Community Chat

[judianne]

Before l retired l had jobs that l couldn't do at home . Clinic Nurse , Emt with an Ambulance service and a Mental Health Counselor and teacher for chronically mentally ill adults . 

[Linmo]

I haven't read all of the posts but has anyone mentioned the price of gas to commute everyday? We're in CA with high gas prices and have saved on both gas and car insurance costs since the pandemic started.

[Oznell]

My husband is an engineer for a large international company here in the U.S.    A European-based firm, they were heavy into insisting workers work from home insofar as they could, for as long as they could, during the height of the pandemic.  Against my husband's inclination, they all had a certain period of enforced work-at-home near the beginning and middle of Covid.   Then it became voluntary.

He much prefers working at work.  Much of his job requires utilizing resources at the office, and inter-office cooperation.  He's very focused and high-energy whether working at home or the office, giving it his all.  His observation is that the newer, lax "work-at-home" options have harmed productivity. 

[Tinkrbl44]

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@sugar plum wrote:
@QVCkitty1and @On It

I'm also an introvert. Don't miss the noise, and drama. Exhausting for me.

An introvert friend of mine calls some overt extroverts "vampires". They suck the air out of a room. LOL

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@sugar plum   @QVCkitty1 and @On It

Ditto here .... I hate the energy vampires.  Exhausting is definitely the right word to describe them.

I think so much better in silence.  It was mentioned not missing office drama and taking up collections for whatever ... unprofessional and annoying, IMO.  

[CANDLEQUEEN]

Nope, I did not like working from home. I enjoy people and being around them, and being in an office setting. I work for a company that is very comfortable and it is not at all strict, so I am not punching a clock and having  a supervisor hover over me 8 hours a aday. Sometimes I dont even see my boss for a whole week-she is accessible via instant messenger, but I dont necessarily see her all the time.

I agree that bad weather makes for working from home nice, you do save on gas, and lunches, but I much prefer going to work in a workplace..I wouldn't mind working from home maybe once a week though...But definitely not fulltime-I did it for 2 years and I was miserable~!    

[Firefly901]

     COVID has changed us in many ways.  It seems to have put us on some kind of technological fast track.  There are now major subtle paradigm shifts going on all around us that we have paid little attention to.  Work from home is one of them, buying and selling from home is another, home school, and educational initiatives are other major shifts.  With COVID we found that a lot of time, effort, and money were being expended in unnecessary ways.  Why spend 2-4 hours a day in traffic when that time can be better used?  Over time it adds up.  People who have jobs that require a lot of cognition, thinking, research, writing, formulating new things, preparing deliverables, and the like, might be more productive in work from home arrangements.  In fact, some companies have found that productivity actually went up in certain areas when people worked from home.

     Even jobs that require a great deal of interaction, might be best managed from home.  With Zoom and all the communications technology, one can have individual or group meetings with people all over the world.  I have been in Zoom meetings with over 100 people, with break-out groups, films, video, and lots of stuff.  It is just like you are all there together, and there are not as many distractions.  If you are in sales, many people are now buying and selling everything on-line which you can operate from home.  This includes basic consumer goods, to cars, houses, boats, or even shopping centers.  Delivery is now a big business and inclues everything from consumer goods, as well as real estate deeds, to cars and car titles.  Money changes hands mostly on-line for tiny as well as huge transactions.  No need to go anywhere.

     Beyond these possible work at home initiatives, because of all the technology developed while people were working from home shut-in from COVID, we are learning we are going to have to start being nice to computers.  They are no longer just dumb machines that do what we tell them to do, but are now thinking and acting like humans.  In fact ChatGPT will force society into transformational change, and we will have to look at everything.  Coupled with all of that, young people are spending time, energy, and money in the metaverse.  So, for many work from home is here to stay, and we must be positive, look up, expect a lot of change coming our way, and begin preparing for our new future! 

[I am still oxox]

I worked at home for 16 years and I loved it as long as I got my work done I have some freedom, but then there were ti days when I worked 8-8, in the end it all balanced out