I can’t say why. But work seems to have no “gravity”.
Like in my brother’s government job, coming into office was a given. You could have serious career repercussions if you were slacking off.
Then the lockdown happened and work moved online. Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.
Now they’ve got in-office mandates again but some of the workers just don’t come in when they don’t fee like it and just log in from home. And no one seems to care or even mind.
It's funny that you haven't actually said that less work is getting done. It just sounds like you are saying that "working from home" is equivalent to "slacking off", even if you didn't intend it to come out that way.
Maybe people were always "slacking off" at their jobs, they just had to work harder to hide it when people were in the office?
I posit something similar in a sibling comment, because productivity indicators have not significantly dropped and I doubt the impending recession has anything to do with a newfound collective laziness.
I've been on calls where half a dozen people are trying to find someone to complete some repetitive technical task that isn't easily given to automation. I suspect the idea was to find some poor junior type person to take on the task (preferably in a "best-shored" location). Typically it was me, a senior, who would say, "let me put on some headphones and listen to music, and I'll just work on it". But if I wasn't in those calls, I wonder how many more person-hours would have been spent on something that would take me an afternoon at the most to complete.
All that is to say is that it seemed like there are tons of people caught in a Bullshit Job situation where the job seems to be mainly trying to foist the work off on someone else. And I suspect that a lot of the work they're trying to find owners for is of highly questionable value in the first place.
This was long before the pandemic too, but it does seem like an awakening that other people had in pandemic times.
> Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.
That sounds mostly like a good thing. Turns out that killing oneself for maximizing productivity wasn't a smart move, or even necessary for things to work ok.
> What I care about is that when I go to book a driving test, I can get one. I could do that pre-2020. I now can't.
Sounds like a supply and demand problem. The marker solution would be to increase wages for driving testers and attract more candidates to these positions.
The alternative was mass unemployment, it would have taken two decades to re-prime the pump. So the alternative to such a large shock was either ~5 years of inflation / stagflation largely caused by supply side issues (can't get a driving test, can't get employees, can't get something shipped from China, etc), or a two decade (a la 30s / 40s) rebuilding the economy from scratch.
And (as a side issue) you shouldn't be surprised that large scale uncontained shocks lead to war. Look at the drought in Syria from 2006 to 2010. Look at the largely global economic shock in the 30s. If you want to see what a systemic supply shock can do to economies at scale have a look at the complete collapse in the lead up to 1177 BC.
So a large systemic shock like COVID will need to be "paid for", and the choices are "a very big bill" or "a catastrophic bug bill". I suspect that you feel that life was fine pre COVID and you were happy with your lot. And now you're not, you wish it was back the way it was (e.g. you can book a test). So since we had interventions (most "imposed" on us), post hoc ergo propter hoc the interventions are bad.
So my suggestion is to do a root cause analysis and realise that humans (both individually and collectively) are bad at dealing with black swans, even when we know it will come (sooner or later). And secondly, even if you don't like this human short coming and you wish that someone would just "get a grip" of the situation so you don't have to deal with something you don't like, it might help to have a bit more empathy towards people trying to help.
This is pure anecdote. Any evidence of this besides personal experience? I've had a WFH job since before COVID and everyone seems very engaged in what they're doing.
Like in my brother’s government job, coming into office was a given. You could have serious career repercussions if you were slacking off.
Then the lockdown happened and work moved online. Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.
Now they’ve got in-office mandates again but some of the workers just don’t come in when they don’t fee like it and just log in from home. And no one seems to care or even mind.
Work has started feeling optional, not essential.