Mandatory office days are kinda bullsh*t
Mohamed Nohassi via Unsplash
There are many reasons that organizations give for mandating in-office days. Team building. Camaraderie. Relationship strengthening through being face-to-face with your colleagues. Productivity.
Then there are the reasons that staff feel mandated in-office days are for. Micromanaging. Real estate. To make middle managers feel powerful and like they have a reason to have a job. Skepticism of in-office requirement days ballooned during the height of COVID and hasn’t gone down since.
My main beef with mandatory in-office days is that I don’t feel like I’m being given a compelling reason for it beyond “it’s policy”. The nature of my job involves print; however, I would estimate that I maybe do this once or twice at most. I also take staff onboarding photos sometimes, but this is also infrequent. I’d say that about 90% of my job can be done remotely.
Like most people, I hate commuting. Beyond the financial costs, it’s exhausting to have to get up early, prepare yourself, then either drive (which is gas burned up and time spent sitting in traffic) or take public transit, which is also sitting in traffic and sometimes means having to get up 2 hours or more before your workday actually starts. This also means that after working a full day, it may take you 2+ hours to get home, and then you still have to cook, try to clean up, spend time with your family, self-care, etc. etc.
There are always some people who work best in an office environment. It helps them focus; it makes it easier for them to communicate with their team members, and on the personal side, it allows them to have a structured workday with a defined start and end time. For some folks, it also gives them a chance to be social, but a healthy social life with friends takes care of that. An office is not a replacement for having friends.
I’m none of those things.
When I’m in an office environment, my productivity tanks. Between the lights, the people talking (not often about work-related things), overhearing meetings, people wanting to stop by and chat or ask for things - I cannot focus. I also spend more time than I like watching the clock and thinking about how I’m doing something that I could have been doing at home. The colleagues that I have a friendly relationship with - we talk outside of work. We spend time together and are friends. Besides that, Teams and other software have made communication MUCH easier. Sometimes there are Teams meetings…where everyone is in the office. If we can have this meeting on Teams anyway, why are we in the office? And if we’re in the office, then why are we on Teams?
Joshua Earle via Unsplash
If camaraderie is also a part of it, I also have to say…how do I put this…
The nicest way that I can frame this is: everyone has a different standard of cleanliness and what they find an acceptable amount of “mess”. When you have a bunch of people in one place, there will be some clashing of those standards.
Being in an environment where folks often don’t clean up behind themselves - including leaving food, stains, dirty dishes, and mysterious liquids - it can be hard to feel “warm and fuzzy” when you spend a decent amount of time cleaning up behind other adults. Or adults who have questionable handwashing practices but touch lots of communal things (coffee machines, door handles, etc.). That does NOT help with team connection. It has the opposite impact. When I’m at home, if I have to clean up behind someone, it’s me. Or my dog. It’s not another adult.
I guess the good news is that I’m not alone. COVID showed that working remotely did a lot of good and led to a much better work/life balance in most cases. Why did some organizations throw this out in favor of office requirements? Only the organizations know that, I guess. I just know that I’m glad I’m not alone. Unless something changes, I’ll just continue to get up two hours before my workday starts and spend an hour trapped on a train with headphone-less TikTok videos and farts.
Here’s what some other folks are saying about mandatory in-office time:
