Do you (or someone you know) prefer working from home?

I hate working from home. During the first couple of months of shut-down, I was stuck at home while I attempted to get stuff done with my kids home (I don’t have a separate office space). I’ve also spent years working from home at previous software development jobs.

I loathe it. It’s lonely, and I work so much more. With my computer on all day, it’s easy to work 16-hour days while trying to solve a problem.

My ride to work is normally 45 minutes, minimum in rush hour. It’s been 3 hours in ice or snow or if there’s an accident or flood or other problem. Add to that wear and tear on the car. Tires last two years, tops, so about 400 dollars every two years just for tires. Oil changes have to be every few months. The car gets about 30k miles on it annually. I can’t lease a car due to the high mileage I put on it.

The commute is grueling. There are groups on FB where people talk about traffic and other road conditions. My 7 hour a day plus one hour lunch, 8 hours total, becomes a 10 hour day with the commute. When I had to take my daughter to day care it was an hour and a half with the drop off.

Now, since the shut down, I have been working from home for a majority of it. What a breath of fresh air! No more getting up early, getting out, worrying about the traffic, being stressed out for the hour ride, worrying about walking in ten minutes late and getting in trouble from the boss or hearing comments from coworkers about some people being late. Now, wake up and turn on the computer and voila! At work! I can take a shower at 2 pm or any time I want. I can run out and get an appointment taken care of and come back and log on to check email at night if I want to, or take a call any time of day or night if I want to, to make up for lost time. Nobody knows or cares about lost time since the work is getting done. With my middle-school aged daughter doing a lot of school remotely, I can be home to supervise her or make her breakfast or lunch, or get dinner into the oven in late afternoon instead of walking in the house at 6:30 and trying to start it then.

In the summer, if we wanted to do something in the afternoon, it was so much easier to plan and schedule rather than dealing with getting out of work and driving home, and having to factor that commute time in. Now with dentist appointments or any other appointments, it’s so much easier to not have to deal with the dreaded ride home. I can work until the very minute I jump in the shower, instead of having to factor in leaving an hour early for the commute.

A friend is going to stay home for the rest of the school year, because her job is allowing it. She lives near me and works near me so she has similar stress with the commute. She said her company is going to drastically reduce office space, thereby saving the company money on expensive overhead and with happier employees.

I love working from home.
No rush in the morning, no commute, no annoying coworkers, no constant door bell ringing of the postal service dropping off packets for the entire building, maximised creative autonomy of the projects I work on, without the boss interfering in the middle.

I can certainly understand working from home being more appealing for those who have a long commute. Commutes are notoriously grueling here in the Bay Area and I don’t blame someone who lives in Tracy and commutes to San Jose being relieved that they no longer have to do that. I’ve never lived more than a 10-minute bike ride away from where I work so it’s not something I have experience with. I don’t have much desire to escape my home life and I’m not in tech so I don’t know what it’s like to work at a “resort campus”, but my job involves working with students so it’s not something I enjoy doing from home nor can I do it as effectively from home so I really hope I am able to go back to work soon.

Gotta say, I’m kind of digging it. I do not miss the commute (3hrs/day) or sitting in meetings that could easily have been an email or (at least) a Zoom chat. Love sleeping in an hour later. Taking breaks to do laundry or walk the dogs. Get to hug the kid and my wife anytime I want.

Now, as a teacher, I realize this is not sustainable and this is a clear advantage to being in person in a classroom.

That said, if we ever return to “normal” I might only be on campus when I’m in class and maintain some type of hybrid model forever.

I agree with @loli.

Plus its nice not driving in winter weather.
I do miss socialization with coworkers a little but the positives outweigh the negatives by far.

Working at home also helps me with constant coworker interruptions and my ability to stay focused.

Plus I’m down 15lbs going on month nine at home. My stress is down at least 75%. No kids here. And socialization is social distanced still here so I’m good for awhile.

