On the contrary, I feel it deserves LESS respect. Treating the office as an escape from an undesirable at-home situation and then having the audacity to try to force more people to be in-person is incredibly selfish behavior.
If these people truly need that social interaction, how about putting more effort into community/personal relationships instead of workplace relationships?
We should respect honesty more. At least then we can talk about the real issues, like maybe finding relationships in a non-work context.
We can call this person selfish and attend to the root malice only because they were honest. If they just contrived a reason to further their goal state, then they are being both duplicitous and selfish, which seems to be something we should respect less?
For what it's worth, without the word option being emphasized here, yours is an equally selfish desire because it brings harm to that person or group of people who prefer the office experience. I liked working in an office, sorry you don't.
No, it doesn't. People who want to work in an office -- or in any kind of shared space -- can do so. Maybe that space is provided by your employer as a traditional office. Maybe your employer can rent some space a WeWork-type thing.
Your argument also rests on the premise that the people who have been forced to come into an office every day should continue to be forced to do that, because some other group wants that situation. The idea that that's an ok situation to begin with is just bonkers. If you can't have your communal office experience without harming others, then you should not get your communal office experience. (But you can have that! No one is saying you can't!)
The idea that a group of people wanting to work from home is somehow "harming" people who want to work at an office is ludicrous.
No. Nothing is keeping you from having a shared workspace. If you can convince your coworkers to share it with you, nothing is stopping that. Social time at your discretion!
This is very different than daily forced containment.
I'm confused about what you're arguing. Are you saying "by allowing people the freedom to work from home it harms people who wish those other people would join them in the office"? Or are you saying, "I realize you're not saying people should be forced to come into the office, but if you were arguing that it would be very selfish"? One of those is absurd and the other is the weirdest kind of straw man I've ever heard.
Is this comment stating that commuting to an office and dealing with the absence of in-person contact are equally burdensome? One of those things requires (often) buying a vehicle that costs thousands of dollars + maintenance and spending, on average, about an hour a day of their time just commuting (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...). These are not equivalent asks.
I think the word "option" probably needs to be emphasized more here. My workplace is moving toward hybrid, which allows this option.
> That won't be for everyone. But there might be a sizeable enough cohort that performs better in the office that it'll be a good option for some companies.
No, the option GP is referring to is the option for the company to decide everyone is working at the office, not for it to be optional for the employees.
I would be open to a remote working arrangement that was truly asocial. The problem is you still want all the normal social features of working relationships - meetings, collaboration, mentorship, collective commitment and sacrifice towards a shared vision - in a remote context. The imitation of a team over Zoom carries, for me, all of the costs (higher costs, even) but none of the benefits. Empty calories. From my end it's you, prospective remote colleague, selfishly offering a raw deal.
> From my end it's you, prospective remote colleague, selfishly offering a raw deal.
This just strikes me as not at all the same thing.
People wanting to work from home does not remove the world of office work from your list of options. Depending on how extreme your particular company wants to go with remote work, yes, that might mean you'll have to find a different job to get the office experience. But that's the breaks.
I think it's the height of selfishness to require that your colleagues continue to waste hours of their lives on a commute daily and deal with inflexible office working arrangements just so you can get the "working relationships" experience that you want.
Your side seems to want the status quo, and our side seems to just want more flexibility, flexibility that doesn't preclude office work, at least some of the time. Seems obvious to me here who is being selfish and unreasonable.
There is no option for those of us in office to have the experience we're looking for, when you have the "flexibility" to be a stranger 1,000 miles away but retain the right to be included and treated the same way as everyone else.
It's absolutely astounding that you'd use a phrase like "that's the breaks" about a radical new change you're proposing while not realizing how it applies to something as baseline for adulthood as commuting.
humans collaborating together, in person, to work on a common goal, has been a thing since humans existed. everyone working individually at home by themselves, only interacting with others digitally is pretty far removed from that. i might go so far as to suggest preferring the latter is what is not normal.
having distracting kids at home is not an "undesirable home situation", in fact its a great home sitaution, so great that it makes it impossible to focus on getting work done because i'd rather just play with my kids. there is a reason most workplaces don't typically have your children in them.
the fact that so many are happy being isolated at home with no real interactions with any peers is concerning in itself.
> the fact that so many are happy being isolated at home with no real interactions with any peers is concerning in itself.
That seems to be a huge straw man. "Interactions with peers" doesn't have to mean "going into an office for 8 hours, 5 days a week". I know plenty of (pre-pandemic) fully-remote people who get tons of interactions with their colleagues. And I know others who, yes, do want to keep that interaction to the minimum necessary to get their jobs done. Both of those situations are fine.
Work is not the be-all, end-all of existence. While I have made many good friends through work, and some (though not most) have made the transition to non-work friends (the true friendship-type test is when one party in the work friendship leaves the company), I have very little need or desire to socialize at the workplace these days. I get plenty of interaction outside of work, and that's how I like it. I certainly recognize that others want more interaction through their work, and that's fine. But you don't need to drag me into that to get it.
> humans collaborating together, in person, to work on a common goal, has been a thing since humans existed.
It was a very, very rare thing for most people for all of human history until the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, a lot of people helped build StoneHenge and the Pyramids, but most people were just farming (at home) or else hunting/gathering in family units.
For how pre-industrial farmers worked, look to the Old Order Amish. They are not isolated family units, the community is the bedrock. The oldest settlements found suggest group cooperation was essential in the development of hominids.
To be clear, there's no discrepancy between "the larger community was essential" and "daily life revolved around the homestead and kinfolk groups". The former doesn't refute the latter. Indeed, I grew up amid the Amish, and both were true: their daily work was on their own farm or else they were helping their kin farm and their communities were very important to them. I suspect that's also the case with the other hominids you're referencing.
it wasn't nuclear families hunting together, it was all the warriors/hunters of the tribe or whatever. that was "going to the office" for them. i wonder how those who wanted to "hunt remotely" would fare in that environment?
If these people truly need that social interaction, how about putting more effort into community/personal relationships instead of workplace relationships?