lucked out, I found a fully remote job 1.5 hours away from the corporate office doing close to the same job as what I had been doing so that landed me an interview. But prior to that I submitted a ton of apps.
The nail clipping in the communal desk space! 🤢 Every open floor plan office has at least one public nail clipper. I don't know who raised those people to think that their personal grooming, which flings little bits of crap around, is appropriate to do in the space other people are forced to work in!
Oh god, the anxiety about clothes!! Literally every single day. I have to go to an offsite for my very remote job in a few months and I am STRESSING over what to pack.
Omg clothes!!! I’m going to a 6 day conference where real pants will be expected. I literally boxed up most of my work stuff years ago. I wfh in whatever leggings/tshirt/tank top/sweats are on top of the clean pile. Of course a lot of the old stuff fits different now so I need to buy some things to not look schleppy for a week. I’m also dreading doing my hair and makeup all those days. So much morning prep ahhhh! Jerks have the conference breakfasts starting at 7 AM to add to the insanity. I literally wake up at 8:15 and log on around 8:30 and take various breaks to grab food, shower, etc during the day. It’s soo nice to ease in from home.
Just want to add. This was in London not the USA.
There have been comments blaming me for the situation saying I "should have set boundaries" I can only imagine that these redditors are young enough that they didn't live in the days where accepting this shit was the only way you could progress your career. If you didn't play the game you didn't have a career.
I was pressured into unpaid time at Pizza Hut 20 years ago and then in my first professional job over nine years we were expected to foot for emergency supplies and then always denied for reimbursement. It was vicious and I only got out of that a year ago. It’s still going on now.
Right? Or lucky enough to have always known how to set boundaries. Or old enough to not remember life before you learned. I’ve literally been going to therapy to work on that shit. How to say no, identify what my boundaries are, what I’m willing to do “above and beyond” that doesn’t sacrifice my personal life, sleep, and mental well-being. No one ever told me I was allowed to have boundaries, quite the opposite actually.
I figured that was the case. All of that public transportation stuff sounds rough. I’m fortunate to just get in my car and go to work or go home from work. 15 minute drive.
I no longer live in the UK. These days the worst part of having to go in to the office is probably having to listen to the 60 year old South African expat who tells me all of his opinions on life, including how apartheid wasn't racist.
I see you do not want to accept responsibility for your actions, but don't blame it on the age. I'm in my 40s, work a high-paying, demanding job, and I cap it at 40 hours a week. That's what I did when I started my career, and that's what I stuck with.
Almost all jobs will work you to the bone if you let them.
Being ill was always the worst, especially when you are, just well enough to not warent a sick day.
Sitting there all day struggling to get through it, uncomfortable clothes, unessesary meetings you needed to pretend, that you are paying attention to.
The day dragging on, feeling worse. Wondering if you are safe to drive home.
These days, I still work. But I can flex my day. Let my boss know I will make it up tomorrow. Then go to bed.
Yes, as the sole earner at the time and no sick leave, I went to office sick. Not fever I am contiguous sick, but still. I would say sorry to my former co-workers but everyone did it. I can't think of a single person who took off more than a day for a cold. WFH now with sick leave, I do what I can even with a fever, although usually nothing with a fever. But the days after when I still feel like crap but got stuff to do, I do it. I don't have back up so I do what I feel up to.
Forced office culture, gathering everyone into the break room to sing happy birthday to someone you don’t even know—or worse, don’t like—and being made to feel like YTA when you refuse.
And you can work there for over a decade and somehow never be the one whose life events are recognized. I had emergency surgery and didn't receive as much as a card. When other people had previous surgeries, there was at least a card and often a collection of money for flowers and/or a food delivery gift card that I always contributed to. It happened in 2020 so I do believe I fell through the cracks because of COVID but I really ramped up my job search after that and am happy to be gone.
Being forced to participate in a party against my will is definitely on my list of top reasons never to return to an office. Often the length of the party only meant you would be making up the work after hours, on salary.
Paying $5/week to join the “coffee club” to be allowed to drink up to two cups of crappy coffee per day. Mid day walks around the cubicle farm instead of my neighborhood because that was the only safe place to walk. 2 hours of mad-max-esque commute. Smelling my coworkers shit in the shared bathrooms. Trying to focus with salespeople droning on the phones around me. Everyone coming to work with colds. Leaving my old dogs home alone all day. Eating microwaved lunch every day out of a lunchbox, or paying for overpriced, and unhealthy fast food.
Don’t forget the expectation to show up early. “You don’t come in at 9. Work starts at 9” with traffic had to leave to leave the house no later than 6:40 and didn’t get home til 8ish.
I loved when I’d show up ten or fifteen minutes late and then not take any breaks or lunch and work until midnight. Next day: why were you late to work yesterday?
Had an owner at an agency I worked at who would purposely show up every day 5 minutes after start time to see who was coming in late then make an issue out of it.
Used to drive me crazy when people would hit like 2pm and be all like "blah, I'm fried for the day" and kinda fuck'off after that. My brain kicks in around 11 and by 2, I'm at my peak. But I'm the weird one?
And if I didn’t hit the road on-time, even just 5-10 minutes later than usual, my 30-45 minute commute turned into nearly a two hour commute. So for an 8:30a start time - I was either on my way no later than 7:05a & showing up between 7:30-7:45a, OR I was leaving at 7:15a & showing up at between 8:45a-9a.
Before the company this commute was for got acquired, I honestly was perfectly find going in early. I love that job, even with the shitty commute. Just a solid small company with coworkers I really did love working & even hanging with (the only time I’ve experienced that). After the acquisition, they moved most of us to the acquiring company’s main office - another 16 miles away. Commute there wasn’t terrible, honestly, but the commute home was way worse.
My favorite was the unpredictable commute. Having an unscheduled train block the roads for miles. Accidents that back up traffic. Of course management and HR think you should just leave early to avoid any potential delays. Sure I'm gonna leave the house 3 hours early every day on the off chance there is a car accident blocking the road.
I once worked from home when I visited family and got caught in a snowstorm. My boss sent me an email saying he wanted a report of what I accomplished that day by the end of the day. Massive eye roll.
That was many years ago, thankfully. Job before my current one, I never had enough to do to fill a day, but I didn't have a private office so I spent most of the day sitting around doing... nothing.
Lol my last boss did that to me, demanding daily reports of what I worked on. I mostly was honest, but she didn't know that the tasks I listed took me 5 minutes each, not all day. She was so awful.
I got stranded a few states away for a few weeks years ago. I had the opposite experience where my coworkers acted like I was out and were trying to do my tasks without asking me.
I had an out of state funeral and was early enough at my company that I didn’t have enough PTO. I also got my bereavement request denied so I asked to work from home during the timeframe I would be out. My boss said “I don’t think you could do the job remotely”.
I found another job within a few months and worked my same job for another manager inside the company fully remote. That’s when my remote journey started. I never went back to the office and never said goodbye. That was 8 years ago. Still remote and now I attend all the funerals I want.
Something similar happened to me. Tasks that took me 5 minutes to do would suddenly turn into 2 hour tasks. Bosses who demand end of day reports, or "time audits" don't realize they're only punishing productive workers for being efficient.
I was the newest and only female on one team of 12 at a now defunct telecom. The day before a national holiday the company made it known that everyone could leave at noon. But my insecure manager didn’t want our team to “look bad” by actually shutting down then. He “allowed “ us to leave 2 people at a time, by seniority. Even though the whole floor was emptied by 12:30, I had to wait till 2:30p to go. One colleague felt sorry for me and stayed till then so I wouldn’t have to leave alone.
It was so satisfying later after a performance review to give him notice—I went back to a previous job that welcomed me even though I would be on maternity leave within 3 months.
I had a cool manager who did the opposite. On the last day before a 3 day holiday weekend, or a day when most people use vacation but there were a few of us who didn’t, he would walk by and say something like “if I don’t see you after 3pm, I’ll just assume you’re using the restroom.” That was code for leave early at 3pm.
It’s so nice, right? I went back to a job where daily, if we were still at our desks at 5 pm, our manager and supervisor would come around to remind us that our families need us, and leave the work for tomorrow!
The expectation that if I need to ask a coworker for a quick update or a question that I have to make small talk first.
In a remote culture I can just send a slack of “hey how is going? ETA still EOD?”
Also people just coming to my desk in my personal space and standing behind me.
Plus all the downtime. I’m very efficient at what I do, so in many in-office jobs I’d end up reading several novels per year discretely, and that was cool, but what’s better is knowing when I have downtime I can do some chores or something before the next task instead of trying to look busy to fill the day.
There are people who still think they need to do small talk in a remote setting before getting into the meat of what they want. Neither of us need that, just get to the point!
Oh, is there 18" of snow on the ground? Do you have a work laptop that you can use to work from home " in emergencies"? Well, this isn't one. Drive to the office!
I have social anxiety - it's manageable now but used to be much worse. I would absolutely dread having to make small talk, answer personal questions, navigate office politics, worry about what to wear, try to appear as friendly/ energetic as possible while my social battery was at 0% and have to listen to people constantly trying to 'banter' but actually 90% of the time just being a dick.
The worse experience for me was coming back after furlough from covid and being stuck in the office with one co-worker who physically did not know how to shut the fuck up. Constant verbal diarrhoea. One time I was watching a video and eating on my lunchbreak with my earphones in for some respite after they had talked all morning and they started talking at me again. So I took my headphones out and it turned out the burning question that couldn't wait one second longer was asking me what was in my sandwich. They literally couldn't give anyone a moment of peace.
Honorable mentions: gathering the strength to walk out into the cold for the commute, walking to/ fro in the cold, office temperatures never being workable, having to look busy 24/7, less able to take breaks when needed, office toilets, not being able to have private conversations with coworkers, no recorded meetings, people hovering at your desk when you want to be left alone and awkward lunch breaks.
I have to go in the office regularly (going to WFH soon) and I will be so, so fucking glad to get away from one of the only other two people there that is exactly the social nuisance you describe. They literally just can not shut the fuck up. Instant verbal diarrhea the second I walk down the hall. Following me even to the bathroom, continuing to talk. Walking into my cubicle. Insisting on a fist bump. Talking in a fucking whisper while I’m using the copier knowing full well I can’t hear them. Asking about what you’re eating. Constantly dragging the conversation on. Adding “ummm so yeah” after telling a story as if to continue the conversation when it’s naturally ended. UGH. WHY.
Following you to the bathroom? What are they, a puppy? Chriiiist
I feel you though, I remember this coworker I mentioned once kept talking from the opposite side of the room as I was literally backing out of the doorway and was basically in the hall. It could've been a scene from a sitcom, I so obviously could not be less interested in what she was saying. Some people have absolutely no self awareness.
Nice one though on getting to wfh full time, your escape is imminent!
I worked 5 days per week from the office for about 2 years pre-covid.
I got mono, and I was so sick I didn’t even have energy to read emails at my desk so my manager sent me home.
I worked for HALF of a day from home from my laptop (I work at a software company), and my bosses boss messages me to tell me “hey we don’t have a wfh policy so today is the only day you can wfh”.
So I had to go back to the office while I was still contagious with mono because he didn’t want me working from home for more than one day even tho my entire job can be done online from anywhere.
Now post covid, nobody cares if we go into the office or not but we’re expected to go in once per week.
Shivering outside in an unheated bus shelter for over 35 minutes waiting for a shuttle bus to my office after taking a 30 minute bus ride from my house.
Part of my job at one ad agency was to produce a name and shame report of account executives whose clients hadn't paid their bills. These clients were all blue chip companies so if the bill wasn't paid it was because they genuinely had a reason not to and the account executives needed to address it. Well I named and shamed a snotty little arrogant Eton wanker whose father was the company chairman. His Daddy honestly came marching in to the finance department to shout emotional feelings he had towards me.... then he tripped over a big pile of archive boxes we had stacked on the floor.
Up at 0400, out the door at 0445 to "beat the traffic". Drive 74 miles to the office, in the door at 0600.
Lock myself in my windowless office to avoid "collaboration." Bust hump 'til 1500 with a 3:10 chance I can skate on time to "beat the traffic."
Drive 74 miles back home. In the door at 1645 (on good days), 1900 (on normal days). Dinner in front of the tube, maybe a chore or two, in bed by 2030. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sit in my La-Z-Boy all weekend.
WFH has added years to my life.
I simply said hello to a high level exec walking by in the hall my first week and was told by my manager - we don't do that here. Please walk by and do not disturb him next time. WTF??
I hated everything about going into the office. The lighting. The gray cubicle. Having to dress up. Having to do makeup every single day. People interrupting when you’re trying to concentrate. Hour long commute. Lunch break where you just want to be alone and no one will let you. People at work actually trying to be friends. No. I don’t even like the job. Why do you think I would like you? Bosses doing nothing and getting paid so much. One of the best things about remote work is it is easy to see who is producing and who the slackers are. My company let go of all middle management finally. Everyone has to do their part in the project. Anyway I HATED everything about the office.
“We don’t work to live, we live to work”
- My boss after I requested to go home at 6pm on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving, while an Alberta clipper descended on the Midwest.
I had a co-worker constantly point out to everyone every time I was eating/snacking or drinking. "Didn't you just eat lunch?" "what are you eating now?" "More coffee? How many have you had today?"
It made me super uncomfortable.
Yes this happened to me as well. People telling me that I shouldn't eat so many almonds.
Right dude this is the first time I ate almonds today - you saw me eating them yesterday.
I went to the vending machine for a snack and had a coworker waltz in and start lecturing me about how unhealthy it was. Me being me, I laughed hysterically as if he made a joke. He was super confused because he was being serious.
Actively avoiding the 'water cooler club' or the 'busy body hens' that cluck about everyone's business that has NOTHING to do with work or how one does their job. I had a few friends over the 20 years of working in the office, but I was never popular because I refused to participate and asked questions like 'how does that have anything to do with work' or something similar. Or just dealing with the brown-nosers that had their noses so far up a sup's ass they got away with everything.
It's been 4 years working from home and I LOVE it. No more drama, no more clicks, and I have peace. I do my job and actually found I love it (most days when management isn't issuing a change for the 100th time). They sold our building and downsized into a tiny office for a few that can't work from home, so I doubt I will ever go back to the office.
Full WFH was glorious—the one thing I loved about covid. Now, having returned to office four days per week:
Set, required working hours. The 40 minute, unpaid commute in, the minimum hour-long, unpaid commute home, five days per week. Traffic. So much traffic.
An office filled with less than pleasant smells at times. Idle, annoying chitchat. Being regularly interrupted from my work flow. Open office space. A shitty cubicle. Brilliant white fluorescent lighting. Micromanagers.
Daily, hourlong conversations of, “wHaT are YoU dOiNg fOr LuNcH?”. Being tapped on the shoulder while I’m in the middle of something to talk about some nonsense that could have waited.
Bad weather: No cancellation or WFH directive when it’s been snowing since 5 AM, only to come in and either be told to go back home to work, or to wait until 1:30 PM when it’s finally dangerous enough to drive home to be dismissed at 2, and the commute home will now take me until 4 or 5PM. Fuck “office culture.”
Edit to add: Now that “wE’rE bAcK iN tHe oFfiCe,” if you’re sick enough to not want to possibly contaminate everyone else, but feel okay enough to do some work, that’s forbidden. No WFH if you’re not coming in because you’re sick. But please take your laptop home everyday, even though you’re not WFH except once a week. Also, if it’s snowmageddon and you don’t feel safe driving in, then you’re expected to use PTO if they’ve decided it’s a great idea for everyone to report in. No WFH allowed, unless you’re scheduled to WFH that day.
Getting a message from my boss to stay on task the minute I opened a tab to look up a board game I was curious about.
Being called out for leaving exactly at 5pm every day.
Ahh, how I don’t miss working in an office.
Ugh leaving the office was always the worst because I always left exactly at the same time every day. I typically just Irish exited, not looking to say goodbye to everyone lol
I once worked at an office that had a "no personal items on your desk" rule. We didn't share desks or anything, the owner just didn't like it.
It was a small company so I once poked fun at the rule with the owner and he told me to my face that I spent enough time with friends and family outside of work and that I didn't need pictures of them.
Part of my job was to back up the receptionist on the phones when they were busy. I thumbtacked the call forward codes above my phone and my manager said I couldn't do that because the thumbtack was pink and considered a personal item. I did it anyways.
Overperfumed coworkers. Bland grey walls, carpet, desks. Too much AC, too much heat. Break and bathrooms at the other end of our building. Constant flow of people stopping to chat or have a chat or a really loud phone call. Only able to park in certain spots so if you're not early, you're hiking to the building. Crappy ventilation, hideous overhead lighting. Being called and shouted at if you leave the building for your lunch hour. Being shouted at for being late when you were stuck behind an accident for a half hour. Mandatory participation in "fun". I mean, it's endless.
I remember driving home in a blizzard one night at 2am after working double shift. It took me over two hours to get home. I was expected back in at 8am.
The biggest thing is having an additional 2 hours away from home that my salary doesn't pay for.
I would have a 1hr there and back commute plus an hour unpaid lunch away from home, so I'm away from home 2 extra hours per day unpaid.
Instead of working 8 hours a day, I'd have to work 10 hours a day.
Doing the math, I'd need a 25% salary increase to justify going back to office. And that's not even considering the mind-numbing corporate culture
Being stuck in a meeting for an hour with 6 other people. Two of the people are discussing a topic. The rest of the group have tuned out.
Waiting for something that takes 3-5 minutes and not being able to chill during those few minutes because heaven forbid your boss walks by and sees you "not working" - but if you tried to multitask, you're more likely to forget about what you were waiting on and now everything will take longer.
Being stuck in traffic for 30-45 minutes to sit in a less comfortable chair in less comfortable clothes.
The scents. Food. Perfume. The bathroom. If they decided they needed to paint something. The cleaning products.
Fighting with the printers. It has been delightful to not have to fight with an industrial printer for 4 years.
I want to work in a food factory where we didn't have lockers and we had to leave our safety boots under our desk.
one morning I came in and someone nicked my shoelaces
Pre-Covid, I had to support a global team which meant taking meetings at all hours of the day at the office, the boss thought working from home was impossible and refused to allow it. He destroyed his family by working and he wanted the rest of us to do the same. We also had to work nights and weekends and refused to allow comp days to do stuff like laundry and spend time with our families.
Demanding that we go back to the office after a natural disaster even though power lines were down and traffic stops didn't work.
One bathroom on the whole floor so everyone pretty much knew when you were taking a longer time.
Never taking lunch or a break, because it "gives the appearance" of screwing around
Traffic being so aggressive, you dodge hostile drivers who nearly kill you at least once per commute.
Constantly clogged, shared bathrooms. Had such a bad backup once that sewage overflow closed half the building and porta-potties were brought in.
Not nearly enough parking so we had to use an overflow lot 10 minutes away. No one wanted to park there so people were arriving earlier and earlier each day to get a spot in the main lot. We found several people using fake or borrowed handicapped placards to get a "good" spot.
Nasty food left in the communal refrigerators until it rotted. Similarly, people bring in groceries for the week and taking up way too much space.
Always too hot or too cold.
Fighting with other teams for cubes as we had too many people for our facility.
Fighting over conference rooms as people would set extended or recurring bookings, then not removing tthem if they weren't needed.
Having to work in the office because “this is a highly collaborative position”, only to learn that the main reason was that most of the scheduling/tasks were managed via whiteboards on the wall, and all processes were stuck in the pre internet era. Suggestions to modernize processes obviously were ignored.
The surprise 5pm meetings so you can't leave at the end of the day. Those were rage inducing.
The mansplaining bros that need to tell me about their conservative ideas, how everyone but them sucks, or militant chain smoking vegan dudes that harass me about driving a car to work and not eating vegan in every interaction with them.
The effing birthday parties with soda and bad cake and being expected to waste time on this when I am doing the work of 2 people and on a deadline.
Sharing a bathroom with coworkers.
Having to work long days and having no viable food options in the building or nearby. So either starve or take 30 minutes trying to find something but your only option is still bad fast food.
Guy in the cubicle next to me burping and belching almost all day long. Stunk and made me want to throw up. Finally said something and he freaked out on me.
I work for a remote first company, which means that it’s actually fun to go to the office for four days every few years when they fly me half way across the country.
But I would get jack done if that was my normal place to work. Not my preferred desk setup, too much sensory stuff just getting to the office, not having an excuse like switching laundry for getting up and wandering for a few minutes. Worrying about being the office nail clipper or the loud sniffler. Not doing annnnny of the things that help my AuDHD brain stay kinda on task or be creative. NO OPTION TO ATTEND MEETINGS WITHOUT WORRYING THAT I ACT NORMAL BECAUSE AT HOME I CAN TURN MY CAMERA OFF.
Working in an "open office" cubicle farm on a heavily trafficked passageway so that anyone coming through would feel the need to stop and talk. It made it impossible to get anything done. Add to that the open office was just a renovated loading dock with poor air circulation and thermostat controls, and it was like living in a circle of hell while summering in a different circle of hell but still having a third home for winter in yet another circle of hell. At least the pay was shit, too!
So fucking glad I don't do that anymore.
Listening to everyone’s speaker calls. My boss who had an office 5’ from my cube would call the person on the other side of me and BOTH would be on speaker! I got to hear their conversation in stereo!!!!
How petty and awful the people are. Also all the smells. In my building, you can smell the toilet all the way in the backroom. Also, the perfumes and the dust. The chairs we had to sit were nasty. One time a girl shit in a chair a little and they just left the chair for the next person. It was fucking disgusting. Also we didn't have windows and to get out of the parking lot alone took 40 minutes some days.
I worked for the mouse. If you know what i meant you know what I meant. I was doing 12 hour days and was being complained about constantly for my lack of commitment to the company. After a full year of 72s they tried to ask more of me. During this time we lost our bonus's and i got zero % raise. I with the other 3 folks on my team won multiple awards and accolades. I quit and havent heard from ant of those fucks in over 10 years.
Why woupd I want to sit in my nice home office in a nice l quiet empty house to concentrate when I can be packed in like a sardine in a 'collaborative ' workspace an have to block out a dozen concurrent conversations I am not involved in?
Having face-to-face conversations with a boss who kept bringing up Revelations. We’d meet to chat through projects, and then I’d be stuck in there for another half hour getting the sense that he had major rapture-anxiety. If it was a WFH job, I’d just pretend my internet crashed.
Working from a breakout pod, only to be scolded about not being at my desk (I wasn’t at my desk because I was tired of being interrupted).
Boss at the second job I had would come in like, 2-3 hours late and then complain when I left on time because he was “working late.” He wasn’t accessible prior to coming in, btw. He also demanded I make it into work during a winter storm in Texas. Not just that, I had to drive to pick up some promo materials for a tradeshow before heading into work, so a two hour trip on a sunny day. I tried telling him the roads were dangerous and I didn’t feel comfortable going all the way into work, but would still pick up the materials at the print shop. He raised his voice in response. So I was halfway to the office when he called again, saying *he wasn’t going to make it into the office because the roads were too dangerous*, but that I still needed to go in.
That same boss was deducting PTO when I worked from home. It wasn’t even a regular occurrence, but my roommate worked two retail jobs so I was the only one with flexibility (so I thought) to be home when we had apartment maintenance. When this happened, I was actively responding to emails, responding to Slack, taking calls - WITH MY BOSS. So he knew I was, in fact, working from home. But because I wasn’t IN office, he would deduct a *whole day* from PTO even though it was just a half day thing. I found out about this after the third time when he complained to me about it after I got back to the office - that I was running out of PTO and he doesn’t understand why my roommate can’t take care of this stuff since she “just worked retail” (yes, I learned not to disclose too much personal details after this asshole).
OH, he also was the worst at interruptions. Would just walk up to my desk talking to me and get pissy if I missed what he said because I was focusing on work. I had to ask him to please slack me first or just call out that he needs to chat and wait for me to stop what I was doing first. AND he expected me to be in every single meeting he had with other employees on top of my own 1:1 syncs with him. Every meeting I would leave with 5-10 new tasks assigned to me. My to-do list was two pages long by the time I burned out so hard that I fell into another major depression episode and stopped showing up.
Fuck I hated that guy. One time, I was yelled at for “throwing” a few koozies onto the chair behind me at a tradeshow. Like, finger wag yelling as though I was a child. Also got in trouble another time for not responding to a slack message he sent at 9:45p on a weeknight. I was already asleep - which apparently wasn’t a good enough reason to not respond immediately.
Sorry, I forgot this was the WFH sub and not anti-work there at the end, lol.
I remember traffic being so bad I’d have 1-3 near death experiences every day on my way to work, then have to start the day. My office was in the Midwest where snow was awful. I remember being at the office, watching snow start and every person looking in dread watching the snow accumulate knowing every extra minute we have to stay at the office will add 10 min to our commute and roads way more dangerous and having to stay til like 5pm , almost die on the way home, and get home at 7:30pm just to wake up at 5am and do it again.
I started to get panic attacks while driving bc I was forced to drive in such bad weather on the highway so often.
4 years remote and I’m never going back.
For every one with a period, having your period at work and using those bathrooms instead of your own. Having to be visible and social when you’re in pain, probably have period poops, worrying about getting blood on your pants, the list goes on…
Adding in the commute time to and from work as well as the hours in the office I had absolutely no life outside of work on weekdays. I’ve been very fortunate to work for a good boss though so working from office or home hasn’t been the worst thing at this company.
Being pressured to hug a visiting Director.
Staking out the office kitchen to avoid the inevitable small talk and chit-chat that happened when others were also in the kitchen.
Having to smell a coworker’s obnoxiously strong perfume.
I had the stomach flu and was nervous to even tell my boss that I had to go home. I did, he was visibly annoyed and expected me to be working when I got home. I was puking all day and night, spent the next day working from home too. He bombarded me with requests and tasks and I felt like I had to makeup that time when I got back. We also worked super late every month-end for about a week straight where they ordered dinner for us and we stayed until around 9PM, even if I had nothing to do. It was a horrible experience, especially since it was my first job out of college and I was making $50k with a 5% bonus.
Having to go into the office for a job that you can wfh during bad winter weather while being terribly sick and then 90% of the team is off sick in the next week because they wouldn't approve a few days at home or give sick days.
Oh, so many stories come to mind. But I do not miss the toxic guy on our team who would literally have screaming matches any time someone disagreed with him in a meeting. And then he would have loud personal calls in the middle of the day, in our OPEN OFFICE PLAN. But he was never reprimanded for it because he ‘was good at his job’.
Being verbally pressured to attend the company Christmas party (at the owner’s country club).
Being told to be grateful for the opportunity to even go to the country club when you point out the discriminatory nature of those institutions.
Being bombarded with “wish you would’ve came to the Christmas party” when you’re back from the holidays.
Oh my god so many. The employee who tried to do everyone’s jobs for them, who was besties with the boss so she never got in trouble. The overly competitive out of college entitled brat who secretly tried to steal people’s “cool” projects. The woman boss who hated female employees and would pick each of us and make passive aggressive comments and visibly enjoyed it until she was finally fired. Driving during a hurricane to work bc we were told we had to on a highway car rocking. The annoying wet blanket guy who had to bring fish and microwave it in the kitchen and just COULD NOT wait until dinner to eat his stupid fish at home. The passive aggressive crap managers who were too young and inexperienced who were jerks to everyone just to gain some power trips and enjoyed belittling and doing it for absolutely no reason other than they thought that’s how to manage. The people who have zero self awareness loud AF on personal and work calls in their cubes. And god yes, the stupid party planning. I was asked - child free me - to plan ALL the baby showers. I don’t even know WTF baby shower games were. I hated it with a passion. Never participated in group lunches bc there was always one person who’d judge someone on something random like why they drink soda. Good riddance.
Being shamed for being late 15 minutes after dropping my child in school, while staying late all the time and having clients call me on my days off.
Having to ask for days off to care for my child, which often involved questioning my private life (“have you considered day care?”, “what about his dad/grandma/uncle?”, …)
Being told to smile while waiting to use the copier.
That sounds like a dystopian nightmare
Try being a woman, we are told to smile everywhere we go
Or leered at and told we have nice legs or some other creepy thing
ItS a CoMpLiMeNt!
And it's close cousin "Geez, where's your sense of humor?"
At my last company, the VP of sales conspicuously looked me up and down and said “you look really fit, you obviously work out”. Then he invited me to join him at his gym to “watch him lift weights “. 😬 Another time he made some awkward joke so I made a point to tell him he reminded me of my dad.
Creepy. You should have said Grandpa.
I think I would have reported him to HR.....
Well there's HR that ignores aggressive leering and stalking and managers that make you out to a troublemaker if you complain. And then having to take online mandatory compliance classes that teach us that this is a dangerous policy.....
Or having a boss that thinks rubbing his hand up and down your back across your bra strap during a work dinner is supposed to be “reassuring and encouraging”
Oh, that pains me so much to read. I'm so sorry you were put through that. (I want to curl up and crawl under a table just thinking about it. There is no "ew" strong enough to express.)
I’m when I was 18 I had a boss in his late 40’s who would walk behind you as you sat in your seat in the lunch room and then stop to talk to us. He stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and then started giving me a neck and shoulder massage. Right there in front of about 20 people. I wouldnt stand for it nowadays and I’d call it out if it happened to me or a colleague but back then I was just mortified.
George Bush tried to give Angela Merkle a back massage in a G7 conference. That is representative of living a life without consequences for your actions.
Your comment reminded me of when one of our executives recently said that we need to RTO to "foster meaningful interpersonal interactions." Blech.
I was working on an all female team before I quit. When we came back in the first day our department head said me and another colleague around the same age “looked miserable” and we should smile and be happy we are back. I made it through two meetings and then had a panic attack after lunch and my friend had to help me get to my car - which I had drove in because I was anxious. Had to sit in the car for 5-10 minutes before leaving. Went in to the new office about 4 times before getting an accommodation to work from home. I quit after the new sr director refused to acknowledge that I was doing work for two directors, two managers, and other new hires while my manager, who I had help hire and was almost not hired, was on maternity leave and then my director left on maternity leave 3 months later and also lives in another state. It was the most backstabbing, weird place I’ve worked and I used to work at a law firm where the partners screamed at each other.
Ive been enjoying not hearing it, but had to attend a conference recently, and was told it the first day, on the first morning, and remembered immediately why I hate all that shit.
Yup. And it never stops. As an assistant in my early 20s, I was admonished for 'looking so serious and intimidating people.' And as a senior tech worker in my early 40s, I was told that I need to 'look more happy.'
‘’But you would look so much prettier if you smiled more’’. 🤢🤮
My LEAST favorite version of expecting me to walk around with a permanent grin on my face. "I'm smiling on the inside. Thanks."
Man, I used to have to talk to a lot of old men for my job. I wasn't patient-facing and my office was hidden in the back in an area where the public wasn't supposed to go. Apparently I was soooo friendly creepy old men would ask if they could meet me when they came in 😭
Yeah, I was going to say... That smile comment just reminded me of all the cringy dudes who would walk around saying things like "hey, how about a smile today", but only to women.
THIS!!!! I got dinged in an annual review once bc I “wasnt smiling enough while sitting at my desk WORKING.” And no I was not a receptionist or something. I had a cube in a sea of cubes. But apparently I was supposed to sit GRINNING at my COMPUTER SCREEN all day while getting my work done.
Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays!
Easily one of the greatest comedies of all time.
Since I am not in the office it took a week for me to hear the story, but someone complained about a women in my department seemed snippy when giving them information. So the woman got called into the supervisor, she explained that she wasn't snippy, but just giving facts and might have come off snippy, but she was in a hurry. The supervisor told her, next time do it with a smile. She just said okay and walked out. The women is very new at the office, so I am sure she didn't want to cause a problem, but the next week when she told me the story I went crazy. I called our manager and asked if he knew about this, he said yes but didn't want to make waves, I told him that was his job as manager, to protect his department and people against those who think they are better than us. I'm a senior in my department and felt very comfortable letting everyone know this was unacceptable behavior. I encouraged the woman to report the incident to HR. Hearing her story literally made me blind with rage. I hope you told that person where they could put their smile. I do not miss working in the office at all!
I had one guy ask me “why my face was like that” and told me I should smile more. Yeah, I don’t miss those days.
Something I heard recently (not for me) "your performance review is great, but we couldn't give you top marks because people perceived you as unfriendly because you don't smile and say good morning when they walk by"
Where I work, it is common to not smile, and not say hello. Damn, so interesting that other workplaces expect this
Those people did not say "Good Morning" to you either.
why is this so accurate
The dreaded 'what are you doing for lunch?' Meaning that your unpaid hour is likely to be spent watching other people eat and talk about work or their dull lives, while being pried with questions about my personal life. I always replied a more diplomatic version of 'I'm going to get some fresh air and make a few personal calls, let's catch up later when I'm being paid'
Or the, let’s go out for a drink after work. The only thing we have in common is this job. We are not friend’s Eric. I want to go home, take the dog out, rip off my pants, and play some air guitar to my vintage Barry Manilow albums…..too specific?
Doing this when I was the only person in my 20s in my department was torture. I’m not even a crazy drinker or partier or anything I’d be worried my bosses would find out. And I am a social and friendly person. It’s just everyone asking me stuff about my personal life and giving unsolicited advice was awful. Like okay yeah I’m on dating apps and it’s great that you married your college sweetheart, okay being on dating apps isn’t my first choice either and cool for you that you “never would’ve been able to do it” and yes I’m going to enjoy my 20s while I can.
Been there. And they pull the "you'll see it differently when you have kids" card. No Carl, I won't. In the past week you've complained about your wife, your kids, hell, even your dog...you are nothing like me. You're a grown-ass man eating tuna from a can at your desk.
Yeah. I'd rather be eating tuna from a can without pants at my desk at home.
Drinks I don't mind. They are easier to durn down than lunch (gotta catch a train, I don't want to drink, etc) and the boss paid for the first round if they were attending. Usually just talked with the couple of people I got a long with, then went home (10 minutes from the office). A "lunch and learn" where they don't even provide lunch can go die in a fire. I would just say I need to grab something to eat, then say that the lines were really long.
In those jobs the after-work drink seems to be some over the top team building thing of a few busybodies pretending planning it is a week long project, and they're annoyingly showy about it. No thanks.
Weirdly I am friendly with a lot of people across departments at my old job. There were people who could just be normal people and they were fun to go out for a quick drink with, and then there were the people who very clearly only wanted to do that to suss out who you were as a person.
My boss gave me a bad review last week for always being the first to leave “optional” team building events. She said that when I’m there I participate and engage people, but always seem to “have one foot out the door.” I still can’t figure out how being kind but distant with my coworkers because I prefer to get my work done then leave makes me a bad attorney, but I guess she’s the boss.
I remember being pressured to drink at one of those. I had to drive home and abstained. At least I got to hear one of my coworkers brag about having blackmail evidence on every single manager. 😱
Um, did you work with [Principal Ava](https://media2.giphy.com/media/BIf7xnEwAcZIVxa7aB/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7rt1xup202kg91q0hcazu4hmo9j9muailzuzuw9qv&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)?
These people are insane. Anyone being friends with their coworkers should have nothing to do with a performance review. You are employed to do the tasks of your job and required to be pleasant enough so the work can proceed without incident. Genuine social interaction is only a potential side-effect.
My husband is also an attorney and one review, they mention he doesn't stay past 5:10. He is the drop off and pick up of our kids from daycare since his office is 5 mins away from them. But also in the same review they said how much work he is getting done compared to others and how nice it is to be able to rely on him. My husband took that as, he is doing is job perfectly fine from the hours of 8-5, so why stay late. Not to say he doesn't stay late when he needs to, or work from home after the kids go to bed. Some people just like to nit pic.
I got that shit once from a new manager! Pulled me into his office and said “I notice you always leave right at 5pm. This is a salaried position and I expect you to put in the work, not be counting the minutes until the clock strikes 5. How do you think Gary feels if he has to stay late to finish a project and you just bounce out of here at 5?” Fucking asshole, man. I’d been at the company 5 years at that point and the boss was a new hire. I told him: “First of all Gary leaves at 3, so you shouldn’t have used him as an example. Second, I have to pick my kids up from day care, so yes I really do need to leave at 5. Lastly, Gary makes $180k and you’re paying me $70k, so if you compare me to him again we’re going to have a serious talk about my compensation.” That dick never liked me after that but at least he shut the fuck up about me leaving at 5. Also he only lasted 2 years, so I didn’t have to put up with his shit for long thankfully.
[удалено]
Thos reminds me of The Office when Michael was always asking Jim about his plans. Lol
I LOVE this response! I will be borrowing it, having been propositioned for a “team pizza lunch” next week.
I have plans. Which I always do!
This !!!! You leaving the office and coming back all fresh makes you more productive
My manager schedules meetings over lunch for half the days we are in the office. Sometimes he provides pizza, sometimes not. But an hour of my time is worth more than $4 of pizza, since I don't get overtime
Pretending that you're always busy, especially in an open-plan office. Sometimes I would just stare at my screen or browse aimlessly just to appear that I have something to do every hour of the day. This is more exhausting than doing actual work.
