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Me who likes working in a office:
Then go to the office, don’t be angry if others don’t go
People who are having a great time at work are the reason I like WFH
I personally don’t have an issue with WFH as long as you are getting work done. If you can manage yourself go for it. It is nice to see people face to face once in a while but that doesn’t mean 3 days a week.
I may be an outlier, but it feels great to be car free in a walkable city.
I don’t mind walking but sometimes the distances are a but far. I do know a lot of people who ride bikes. Bikes has the benefit of being small and having a place to put a bag. It also probably has to do with air quality as in some places the air is bad.
I couldn’t have done it if I stayed in the states. No judgment on anyone who lives in a structurally car dependent area and doesn’t have a good alternative
We went back to the office, I don’t care because my commute is immaterial BUT now I leave my laptop there, I disassembled the workstation at home and packed it away, I will not work at home now. Teams is on my phone because I don’t put the work email on my phone and needed a way to tell my team if I will be unexpectedly delayed. I don’t open it ever though, and now we have a group text might take it off too.
If it’s outlook you can access it from “webmail.your companydomain.com/edu/org” from any browser. That way you don’t need teams on your phone either.
They have the ability to turn off the web access now. My company recently did just that - if I try to access office.com on a personal device, my log in is blocked. Works fine on a company controlled device.
I’m not sure how they tell the difference since it’s through the browser. But my guess would be something to do with the lack of all their security software they load onto company controlled computers that have hooks into everything.
You can just login at office.com on your mobile browser.
in my country you’re not obligated to answer to anything work related after your work hours unless you’re manager or superior or it is exliciptly said in work contract that you be on call.
In my country you are on call and not paid for it, thats the workaround there.
I get comp time when I’m on call.
well that sucks
Yup, on call pay was rolled in pay which was then cut back to where it was previously. Fuck Irish unions.
It’s sad that this is considered malicious at all. Seriously, either working from home is a risk for your company or it isn’t, there’s nothing in between.
Well u see your employer reserves the right to always be right!
That’s the benefit of being “leadership”
What I need right now supercedes anything I’ve ever said or anything on paper
This is such an odd restriction for IT staff. Normally HR gives you a form to sign agreeing to working remotely sometimes and having company data on your phone because you know, servers are meant to stay on all the time? It must be nice living in a world where nothing bad happens after hours.
On the other extreme, 24/7 operations have redundancy.
A friend of mine explained that being an Emergency Medicine physician is a great job for work life balance, despite the fact that he often has to work ridiculous shifts, because he never has to take any work home with him. An Emergency Room is a 24/7 operation, so whenever he’s at home, some other doctor is responsible for whatever happens. So he gets to relax and never think about work when he’s not at work and not on call.
not. the. point. listen carefully and you can hear the whoosh of the argument which is being made in the attached screenshot.
working from home for this tech, is the same as having to schlep into the office, all their work is done remotely, as in not in front of the client computers or servers, but from their workstation. doesn’t matter where their workstation is, either in down the hall in an office building, in their home, or timbuktu
having requested to work from home, and having been denied, this tech is now arguing that “working from home” isn’t considered as good as working from the office, so, if it’s not considered as good, the employer shouldn’t ever be asking them to do it
it’s not going to work out for the tech, obviously, but that’s the argument they are making
In a sane world, they give you a company phone when you are on reserve duty and they agree to pay compensation for being on reserve. Why would you agree to work for free?
It really saddens to me see how many managers out there treat their subordinates terribly, and then act surprised when their subordinates do the same - as though employees are meant to greatful for their terrible treatment
Does ring true dunnit?
Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
I recently was recently reprimanded for using the term “subordinates”. I was informed that term has fallen out of favor. Direct Reports is the proper way to say it these days.
Honestly calling someone a “direct report” sounds even more dehumanising. At least calling someone a “subordinate” acknowledges that you’re belittling their existence. A “direct report” sounds like a piece of paper.
What about indirect reports?
That’s who you are to all the people who aren’t your boss but think they can tell you what to do anyway.
Or just your direct reports’ direct reports.
Fair enough. Subordinate is the term I’ve always heard used. Direct reports just sounds like the sugar coated version to me.