@cookieman: Oh yeah, I forgot the sleep factor. I sleep a whole lot better knowing I don’t have to get up and out by a certain time and be stuck sitting in the office like a prisoner.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being dramatic, but I just worry about the ways the pandemic is making us more isolated as a society. We’re already a society of people who stare at our phones when in public and now that our ability to go out has been severely limited and people are getting a taste for working from home and are preferring it, I just think we may reach a point of no return. If we think social media and staring at our computers all day has made us more isolated and divided, then having no reason to leave the home, not even for work, and to fear interacting with others because they might bear disease, is only going to make it worse. I just wonder where we’re headed as a society. Anyway, rant over. Thanks for the answers. :)

Is it “work” if you sit in a chair all day and either buy or sell stocks? I love doing it but not sure if it’s work.

I forgot the thrill of being able to take a call or be in a zoom meeting from my deck, or next to the lake I live on, or in the car on the way to the dentist, or even when I’m in another city on a recreational trip. I’ve saved on vacation time by being able to work from a vacation spot (i.e. Newport Rhode Island), checking email and taking phone calls as is my requirement, but instead of sitting home on my bed, I am enjoying my trip.

I don’t mind working from home, although I seem to work a longer day than I did when I was commuting.

I log on anywhere from 4:30 a.m. to 5:15 a.m. depending on what is going on, and I log off now at 2:15 or later. When I commuted to San Francisco, I was logged in at 5:50 and logged off at 1:30. And I do some work on Sundays now, too.

But at least I don’t have to ride BART, which has become the worst train ride in the US. BART makes NJ Transit and the NY Subway feel like the Orient Express.

I do miss seeing people and a lot of the fooling around one might get into at work.

I’m not great at working from home. I prefer being among other workers.

I had a friend who was the work-at-home champion. She was out of the office for weeks and people literally did not know she was gone. She was that good at making her presence felt, both with volume of work done and keeping in constant phone contact.

@desmosthenes When I read that I thought of the conveyer belt fat people on Seinfeld’s Bee movie. But you aren’t all wrong.
How can we bridge the very wide divide if we don’t see or talk to people different from ourselves? I mean, that’s why I’m here (on fluther) even if it’s extremely offensive and uncomfortable at times.
Sadly, until Covid is out of the picture, I don’t see much changing. Although I certainly expect to go back to work in the office at some point, maybe.
For businesses, realizing they don’t have to have a physical location to do business, could also help with the financial losses of 2020. Perhaps downsizing, selling off commercial property, or having people work from home will be the new normal.

I do prefer it, and so does my husband. It certainly has its own challenges (such as finding a clear end to the work day), but I don’t find isolation to be a problem. I want to spend time with people I like, and colleagues don’t necessarily fill that space. Many small, but meaningless interactions are simply draining to me. Working from home, I have enough energy to see friends and family.

@longgone I completely understand that and agree for me, as well. My energy is much higher at home, with sunshine and dogs, fresh air.

A cold brick 100 year old office with no windows was not that pleasant tbh.

When I was little, I used to wish my mom were a housewife. She had to work and so it was very rare for her to be home during the day. Other moms were coming on school trips with the class and my friends would go home for lunch. I could never do that and I wouldn’t have even thought of my mom coming on a class trip. I always had babysitters in the house after school.

For me, I made a big effort to participate in class parties at my daughter’s school, to go on trips (as did many other moms, not just one or two), and now it’s nice to be home when she gets home from school, at least a few days a week, to give her late lunch/early dinner and just be around.

Even if this ends in a few months or a year, it was still a nice experience.

@KNOWITALL Dogs and fresh air, definitely. Especially in the colder seasons. It gets dark around five here now, so I wouldn’t even see the sun if I worked regular office hours. As it is, I usually go for a long walk in the early afternoon and then spend the evenings snuggled up inside.

@longgone I go outside and stand in the grass, let my bare feet ground me while the leaves fall. And we need that sun and our walks and some fresh air!

The hardest part of office life for me was the lack of fresh air and sunshine. Not to mention crackheads everywhere, so I had to watch my back a lot. At least here I only have ONE woman’s moods to deal with haha!

I would love it.