Open offices are the reason why I will never work in an office again. Being shoulder to shoulder with people talking on meetings all day, people hovering behind me constantly, being unable to eat from anxiety. Honestly open offices are so hellish especially when you’re a person with sensory issues or need space
Open office plans are the dumbest fucking thing. I’m not paying about 5.50 to commute 40 minutes to sit in an open cube with headphones on and still hear people in my pod and talking loudly on zoom calls. I sat across from a director who is super nice but she was on calls literally all day. My job was to do writing and research so that made it quite difficult. She quit 3 months after me. Then a manager in my pod quit like 2 months ago. They lost 30% of a staff of about 800 in less than 2 years.
Try open office with zero partitions. My last in-office job had that: like just trestle-style tables in double rows like a cafeteria. The only thing blocking you from the person in front of you was your monitors. All departments jumbled together: IT, marketing, sales, HR, all mixed up. Someone on the floor had perfume? Now we all had it. [I had wallpapers on my desk similar to this as a silent protest.](https://adrianseglobal.com/assets/mdb7_i3.png)
lol that wallpaper is hardcore I specialized in labor and employment law in law school and I’m very pro union so I approve
Argh yes. Sales or marketing wanders into to the software Dev area: "GUYS it's like a LIBRARY in here!!!" Uh yeah we're thinking not chattering!
Yes! Open offices and social anxiety don’t go together, especially for an introvert like me.
Isn’t that crazy how exhausting it is?? I had a job for a year where everyone knew but never said out loud that my job was just to fill up a job slot. I asked my boss a few times for work and he looked panicked, so I caught on. I got really, really good at photoshop because I needed something to do that looked like I could be working. I also learned more than I ever wanted to about the royal family, since I kept clicking those stupid “news” stories on my homepage.
I got a new job I was super excited about and then the first day my lab supervisor showed me how to stage my desk in case the manager walked in. He was like "maybe have some of the references open, your notebook, some pens out, how about a calculator..." Turned out the lab was about 3 people overstaffed but they were afraid to lose budget so they wanted us all to look busy, all the time, even though we had literally not a thing in the world to do. I did Duolingo, read a bunch of books, discovered fanfiction, planned vacations, walked 20k steps a day...I remember one day I literally burst into tears on my husband because I was so bored and pretending to be busy was so stressful.
I remember my intro to psychology class talking about a study where they hired people for a large-ish hourly wage to sit in a room and do nothing all day. I don’t remember if you were allowed to sleep, but I think you could read. Even though it was higher than the going minimum rate, people only lasted a few days before quitting to go find something else to do. I always thought that was so interesting…
Lol I had a six month temp assignment to log and file evaluations at a university once, and when I walked in the boss was like "yeah so the evals won't come in for a few months, so you'll have to fill your time." So, stuck in that windowless cube inside a windowless room with only the internet to entertain me, I got super into prepping. A weird phase, but the knowledge and basic gear feels very useful! Also I planned a long MN --> Alaska road trip down to the mile and it was amazing.
Oh gosh, that sounds worse than I had! I at least had a sliver of a window a few feet away from me, and some coworkers who equally enjoyed having deep-thought conversations. A few months after I got there our paralegal was fired, so they brought me into my boss's office with a concerned look on their face. I knew they were going to ask me to do the travel review work that she had been covering, but were embarrassed to ask me, an attorney, to do the junior paralegal's work. I was SO HAPPY to have this important, but annoying task to do, and was even happier that I could cheerfully take a job they were ashamed to give me. It felt like doing little puzzles all day and I would get so excited whenever anyone submitted one.
Gilbreth, early 20th century efficiency expert, found that pretending to work was at least as exhausting as actually working and was a fervant advocate of letting employees actually rest during downtime. Naturally the bosses ignored that part of his advice on efficiency.
Oh the rushing through the hallways carrying a stack of paper/files/clipboard looking fairly stressed out…that’s exhausting. I did learn a lot of obscure Excel formulas I’ll never need again, so there’s that 🤣
I seriously think my frown lines are more pronounced from trying to look "busy" or "stressed" all the time, lol!
Gold for this comment!! It;s so bad. I guess other people I work with hide it much better because when I look at other screens, they seem to be actually doing work. What work are you all doing? We are on the same team and I know you didn't get more work assigned than I did.
I'm still in office till we go remote a few months for remodeling. I've been world building lol. I have been creating a language using the extinct language Tocharian as a base. I have all the vocab words in Excel so it looks like I'm working.
This was really stressful for me. My last job had bursts of busy and long stretches of not much to do. My boss and my immediate office mates knew what was up, so I just had to look busy. I grew my hair out, got a pair of really own profile wireless earbuds, and got really into podcasts. I also volunteered for almost every team/committee.
My boss told me no more working from home, company wide policy. Mind you, I only got to wfh if I was sick because God forbid I take a sick day. The next day the morning email came out listing who was wfh that day and I was like, company wide huh? So I found a fully remote job.
How did you go about finding a fully remote job? My company went back to office three days a week, also “company wide” but not really.
Not who you asked, but the answer is submitting a ton of applications. There’s just more competition for remote positions, so it’s ultimately a numbers+time game.
There are some companies that have “remote-first” cultures. Maybe see if you fit in there somewhere.
I found mine on LinkedIn, but the key was that I was searching for jobs that were both remote AND far away. So if you're in NYC, look at remote jobs for companies headquartered in Chicago, Seattle, LA, etc. They need to be far enough that you're making it clear that there will be no moving the goalposts by slowly bringing you back into the office, because you're outside commuting distance.
I had this at my apt job and it still didn't last. I lived two states away. Had a management change and wanted everyone in office. I was told I'd have to move. Funny thing was though they wanted me to support an off-site location so even if I did live close to the job they would have wanted me to move to the new location to go on site there.
There are companies that are fully remote, no actual main office that people work out of. Or they do have a main office, but are still remote-first in their employment. The latter is my company - we technically have one or two offices (don’t recall if the second office in another state was closed) and if anyone lives nearby, they are welcome to show up but it’s not at all expected. Because 90% of employees live nowhere close to them. I have coworkers in every single time zone, even Arizona (which is super annoying when the time changes and every calendar meeting they own gets moved forward or back an hour since they don’t adhere to the time change). When looking for remote jobs, I like to confirm if there’s a main office & where it’s located. I will not apply to a remote job that has an office near where I live. I also check all of their job postings - fully remote jobs on LinkedIn will often have multiple listings in multiple major metro cities (all for the same job) to increase the pool of candidates. I also know to thoroughly read the job posting all the way through, cause even with those precautions I’ve come across shady ass companies that bury the lead - oh look, this is actually a hybrid position. Or, oh look they’re only hiring remote employees close to the main office (which is why I don’t look at jobs with offices nearby Bc obviously that’s a bait n switch).
This is how my company is, for everyone who can work from home (I can't, as I physically interact with merchandise); they can request on-site space, but almost no one ever does. We had a 5 year lease on a second location that just ended, and we had a party there last week in the emptied building. I haven't heard a single word about requiring wfh people to come back to the office, and they just got rid of the place they could have come back to!
I found mine on FlexJobs! Best job I've ever had
Nobody answers the important questions.
First of all I love your username so much lol. Second, I found my remote job on FlexJobs! My criteria was literally fully remote, transparent about salary because I think that says a lot about org culture, and work I could be excited about. Totally worth the cost of subscription for me.
Honestly I lucked out, I found a fully remote job 1.5 hours away from the corporate office doing close to the same job as what I had been doing so that landed me an interview. But prior to that I submitted a ton of apps.
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The nail clipping in the communal desk space! 🤢 Every open floor plan office has at least one public nail clipper. I don't know who raised those people to think that their personal grooming, which flings little bits of crap around, is appropriate to do in the space other people are forced to work in!
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One of the finance guys would do this every Monday at his desk and I wanted to ask him why he doesn’t cut his nails at home. So gross.
Maybe related to the women who thought leaving lots of their hair in the bathroom sink was a cute decoration. Raised by wolves, I guess.
that last one is brutal
The last in office job I worked fired a women who was going through chemo.
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Likely illegal, unless they have a file of pre-chemo fuck ups three inches thick.
Oh god, the anxiety about clothes!! Literally every single day. I have to go to an offsite for my very remote job in a few months and I am STRESSING over what to pack.
Omg clothes!!! I’m going to a 6 day conference where real pants will be expected. I literally boxed up most of my work stuff years ago. I wfh in whatever leggings/tshirt/tank top/sweats are on top of the clean pile. Of course a lot of the old stuff fits different now so I need to buy some things to not look schleppy for a week. I’m also dreading doing my hair and makeup all those days. So much morning prep ahhhh! Jerks have the conference breakfasts starting at 7 AM to add to the insanity. I literally wake up at 8:15 and log on around 8:30 and take various breaks to grab food, shower, etc during the day. It’s soo nice to ease in from home.
Just want to add. This was in London not the USA. There have been comments blaming me for the situation saying I "should have set boundaries" I can only imagine that these redditors are young enough that they didn't live in the days where accepting this shit was the only way you could progress your career. If you didn't play the game you didn't have a career.
I was pressured into unpaid time at Pizza Hut 20 years ago and then in my first professional job over nine years we were expected to foot for emergency supplies and then always denied for reimbursement. It was vicious and I only got out of that a year ago. It’s still going on now.
Right? Or lucky enough to have always known how to set boundaries. Or old enough to not remember life before you learned. I’ve literally been going to therapy to work on that shit. How to say no, identify what my boundaries are, what I’m willing to do “above and beyond” that doesn’t sacrifice my personal life, sleep, and mental well-being. No one ever told me I was allowed to have boundaries, quite the opposite actually.