Oh yeah it’s totally the sugar coated version. It’s funny because I was only using the term “subordinates” because that is what the software platform I was training on calls “direct reports”.
Sounds good to me, I’ve never gotten in trouble for indirectreportination.
Good for you. I refuse to put work related stuff on my phone. Especially since they want permission to remotely wipe my device if it’s lost. I paid for this phone, it is mine, not theirs. Bye.
Weird that you’d have to be available outside of work hours
I can’t believe people have work apps on their personal devices. Delete that shit!
It is wild to me, even as I have one work app on my phone. It’s only there because it allows me to clock in and out, and my personal phone is significantly higher spec’d than the work provided phone.
Even so, I cannot be contacted via this app and cannot perform work with it outside of the geo-restricted area.
No matter what app it is, if employers require one to be used on a smartphone, they are legally obligated to provide you with a work phone. If they refuse, they are legally obligated to provide reimbursement for your personal mobile plan. This can be as simple as $5 or $10 added monthly to a paycheck, or as detailed as actual usage down to the kilobyte.
Even if it’s as simple as clocking in and out. If they won’t provide a phone or reimburse, they must have some other method to complete the task. Whether it be a computer or paper. Failing that, they are not upholding the law of providing you tools necessary to complete your job. Which means if they terminate you for any of the above under “not able to do your job”, it is retaliation for you requiring them to do their job. You could potentially win a suit against them.
My employer provides us with a “tech allowance” as a bonus every month
It’s not enough to buy a barely functional work laptop, but you can “buy a laptop” through them, and then forfeit the bonus until it’s “paid off”
I’m kinda awful with money, so I pretty much need every cent I can get. That bonus goes towards keeping my head above water in the debt trap I’m in.
So my “work computer” which requires their
spywareantivirus to be installed is a virtual machine. It’s been two years and no complaints so far. Great antivirus.Reimbursement for a mobile plan? If I need to use a special authenticator app to login to my work computer, and the app is fully offline (and I only need to use it at the office where I have Wi-fi anyway, if I needed it, but I don’t), then what does a mobile plan have to do with anything? I could use it on a phone without a SIM card, or a tablet that can’t have one.
My examples are the common scenarios. Apps typically use data. Even if in your case data isn’t used, your employer is still required to provide you with the tools necessary to complete your job. It’s as simple as that.
You said “No matter what app it is” which is the point of my confusion. So you actually meant “apps that use data”, that’s fair enough, thank you for the clarification.
your employer is still required to provide you with the tools necessary to complete your job
Yeah, that’s what I thought, that the employer is required to provide a work phone if they require the usage of an app. But you are saying they can refuse as long as they reimburse data, which doesn’t even help if the app doesn’t use data. How is that “refusal of a legal obligation” working?
they are legally obligated to provide you with a work phone. If they refuse
This is the part that I’m not getting. So are they legally obligated or are they allowed to refuse like you say. It can’t be both ways.
It doesn’t matter if it’s apps that use data or apps that don’t use data. If your employer requires you to install an app on your personal phone, you can refuse. It is your legal right. If you choose to exercise your legal rights, your employer must provide you with an alternative method that doesn’t involve your personal phone. Whatever they choose.
If you agree to installing a work related app on your personal phone, you must be compensated. If they refuse to compensate, you’re back to square one. They must provide you alternatives.
If your employer refuses to supply you with the tools to complete your job and/or refuse to compensate personal phone use for work related reasons, they are breaking the law. If they fire you for exercising your rights, it’s unlawful termination.
Here’s an example: My employer started requiring 2FA for the computer logins. They wanted me to install an app by Cisco. I said no. You can provide a locked down phone that can be used for the sole purpose of 2FA. They declined as that isn’t in their budget and “unnecessary”. They later came back with a little keychain that’s bound to my account. I press a button on the keychain and get the 2FA code. I can do my job and they did their job and gave me the tools to do so.
Ok, so it’s not that they can refuse to provide a device, it’s that if you voluntarily agree to use your personal device, then they have to provide compensation (for the data, etc.). Your original comment said they can refuse to provide a device, hence my confusion.
No, they can still refuse to provide a device as my original comment states. Since my employer refused to do so, they came up with an alternative without any additional input from me. They completely side stepped the app requirement by using a little key chain once they reached out to Cisco. Your employer has options. They have to find out what works best to make sure you can do the job they have hired you to do.
Just look at it as wear and tear. Doesn’t matter how miniscule it may be it’s still eating up your storage and battery life in addition to battery charge. Sure you could charge at work too for battery charge but as miniscule as it is it’s still killing your battery life.
Also, don’t give corporations any leeway because they WILL take advantage of the employee given the chance. For every single rule and regulation that helps the employee someone had to spill blood to achieve it.
That’s what I think, which is why I’m asking icedterminal where did they get the info that the employer can refuse to provide a phone, it doesn’t seem right to me.
Wow I didn’t even know this.ty
Right now I am on vacation, my work phone stays at home with an empty battery.
They still have my private number if it is an absolute disaster at work and they need my help, but untill sunday evening I won’t even charge my work phone, let alone check it for messages/calls.
Work apps stay on the work phone, the ONLY exception to that rule I will ever make is work MFA apps.
But I’d sooner get a new separate phone for that if I don’t get a company phone.
Re MFA, I’ve been using a hardware key and it’s so much better. I don’t need my phone for a single work related thing anymore, so I can just ignore it until breaks.
That goes into the work profile of my android phone and that profile of switched off after clocking out. Simple as that, I don’t have to carry two phones and get my peace after hours. And my company respects my free time which also helps s lot.
my company respects my free time
Well that doesn’t sound like a recipe for anyone becoming a billionaire from your labour
I have slack in it, because I don’t like walking around with two phones, but I have it configured to stop notifying after hours. Also worth noting that I do have a phone from the company, it’s just that I find it cumbersome to walk around with two phones.
Same here. O365 and ticketing app.
O365 is shut up during off-time and the ticketing system doesnt have notifications.
I would probably take a 2nd phone but the hassle of keeping track of and charging both is too inconvenient for me.This is me, too. I run a dual Sim on my phone for this reason. I’ve always been good at ignoring things after hours unless motivated by self interest.
I know somebody who does this and accidentally racked up a £3,500 phone bill while on holiday. He was accidentally using the wrong SIM for data.
I have two phones. A personal one and one provided by my company. I like being able to turn off my work phone when on holiday, etc and keep my personal life separate.
I do know a lot of people who sold their personal phones when given a work phone and use it for both. Saves some money I guess but no thanks.
I also know people who have two phones but install all the work apps on their personal phones to make it easier for them. No thanks!
I’m one of the “company-provided-phone-only” folks. Thankfully, I work for a pretty decent employer who has never abused that in the nearly 10 years I’ve worked there. But I realize that’s a pretty rare privilege.
For me it is a convenience thing – I spend a lot of time working from home and sometimes it’s nice to just be able to grab my phone and join a meeting while I’m sitting on the couch or w/e without needing to go over to my home office room. My team almost never does anything outside of work hours, so it’s not like I’m getting pinged or anything. In the rare situation where I get some notifications from a chat channel outside of working hours (usually someone in a different time zone) then I can just turn off work apps in Android and it goes away.
Yup, they started to force me to drive to an office where none of the people I work with are, now that’s the only place I do work for them.
Used to think about and work on projects after hours if I found them interesting or realized a solution I hadn’t thought of. They’ve shown me they don’t care about my comfort, so I don’t feel the need to care about their problems either. The work will be there tomorrow.
They’re so divorced from reality that they think we’d just give up extra hours of our lives for commuting and keep up the same work output. Fuckin nope, going switch to doing the bare minimum it takes to keep you signing checks.
Yup, my work pulled the same Bullshit. I can work from home and we all worked from home through COVID… But now suddenly I can’t
So, there’s been a few times where the power’s gone out or something has happened that needs us at a remote location. They send the team home. The rest of the guys willingly go. I stay back and remind them that “gee, sorry. You guys have made it abundantly clear that I can’t work from home. All those times I had to take personal time… So yeah, no. I’ll just hang out here I guess until everything comes back up 🤷♂️”
Makes me think that with the hybrid they expect to have the best of both worlds, while in fact it will likely be the opposite.
Besides, with a mandatory fixed amount of days per quarter it gets soooo bullshit, it’s not hybrid it’s just barely glorified office work
Especially when the “hybrid” model involves more days in office than at home.
I guess execs don’t work when they’re at home and can’t handle not getting distracted, so they just assume the same for everyone.
Fuck yeah!
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My SO was told to travel to office every day of the week, only to sit in zoom meetings because all of their team is elsewhere.
Reaaaal good use of everyone’s time and our non-renewable resources.
Don’t forget that it’s also effectively a pay cut due to the added expenses and time lost in commuting. They should ask if the company is going to at least pay for the maintenance of the car if they aren’t going to pay for the time spent commuting.
You know the answer, so why even ask? Just makes you look foolish. Brush off the resume and start looking. They won’t learn.
“Here’s the invoice for the rental!”
Also the time spent getting ready for office appearances and prepping lunches (or the cost of buying lunches away from home).
We are required to show up one day a week, but my employer usually buy breakfast and/or lunch. It’s a decent meal, not a shitty half slice of pizza.
None of us dress up. Not the bosses, the lawyer, no one. We sit in the conference room looking like it’s finals weeks. No one cares, and we get more done.
I do something similar, I’m on a dev team of 2 and a while back we started going in once a month for a “planning day” where we spend a couple hours in person planning out our month and spend the rest of the day talking to the teams who actually use our software to get feedback and ideas. At first the owner would take me and the other dev out for lunch but we’ve turned it into a whole office thing. So usually the whole offices shuts down for about 2 hours for a nice free lunch when we come in. One day a bunch of us went out for mini golf after lunch on the bosses dime. Another month a couple of us played old Xbox games and smoked cigs in the basement while we “brainstormed”.
Paying for commute time for regular workers is not going to happen, for many many decades you getting to work is your own issue…thus why we find a place near highway access or near transit. asking a company to pay travel means they will just hire somebody that lives close by
Which will no longer be feasible as more and more people are priced out of city living.
It has already happened in Vancouver area, people commute in from Chilliwack to afford a home
As some in IT. If my company ever does this. I’m doing the same thing. Genius play.
Wife was hired in 2014 for a position that was designed to be remote. They changed things in 2017 and tried to make her come into an office 2.5 hours away, 5 days a week. She’s legally blind and doesn’t drive, a fact they were fully aware of and had no issues with when they hired her. She tried to argue multiple times, and it just ended up going in circles with several managers getting pretty insulting to her. So, she quit, and eventually decided to contact a disability lawyer to inform the ex-employer she would be suing for discrimination, and ADA violations. Because they said some pretty stupid things in emails and voicemails. They ended up offering a nice sized settlement. She found another WFH job that paid 3x what she was making at the old place, with a higher level position and more closely fits her education. She’s much happier with how things turned out for her. The position has been on various job sites for over 3 years and doesn’t look like it’s been filled since she quit, though I can’t say that for sure.
Good
You should absolutely sue when your rights are violated. It is not ok for an employer to discriminate based on disability.
I’m sure they don’t even understand that it was a discrimination, judging by the fact that they went on and left a lot of evidence of their stupidity
They think we’re cattle, but cattle won’t eat the rich.
I have always told folks that I managed, that I’m nothing without them. Yea, I have a MBA as well, but man, are alot of those business folks short sighted to a fault. Like lack of empathy and foresight.
If your KPI’s are based around having a knowledge worker in a chair in a room, your business should die.
Plain and simple.
My boss is awesome. He realizes that his job is mostly to make sure we’re able to do our jobs effectively. It really feels like I’m working with him, not for him, which is how it should be.
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Same, my manager contacts me a handful of times throughout the year, the rest of the time he trusts I’m doing what I am tasked to do. We had a company wide meeting at head office requiring travel for everyone, the schedule was on my kid’s birthday. I conveyed that I would be missing the bday, and they shifted meeting a few days to accommodate. Not all corporations are heartless slave drivers
Cattle will stampede if you piss them off enough.
