[mastodon]
You prove my point. Checking email is not work. That is goofing off. Walking dog, picking up kids. Once again out of touch. Real Work should be 8am to 630 pm in office five days a week with lunch at desk minutes on good days. That is Goldman, Chase, big law, big 4. When I worked in person at a major investment bank I hit 50 hours on Thursday and I still have to do a vacation Day of wanted off Friday. Back in 2002 huge project I was in office physically 3,000 hours. In 2021 I wfh around 700-800 hours |
You were paid the big bucks to go with those hours. What are you moaning about? |
You don’t understand the difference between a government job that can be solely performed using a laptop and a person working on a trading desk at Goldman or a person waiting for in-person pitchbook feedback at chase?? |
+1 The smart places have since adapted (e.g. creating a daily delivery lunch special within a certain radius) or created in-person draws like wifi, a table with kids toys/puzzles, etc. Trying to turn back time on telework to save the restaurant industry is the liberal equivalent of the coal industry trying to move us backward regarding energy. |
This is a very dangerous line of thinking. I’m skeptical of anyone who doesn’t want individual employees to think for themselves. If everyone just complied we’d never have fair labor laws, parental leave, etc. This is spoken like an abusive manager or employer who want everyone to just shut up and do what is to their (employer’s) advantage. |
+2. You just can't get some people to understand that the work culture has changed or even get them to understand what the concept of a work culture even is. |
So then make a RTO plan that is based on actual need, not just some arbitrary schedule that is clearly being swayed by external economic interests. For instance, we have new hires onboarding on X date. We need 2 people on-site from X date - X date for training/mentoring and we will be doing a large group all hands meeting on X date. My DH is private sector at a large organization and this is how his office works. He actually doesn’t mind the days he goes in because he knows he will see people he works with and there is a defined reason to be in-person. It’s a nice break from being at home and isn’t just forced RTO because the powers that be need him to buy a sandwich. In fact his office usually caters lunch and even sends packaged snacks/treats home, which obviously government can’t do. But this goes more to the point that private sector RTO is not comparable to fed gov RTO in that benefits and perks are better with private offices. The thing most people are objecting to is the broad spectrum everyone must be in office 2-3 days/week regardless of work tasks, and then sitting in a cubicle (or small office if you’re lucky) in some old decrepit federal building just to call into a Teams meeting you could have taken from the comfort of your nice home office seems punitive and like it’s about something beyond accomplishing job duties. During the pandemic my agency actually asked for volunteers to handle certain in-office workloads (that we knew truly could not be done virtually) and we had sufficient coverage. Those people went on to be given monetary awards, which is 100% appropriate. Everyone was ok with it because it wasn’t an arbitrary across the board decision. |
Have you ever thought about the fact that some (many of us) don’t want to become managers? I have 3 kids including 1 with special needs. I am a high performer with excellent performance reviews, but at the end of the day I’m just here for the flexibility and benefits. Despite encouragement to try for a management role, I have declined to pursue that path. I would rather do substantive work than deal with timesheets and performance issues. Not to mention with pay compression, moving into a managerial position is becoming an increasingly less appealing career path. So no wonder we keep ending up with only these unhappy managers who are the only ones who want to move up to these positions for minimal pay increase. They can’t seem to adapt to the new more virtual work environment so they blame it on the workers who are busy carrying out the agency’s mission while insulting us for not wanting their-important manager position and blaming us for their inability to train new hires. Maybe you need to look in the mirror when trying to figure out why you’re struggling at your job. |
*their self-important |
You are making the manager’s point, obstinate and unreasonable. Hopefully a RTO edict comes down at some point so they don’t have to keep arguing with people like you. |
Great! Let’s pay feds equivalent to these employers if we’re going to expect similar work hours. It’s insane to me whenever anyone cites private sector work expectations without being honest about the pay differential. I make 140k as a gov attorney which is a fraction of what my big law friends make. I made that choice for the work life balance. I don’t want to work 50 hour weeks and be chained to a desk, and certainly wouldn’t do so for $140k in today’s economy. |
I also joined the government partially for work life balance. For the first 15 years of my federal career I was in the office around 4 days a week, now they’re asking me to come back 2-3 days. Still just 40 hours a week for my GS14 salary. I understand it’s not ideal but all of the people in the past 80 pages of threads saying everyone would leave and this is intolerable sound kind of crazy to me. It’s still a good deal with work life balance. |
LOL. You expect me to believe that you never billed the time you spent reading your email? What a liar. |
Oh I didn't get that memo. More than 70% of our work is via emails. It was like this even before Covid, no different now. |
I hear you but you are really stretching it. |