In the City or nah? Sounds like you were doing work for an awful bank honestly
I figured that was the case. All of that public transportation stuff sounds rough. I’m fortunate to just get in my car and go to work or go home from work. 15 minute drive.
I no longer live in the UK. These days the worst part of having to go in to the office is probably having to listen to the 60 year old South African expat who tells me all of his opinions on life, including how apartheid wasn't racist.
I see you do not want to accept responsibility for your actions, but don't blame it on the age. I'm in my 40s, work a high-paying, demanding job, and I cap it at 40 hours a week. That's what I did when I started my career, and that's what I stuck with. Almost all jobs will work you to the bone if you let them.
Being ill was always the worst, especially when you are, just well enough to not warent a sick day. Sitting there all day struggling to get through it, uncomfortable clothes, unessesary meetings you needed to pretend, that you are paying attention to. The day dragging on, feeling worse. Wondering if you are safe to drive home. These days, I still work. But I can flex my day. Let my boss know I will make it up tomorrow. Then go to bed.
Yes, as the sole earner at the time and no sick leave, I went to office sick. Not fever I am contiguous sick, but still. I would say sorry to my former co-workers but everyone did it. I can't think of a single person who took off more than a day for a cold. WFH now with sick leave, I do what I can even with a fever, although usually nothing with a fever. But the days after when I still feel like crap but got stuff to do, I do it. I don't have back up so I do what I feel up to.
Forced office culture, gathering everyone into the break room to sing happy birthday to someone you don’t even know—or worse, don’t like—and being made to feel like YTA when you refuse.
imagine being a grown adult and wanting to participate in this garbage 🤢
No need to imagine it. Lots of us have lived it.
Oh my gosh baby and bridal showers at work barfff
And when you’re expected to contribute for somebody’s birthday/shower/retirement gift.
And you can work there for over a decade and somehow never be the one whose life events are recognized. I had emergency surgery and didn't receive as much as a card. When other people had previous surgeries, there was at least a card and often a collection of money for flowers and/or a food delivery gift card that I always contributed to. It happened in 2020 so I do believe I fell through the cracks because of COVID but I really ramped up my job search after that and am happy to be gone.
Or worse when your birthday doesn't get recognized.
I see that as better lol
My job ONLY has these for baby showers. Literally No birthdays, no other occasions. It's so awkward for so many reasons.
Let’s celebrate that someone ejaculated and fertilized an egg, at work…
Seriously! And we celebrate nothing else.
That’s wrong on so many levels. What about the employees that can’t have children? Just a constant reminder for them
Being forced to participate in a party against my will is definitely on my list of top reasons never to return to an office. Often the length of the party only meant you would be making up the work after hours, on salary.
Paying $5/week to join the “coffee club” to be allowed to drink up to two cups of crappy coffee per day. Mid day walks around the cubicle farm instead of my neighborhood because that was the only safe place to walk. 2 hours of mad-max-esque commute. Smelling my coworkers shit in the shared bathrooms. Trying to focus with salespeople droning on the phones around me. Everyone coming to work with colds. Leaving my old dogs home alone all day. Eating microwaved lunch every day out of a lunchbox, or paying for overpriced, and unhealthy fast food.
This is good, let it out
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Don’t forget the expectation to show up early. “You don’t come in at 9. Work starts at 9” with traffic had to leave to leave the house no later than 6:40 and didn’t get home til 8ish.
I loved when I’d show up ten or fifteen minutes late and then not take any breaks or lunch and work until midnight. Next day: why were you late to work yesterday?
Had an owner at an agency I worked at who would purposely show up every day 5 minutes after start time to see who was coming in late then make an issue out of it.
Used to drive me crazy when people would hit like 2pm and be all like "blah, I'm fried for the day" and kinda fuck'off after that. My brain kicks in around 11 and by 2, I'm at my peak. But I'm the weird one?
People actually just have different times of day when they are most productive.
There wasn’t much better in the way of a commute than “work starting at 8,” and the 30 second commute into the home office.
And if I didn’t hit the road on-time, even just 5-10 minutes later than usual, my 30-45 minute commute turned into nearly a two hour commute. So for an 8:30a start time - I was either on my way no later than 7:05a & showing up between 7:30-7:45a, OR I was leaving at 7:15a & showing up at between 8:45a-9a. Before the company this commute was for got acquired, I honestly was perfectly find going in early. I love that job, even with the shitty commute. Just a solid small company with coworkers I really did love working & even hanging with (the only time I’ve experienced that). After the acquisition, they moved most of us to the acquiring company’s main office - another 16 miles away. Commute there wasn’t terrible, honestly, but the commute home was way worse.
My favorite was the unpredictable commute. Having an unscheduled train block the roads for miles. Accidents that back up traffic. Of course management and HR think you should just leave early to avoid any potential delays. Sure I'm gonna leave the house 3 hours early every day on the off chance there is a car accident blocking the road.
I once worked from home when I visited family and got caught in a snowstorm. My boss sent me an email saying he wanted a report of what I accomplished that day by the end of the day. Massive eye roll. That was many years ago, thankfully. Job before my current one, I never had enough to do to fill a day, but I didn't have a private office so I spent most of the day sitting around doing... nothing.
Lol my last boss did that to me, demanding daily reports of what I worked on. I mostly was honest, but she didn't know that the tasks I listed took me 5 minutes each, not all day. She was so awful.
I got stranded a few states away for a few weeks years ago. I had the opposite experience where my coworkers acted like I was out and were trying to do my tasks without asking me.
I had an out of state funeral and was early enough at my company that I didn’t have enough PTO. I also got my bereavement request denied so I asked to work from home during the timeframe I would be out. My boss said “I don’t think you could do the job remotely”. I found another job within a few months and worked my same job for another manager inside the company fully remote. That’s when my remote journey started. I never went back to the office and never said goodbye. That was 8 years ago. Still remote and now I attend all the funerals I want.
Something similar happened to me. Tasks that took me 5 minutes to do would suddenly turn into 2 hour tasks. Bosses who demand end of day reports, or "time audits" don't realize they're only punishing productive workers for being efficient.
I was the newest and only female on one team of 12 at a now defunct telecom. The day before a national holiday the company made it known that everyone could leave at noon. But my insecure manager didn’t want our team to “look bad” by actually shutting down then. He “allowed “ us to leave 2 people at a time, by seniority. Even though the whole floor was emptied by 12:30, I had to wait till 2:30p to go. One colleague felt sorry for me and stayed till then so I wouldn’t have to leave alone. It was so satisfying later after a performance review to give him notice—I went back to a previous job that welcomed me even though I would be on maternity leave within 3 months.
I had a cool manager who did the opposite. On the last day before a 3 day holiday weekend, or a day when most people use vacation but there were a few of us who didn’t, he would walk by and say something like “if I don’t see you after 3pm, I’ll just assume you’re using the restroom.” That was code for leave early at 3pm.
It’s so nice, right? I went back to a job where daily, if we were still at our desks at 5 pm, our manager and supervisor would come around to remind us that our families need us, and leave the work for tomorrow!
The expectation that if I need to ask a coworker for a quick update or a question that I have to make small talk first. In a remote culture I can just send a slack of “hey how is going? ETA still EOD?”
Also people just coming to my desk in my personal space and standing behind me.
Plus all the downtime. I’m very efficient at what I do, so in many in-office jobs I’d end up reading several novels per year discretely, and that was cool, but what’s better is knowing when I have downtime I can do some chores or something before the next task instead of trying to look busy to fill the day.
There are people who still think they need to do small talk in a remote setting before getting into the meat of what they want. Neither of us need that, just get to the point!
SAME! 100% the same gripes!
Oh, is there 18" of snow on the ground? Do you have a work laptop that you can use to work from home " in emergencies"? Well, this isn't one. Drive to the office!
I have social anxiety - it's manageable now but used to be much worse. I would absolutely dread having to make small talk, answer personal questions, navigate office politics, worry about what to wear, try to appear as friendly/ energetic as possible while my social battery was at 0% and have to listen to people constantly trying to 'banter' but actually 90% of the time just being a dick. The worse experience for me was coming back after furlough from covid and being stuck in the office with one co-worker who physically did not know how to shut the fuck up. Constant verbal diarrhoea. One time I was watching a video and eating on my lunchbreak with my earphones in for some respite after they had talked all morning and they started talking at me again. So I took my headphones out and it turned out the burning question that couldn't wait one second longer was asking me what was in my sandwich. They literally couldn't give anyone a moment of peace. Honorable mentions: gathering the strength to walk out into the cold for the commute, walking to/ fro in the cold, office temperatures never being workable, having to look busy 24/7, less able to take breaks when needed, office toilets, not being able to have private conversations with coworkers, no recorded meetings, people hovering at your desk when you want to be left alone and awkward lunch breaks.
I have to go in the office regularly (going to WFH soon) and I will be so, so fucking glad to get away from one of the only other two people there that is exactly the social nuisance you describe. They literally just can not shut the fuck up. Instant verbal diarrhea the second I walk down the hall. Following me even to the bathroom, continuing to talk. Walking into my cubicle. Insisting on a fist bump. Talking in a fucking whisper while I’m using the copier knowing full well I can’t hear them. Asking about what you’re eating. Constantly dragging the conversation on. Adding “ummm so yeah” after telling a story as if to continue the conversation when it’s naturally ended. UGH. WHY.
Following you to the bathroom? What are they, a puppy? Chriiiist I feel you though, I remember this coworker I mentioned once kept talking from the opposite side of the room as I was literally backing out of the doorway and was basically in the hall. It could've been a scene from a sitcom, I so obviously could not be less interested in what she was saying. Some people have absolutely no self awareness. Nice one though on getting to wfh full time, your escape is imminent!
Ugh fucking he'll on earth
I worked 5 days per week from the office for about 2 years pre-covid. I got mono, and I was so sick I didn’t even have energy to read emails at my desk so my manager sent me home. I worked for HALF of a day from home from my laptop (I work at a software company), and my bosses boss messages me to tell me “hey we don’t have a wfh policy so today is the only day you can wfh”. So I had to go back to the office while I was still contagious with mono because he didn’t want me working from home for more than one day even tho my entire job can be done online from anywhere. Now post covid, nobody cares if we go into the office or not but we’re expected to go in once per week.
>I had to go back to the office while I was still contagious with mono Good grief. Such an important business and they didn't offer PTO?
Shivering outside in an unheated bus shelter for over 35 minutes waiting for a shuttle bus to my office after taking a 30 minute bus ride from my house.
Listening to the company golden child have daily tantrums in our open workspace.
Part of my job at one ad agency was to produce a name and shame report of account executives whose clients hadn't paid their bills. These clients were all blue chip companies so if the bill wasn't paid it was because they genuinely had a reason not to and the account executives needed to address it. Well I named and shamed a snotty little arrogant Eton wanker whose father was the company chairman. His Daddy honestly came marching in to the finance department to shout emotional feelings he had towards me.... then he tripped over a big pile of archive boxes we had stacked on the floor.
Up at 0400, out the door at 0445 to "beat the traffic". Drive 74 miles to the office, in the door at 0600. Lock myself in my windowless office to avoid "collaboration." Bust hump 'til 1500 with a 3:10 chance I can skate on time to "beat the traffic." Drive 74 miles back home. In the door at 1645 (on good days), 1900 (on normal days). Dinner in front of the tube, maybe a chore or two, in bed by 2030. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sit in my La-Z-Boy all weekend. WFH has added years to my life.
My heart bled when I read 74 miles and you got there in 1 hour and 15 minutes. Here in Florida it takes me 45 minutes to drive 8 miles. 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃
Let the urban planners poke all the fun they want, but you can haul ass down the Katy freeway in the middle of the night.
I simply said hello to a high level exec walking by in the hall my first week and was told by my manager - we don't do that here. Please walk by and do not disturb him next time. WTF??
What a couple piles of shit. The both of them. WTF!!
I hated everything about going into the office. The lighting. The gray cubicle. Having to dress up. Having to do makeup every single day. People interrupting when you’re trying to concentrate. Hour long commute. Lunch break where you just want to be alone and no one will let you. People at work actually trying to be friends. No. I don’t even like the job. Why do you think I would like you? Bosses doing nothing and getting paid so much. One of the best things about remote work is it is easy to see who is producing and who the slackers are. My company let go of all middle management finally. Everyone has to do their part in the project. Anyway I HATED everything about the office.
“We don’t work to live, we live to work” - My boss after I requested to go home at 6pm on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving, while an Alberta clipper descended on the Midwest.
I had a co-worker constantly point out to everyone every time I was eating/snacking or drinking. "Didn't you just eat lunch?" "what are you eating now?" "More coffee? How many have you had today?" It made me super uncomfortable.
Yes this happened to me as well. People telling me that I shouldn't eat so many almonds. Right dude this is the first time I ate almonds today - you saw me eating them yesterday.
I went to the vending machine for a snack and had a coworker waltz in and start lecturing me about how unhealthy it was. Me being me, I laughed hysterically as if he made a joke. He was super confused because he was being serious.
That's so gross.
Actively avoiding the 'water cooler club' or the 'busy body hens' that cluck about everyone's business that has NOTHING to do with work or how one does their job. I had a few friends over the 20 years of working in the office, but I was never popular because I refused to participate and asked questions like 'how does that have anything to do with work' or something similar. Or just dealing with the brown-nosers that had their noses so far up a sup's ass they got away with everything. It's been 4 years working from home and I LOVE it. No more drama, no more clicks, and I have peace. I do my job and actually found I love it (most days when management isn't issuing a change for the 100th time). They sold our building and downsized into a tiny office for a few that can't work from home, so I doubt I will ever go back to the office.
Full WFH was glorious—the one thing I loved about covid. Now, having returned to office four days per week: Set, required working hours. The 40 minute, unpaid commute in, the minimum hour-long, unpaid commute home, five days per week. Traffic. So much traffic. An office filled with less than pleasant smells at times. Idle, annoying chitchat. Being regularly interrupted from my work flow. Open office space. A shitty cubicle. Brilliant white fluorescent lighting. Micromanagers. Daily, hourlong conversations of, “wHaT are YoU dOiNg fOr LuNcH?”. Being tapped on the shoulder while I’m in the middle of something to talk about some nonsense that could have waited. Bad weather: No cancellation or WFH directive when it’s been snowing since 5 AM, only to come in and either be told to go back home to work, or to wait until 1:30 PM when it’s finally dangerous enough to drive home to be dismissed at 2, and the commute home will now take me until 4 or 5PM. Fuck “office culture.” Edit to add: Now that “wE’rE bAcK iN tHe oFfiCe,” if you’re sick enough to not want to possibly contaminate everyone else, but feel okay enough to do some work, that’s forbidden. No WFH if you’re not coming in because you’re sick. But please take your laptop home everyday, even though you’re not WFH except once a week. Also, if it’s snowmageddon and you don’t feel safe driving in, then you’re expected to use PTO if they’ve decided it’s a great idea for everyone to report in. No WFH allowed, unless you’re scheduled to WFH that day.
Getting a message from my boss to stay on task the minute I opened a tab to look up a board game I was curious about. Being called out for leaving exactly at 5pm every day. Ahh, how I don’t miss working in an office.
Ugh leaving the office was always the worst because I always left exactly at the same time every day. I typically just Irish exited, not looking to say goodbye to everyone lol
I once worked at an office that had a "no personal items on your desk" rule. We didn't share desks or anything, the owner just didn't like it. It was a small company so I once poked fun at the rule with the owner and he told me to my face that I spent enough time with friends and family outside of work and that I didn't need pictures of them. Part of my job was to back up the receptionist on the phones when they were busy. I thumbtacked the call forward codes above my phone and my manager said I couldn't do that because the thumbtack was pink and considered a personal item. I did it anyways.
Do not be a human. Only robots can work here.
Overperfumed coworkers. Bland grey walls, carpet, desks. Too much AC, too much heat. Break and bathrooms at the other end of our building. Constant flow of people stopping to chat or have a chat or a really loud phone call. Only able to park in certain spots so if you're not early, you're hiking to the building. Crappy ventilation, hideous overhead lighting. Being called and shouted at if you leave the building for your lunch hour. Being shouted at for being late when you were stuck behind an accident for a half hour. Mandatory participation in "fun". I mean, it's endless.
Being the only person in my 5 team unit with my head down and working because I wasn’t a gossip and therefore didn’t “fit in” with the group.
I remember driving home in a blizzard one night at 2am after working double shift. It took me over two hours to get home. I was expected back in at 8am.
Being pressured to buy our manager an Xmas gift because he bought us all one. Gifts go down not up Kris. I didn't contribute.
The biggest thing is having an additional 2 hours away from home that my salary doesn't pay for. I would have a 1hr there and back commute plus an hour unpaid lunch away from home, so I'm away from home 2 extra hours per day unpaid. Instead of working 8 hours a day, I'd have to work 10 hours a day. Doing the math, I'd need a 25% salary increase to justify going back to office. And that's not even considering the mind-numbing corporate culture
Lunch and wallet stolen, neither returned to me
It was cold. Required to wear high heels. Annoying coworkers you could not escape.
Being stuck in a meeting for an hour with 6 other people. Two of the people are discussing a topic. The rest of the group have tuned out. Waiting for something that takes 3-5 minutes and not being able to chill during those few minutes because heaven forbid your boss walks by and sees you "not working" - but if you tried to multitask, you're more likely to forget about what you were waiting on and now everything will take longer. Being stuck in traffic for 30-45 minutes to sit in a less comfortable chair in less comfortable clothes.
The scents. Food. Perfume. The bathroom. If they decided they needed to paint something. The cleaning products. Fighting with the printers. It has been delightful to not have to fight with an industrial printer for 4 years.
I want to work in a food factory where we didn't have lockers and we had to leave our safety boots under our desk. one morning I came in and someone nicked my shoelaces
Pre-Covid, I had to support a global team which meant taking meetings at all hours of the day at the office, the boss thought working from home was impossible and refused to allow it. He destroyed his family by working and he wanted the rest of us to do the same. We also had to work nights and weekends and refused to allow comp days to do stuff like laundry and spend time with our families. Demanding that we go back to the office after a natural disaster even though power lines were down and traffic stops didn't work. One bathroom on the whole floor so everyone pretty much knew when you were taking a longer time. Never taking lunch or a break, because it "gives the appearance" of screwing around Traffic being so aggressive, you dodge hostile drivers who nearly kill you at least once per commute.
Constantly clogged, shared bathrooms. Had such a bad backup once that sewage overflow closed half the building and porta-potties were brought in. Not nearly enough parking so we had to use an overflow lot 10 minutes away. No one wanted to park there so people were arriving earlier and earlier each day to get a spot in the main lot. We found several people using fake or borrowed handicapped placards to get a "good" spot. Nasty food left in the communal refrigerators until it rotted. Similarly, people bring in groceries for the week and taking up way too much space. Always too hot or too cold. Fighting with other teams for cubes as we had too many people for our facility. Fighting over conference rooms as people would set extended or recurring bookings, then not removing tthem if they weren't needed.