Cows will also chomp down on meat and little birds if given the opportunity. I grew up on a ranch herbivore doesn’t mean vegan like peeps seem to think it does. If they feel like they’re low on a nutrient and have opportunity they’ll nom on anything. No this isn’t pica either.
All these “nobody wants to work anymore” people are the ones that think they don’t have to take care of their employees because they can always hire someone else.
My sister in law is blind in one eye, but because she has one working eye she has no disability protection as far as I know. She still can’t drive because she has no depth perception and it’s very dangerous. It’s made navigating going to work difficult over the years, often working the same place my brother did so he could drive her. Luckily her current employer works with her and lets her work from home. But a decade ago no one would have dreamed of letting her work from home.
In Canada that would be labelled a legit disability without blinking an eye.
Yeah, but here in the US, if you can work even the simplest job you shouldn’t qualify for disability! That just encourages people to enjoy communism! These literally half blind mfers need to get off their ass and get to work, the lazy sons of bitches! Don’t they love freedom?
This is wrong, because you’re talking about disability insurance in a comment thread about disability discrimination.
Disability is very broadly defined for the purpose of disability discrimination laws, which is the context of this comment chain.
Disability is defined specific to a person’s work skills for the purpose of long term disability insurance (like the US’s federally administered Social Security disability insurance). Depending on the program/insurance type, it might require that you can’t hold down any meaningful job, caused by a medical condition that lasts longer than a year.
For things like short term disability, the disability is defined specific to that person’s preexisting job. Someone who gets an Achilles surgery that prevents them from operating the pedals of a motor vehicle for a few weeks would be “disabled” for the purpose of short term disability insurance if they’re a truck driver, and might not even be disabled if their day job is something like being a telemarketer who sits at a desk for their job.
Nah man, freedom.
Just wanted to expand on this
Depending on the program/insurance type, it might require that you can’t hold down any meaningful job, caused by a medical condition that lasts longer than a year.
For SSI or SSDI, you basically have to be bed bound (“less than sedentary”), statutorially blind (corrected visual acuity 20/200 in the good eye), have a condition severe enough it meets the strict requirements in SSA’s listings of impairments, or have a mental condition that prevents you from being at all able to fulfill the demands of unskilled work. The rules get more lenient after age 50 the older you get though.
Offsides, bud!
Pun intended, I’m assuming?
Not really, it was a figure of speech, which I realized would be taken as a pun and decided to leave it. It unintentionally fit the theme.
Nice! Makes it even better.
Iirc for the US government to consider you disabled due to vision, your GOOD eye has to be 20/200 or worse.
So yeah if you only have one eye and you can barely read the giant E at the top of the vision chart, sorry!
Not true. Look up the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by the EEOC. Here, I’ll do it for you. But if I am mistaken, I’d love to know where it defines the vision criteria for exclusion.
Actually, when I was looking it up, it sounds like you’re talking about being considered legally blind and qualifying for Social Security disability benefits, which is not the same as being protected under the ADA.
The latter. The government considering you disabled therefore you qualify for disability benefits.
According to the EEOC, it’s a disability:
A vision impairment does not need to “prevent, or significantly or severely restrict,” an individual’s ability to see in order to be a disability, as long as the individual’s vision is substantially limited when compared to the vision of most people in the general population.
And it sounds like her employer is doing the right thing. But if ever she feels she is not being treated fairly, she should talk to a lawyer to be sure. Don’t just let it slide because she has one good eye. Hell it might be good to talk to a lawyer anyway, so she knows what to look out for in the future if things happen to change.
Thank you, I think she believes she is not protected. I’ll look into this.
How do you know the EEOC applies where she is?
You’re right. I made an assumption about where she lives. I shouldn’t have, but I did. The advice about talking to a lawyer to know her rights, though, is universal regardless of where she lives. So I still stand by my statements.
Because the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is enforced by the EEOC.
I think what they’re getting at is not every person on the Internet lives in the United States.
That’s generally a fair criticism, but the context from the rest of this particular thread is clearly US based
That’s a triple win. Love hearing these types of stories.
