| I can sort of speak to this. I was NOT looking forward to working from home two years ago. I had always worked in the office and was happy with the social interaction. I worried about communication. And that was actually very reasonable. My only experience before was being on a team where one or two people were WFH out of 10-12. They dialed in to our meetings and it was a mess. They couldn’t hear us well, we couldn’t hear them at times, lots of interruptions. It always felt to me like “we” were having a meeting and they were occasionally butting in. It was really hard for them to be truly included, and they were cut out of in-office stuff. So I didn’t want to WFH and get left out, or have others do the same. But that’s not the case anymore. In the time since then EVERYONE was WFH. We quickly got used to it. And we got some team members in other locations. Now that some people are back in the office it’s more even. It’s not the one or two people who aren’t there, it’s half the team. So the WFHs can’t be ignored, everybody stays in the discussion. It works far better than that old arrangement ever did, almost as well as when everyone was in office. As for me I’m happy. I still get my office social interaction for the most part, it’s just often over chat/video. I feel more “free” because I can work where I want at home instead of at my one little cube in my one little chair. I can use better equipment (like my personal nice monitor vs corporate standard issue) in some cases. I don’t need to use headphones for music/podcasts. And no commute. At first I was unhappy “playing office” at home. Stuck at one desk, in one chair, with nothing to look at but a PC and a wall. As soon as I realized I didn’t have to do that I started to really enjoy WFH. |
We had a callcenter in Romania where they had a "relax" area and people used to nap on the couches there during lunch but it's always a bit awkward. And my office had nothing like this.