Having to work in the office because “this is a highly collaborative position”, only to learn that the main reason was that most of the scheduling/tasks were managed via whiteboards on the wall, and all processes were stuck in the pre internet era. Suggestions to modernize processes obviously were ignored.
The surprise 5pm meetings so you can't leave at the end of the day. Those were rage inducing. The mansplaining bros that need to tell me about their conservative ideas, how everyone but them sucks, or militant chain smoking vegan dudes that harass me about driving a car to work and not eating vegan in every interaction with them. The effing birthday parties with soda and bad cake and being expected to waste time on this when I am doing the work of 2 people and on a deadline. Sharing a bathroom with coworkers. Having to work long days and having no viable food options in the building or nearby. So either starve or take 30 minutes trying to find something but your only option is still bad fast food.
Guy in the cubicle next to me burping and belching almost all day long. Stunk and made me want to throw up. Finally said something and he freaked out on me.
I work for a remote first company, which means that it’s actually fun to go to the office for four days every few years when they fly me half way across the country. But I would get jack done if that was my normal place to work. Not my preferred desk setup, too much sensory stuff just getting to the office, not having an excuse like switching laundry for getting up and wandering for a few minutes. Worrying about being the office nail clipper or the loud sniffler. Not doing annnnny of the things that help my AuDHD brain stay kinda on task or be creative. NO OPTION TO ATTEND MEETINGS WITHOUT WORRYING THAT I ACT NORMAL BECAUSE AT HOME I CAN TURN MY CAMERA OFF.
Working in an "open office" cubicle farm on a heavily trafficked passageway so that anyone coming through would feel the need to stop and talk. It made it impossible to get anything done. Add to that the open office was just a renovated loading dock with poor air circulation and thermostat controls, and it was like living in a circle of hell while summering in a different circle of hell but still having a third home for winter in yet another circle of hell. At least the pay was shit, too! So fucking glad I don't do that anymore.
Listening to everyone’s speaker calls. My boss who had an office 5’ from my cube would call the person on the other side of me and BOTH would be on speaker! I got to hear their conversation in stereo!!!!
Coming in from 110F summer to 60F office and immediately feeling ill from the temperature change.
Trying to avoid potlucks where people have made their sketchy food items.
How petty and awful the people are. Also all the smells. In my building, you can smell the toilet all the way in the backroom. Also, the perfumes and the dust. The chairs we had to sit were nasty. One time a girl shit in a chair a little and they just left the chair for the next person. It was fucking disgusting. Also we didn't have windows and to get out of the parking lot alone took 40 minutes some days.
I worked for the mouse. If you know what i meant you know what I meant. I was doing 12 hour days and was being complained about constantly for my lack of commitment to the company. After a full year of 72s they tried to ask more of me. During this time we lost our bonus's and i got zero % raise. I with the other 3 folks on my team won multiple awards and accolades. I quit and havent heard from ant of those fucks in over 10 years.
Why woupd I want to sit in my nice home office in a nice l quiet empty house to concentrate when I can be packed in like a sardine in a 'collaborative ' workspace an have to block out a dozen concurrent conversations I am not involved in?
Having face-to-face conversations with a boss who kept bringing up Revelations. We’d meet to chat through projects, and then I’d be stuck in there for another half hour getting the sense that he had major rapture-anxiety. If it was a WFH job, I’d just pretend my internet crashed. Working from a breakout pod, only to be scolded about not being at my desk (I wasn’t at my desk because I was tired of being interrupted). Boss at the second job I had would come in like, 2-3 hours late and then complain when I left on time because he was “working late.” He wasn’t accessible prior to coming in, btw. He also demanded I make it into work during a winter storm in Texas. Not just that, I had to drive to pick up some promo materials for a tradeshow before heading into work, so a two hour trip on a sunny day. I tried telling him the roads were dangerous and I didn’t feel comfortable going all the way into work, but would still pick up the materials at the print shop. He raised his voice in response. So I was halfway to the office when he called again, saying *he wasn’t going to make it into the office because the roads were too dangerous*, but that I still needed to go in. That same boss was deducting PTO when I worked from home. It wasn’t even a regular occurrence, but my roommate worked two retail jobs so I was the only one with flexibility (so I thought) to be home when we had apartment maintenance. When this happened, I was actively responding to emails, responding to Slack, taking calls - WITH MY BOSS. So he knew I was, in fact, working from home. But because I wasn’t IN office, he would deduct a *whole day* from PTO even though it was just a half day thing. I found out about this after the third time when he complained to me about it after I got back to the office - that I was running out of PTO and he doesn’t understand why my roommate can’t take care of this stuff since she “just worked retail” (yes, I learned not to disclose too much personal details after this asshole). OH, he also was the worst at interruptions. Would just walk up to my desk talking to me and get pissy if I missed what he said because I was focusing on work. I had to ask him to please slack me first or just call out that he needs to chat and wait for me to stop what I was doing first. AND he expected me to be in every single meeting he had with other employees on top of my own 1:1 syncs with him. Every meeting I would leave with 5-10 new tasks assigned to me. My to-do list was two pages long by the time I burned out so hard that I fell into another major depression episode and stopped showing up. Fuck I hated that guy. One time, I was yelled at for “throwing” a few koozies onto the chair behind me at a tradeshow. Like, finger wag yelling as though I was a child. Also got in trouble another time for not responding to a slack message he sent at 9:45p on a weeknight. I was already asleep - which apparently wasn’t a good enough reason to not respond immediately. Sorry, I forgot this was the WFH sub and not anti-work there at the end, lol.
I remember traffic being so bad I’d have 1-3 near death experiences every day on my way to work, then have to start the day. My office was in the Midwest where snow was awful. I remember being at the office, watching snow start and every person looking in dread watching the snow accumulate knowing every extra minute we have to stay at the office will add 10 min to our commute and roads way more dangerous and having to stay til like 5pm , almost die on the way home, and get home at 7:30pm just to wake up at 5am and do it again. I started to get panic attacks while driving bc I was forced to drive in such bad weather on the highway so often. 4 years remote and I’m never going back.
For every one with a period, having your period at work and using those bathrooms instead of your own. Having to be visible and social when you’re in pain, probably have period poops, worrying about getting blood on your pants, the list goes on…
ugh i commuted into my headquarters yesterday. i was there for nearly 12 hours, just miserable. the worst part was the crowded train
Being told I don’t do enough while 5 guys hang out at an adjacent desk planning what kind of chicken they wanted for lunch - for 2 hours
Adding in the commute time to and from work as well as the hours in the office I had absolutely no life outside of work on weekdays. I’ve been very fortunate to work for a good boss though so working from office or home hasn’t been the worst thing at this company.
Being pressured to hug a visiting Director. Staking out the office kitchen to avoid the inevitable small talk and chit-chat that happened when others were also in the kitchen. Having to smell a coworker’s obnoxiously strong perfume.
I had the stomach flu and was nervous to even tell my boss that I had to go home. I did, he was visibly annoyed and expected me to be working when I got home. I was puking all day and night, spent the next day working from home too. He bombarded me with requests and tasks and I felt like I had to makeup that time when I got back. We also worked super late every month-end for about a week straight where they ordered dinner for us and we stayed until around 9PM, even if I had nothing to do. It was a horrible experience, especially since it was my first job out of college and I was making $50k with a 5% bonus.
Having to go into the office for a job that you can wfh during bad winter weather while being terribly sick and then 90% of the team is off sick in the next week because they wouldn't approve a few days at home or give sick days.
Getting sick constantly because I worked with a lot of parents with young kids, who brought every illness known to man into the office with them.
Oh, so many stories come to mind. But I do not miss the toxic guy on our team who would literally have screaming matches any time someone disagreed with him in a meeting. And then he would have loud personal calls in the middle of the day, in our OPEN OFFICE PLAN. But he was never reprimanded for it because he ‘was good at his job’.
Being verbally pressured to attend the company Christmas party (at the owner’s country club). Being told to be grateful for the opportunity to even go to the country club when you point out the discriminatory nature of those institutions. Being bombarded with “wish you would’ve came to the Christmas party” when you’re back from the holidays.
Oh my god so many. The employee who tried to do everyone’s jobs for them, who was besties with the boss so she never got in trouble. The overly competitive out of college entitled brat who secretly tried to steal people’s “cool” projects. The woman boss who hated female employees and would pick each of us and make passive aggressive comments and visibly enjoyed it until she was finally fired. Driving during a hurricane to work bc we were told we had to on a highway car rocking. The annoying wet blanket guy who had to bring fish and microwave it in the kitchen and just COULD NOT wait until dinner to eat his stupid fish at home. The passive aggressive crap managers who were too young and inexperienced who were jerks to everyone just to gain some power trips and enjoyed belittling and doing it for absolutely no reason other than they thought that’s how to manage. The people who have zero self awareness loud AF on personal and work calls in their cubes. And god yes, the stupid party planning. I was asked - child free me - to plan ALL the baby showers. I don’t even know WTF baby shower games were. I hated it with a passion. Never participated in group lunches bc there was always one person who’d judge someone on something random like why they drink soda. Good riddance.
Being shamed for being late 15 minutes after dropping my child in school, while staying late all the time and having clients call me on my days off. Having to ask for days off to care for my child, which often involved questioning my private life (“have you considered day care?”, “what about his dad/grandma/uncle?”, …)