Working from home like it or not?

Brie

NBLondon said:

I would just leave the laptop locked in my desk in the office.

In fact, in a previous job, the policy said I should take my laptop home each night for security.  I pointed out that I was leaving it in a locked drawer in a locked office in a building with metal shutters on the windows, a barbed wire fence and 24 hour security guards.  If that wasn't secure enough, why did they think taking it home (or leaving it in the boot of my car was also permitted) would be an improvement.

Ah the days of when we had desks that had drawers and even drawers that could be locked!!  Ours resemble simple tables.

Brie

General_Grant said:

Brie said:
Our employer issued us all with laptops last spring and removed the pcs from the office.  

Are you able to link the laptop to a proper screen so that you can sit properly with the keyboard on a desk and a detached screen at the correct height (top of screen at eye level when you are sitting straight)?  Or perhaps you are not using the laptop keyboard for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Sorry - should have specified that they removed the hard drives and installed some sort of router thingmes.  Except for a few of us with specialist kit & software. But all desks have humongous monitors and keyboards and mice.  We've even been given these for use at home.  Until recently when someone realised how much it was all costing and now they are getting the manky old 15" monitors and grubby peripherals out of storage to give to any new joiners.

stig

Tokmon said:

Reading all the comments about people needing to "unwind" on the way home from work and hate being reminded at work while at home must really dislike their job?.

I personally can't understand the need to unwind at all when you finish work.

Tokmon, can I ask what your job involves? I loved my job, but some  days were so intense mentally that I literally had to sit in a dark, quiet space for a while, or go for a quiet walk alone, before I was able to switch off and resume normal domestic life. 

Imagine you were a fireman who had just attended a serious car accident before clocking off, or a nurse who had worked a full shift in an intensive care ward - can you really not understand why those people might need to “unwind” after work without it meaning they hate their job? 

Stig

Tokmon

TELLIT01 said:

Tokmon said:

Reading all the comments about people needing to "unwind" on the way home from work and hate being reminded at work while at home must really dislike their job?.

I personally can't understand the need to unwind at all when you finish work.

In which case I can only assume you have a job with absolutely no stress either from the work or occasionally annoying colleagues.  I only ever had one job which I can say I truly hated, but I didn't want to have anything to do with work outside working hours unless I was on paid on-call duty.

My job has it's fair share of stress but i don't need to "unwind" on the way home like people here are saying.

They are making it out like they need the time in the car on the way home to do this and can't do this at home but i don't understand why. Then there was also mention of strange routines of leaving the house just before starting work and then coming back in another door because they need to simulate the leaving and going somewhere for work????. 

I have a work phone and work laptop so outside of work nobody can contact me if i choose to turn them off and that's good enough for me. If i go into the room that i have used when working from home i don't have any negative feelings or horrifying flashbacks of work like some people seem to be making it out. It all seems very strange to me.

Brie said:

General_Grant said:

Brie said:
Our employer issued us all with laptops last spring and removed the pcs from the office.  

Are you able to link the laptop to a proper screen so that you can sit properly with the keyboard on a desk and a detached screen at the correct height (top of screen at eye level when you are sitting straight)?  Or perhaps you are not using the laptop keyboard for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Sorry - should have specified that they removed the hard drives and installed some sort of router thingmes.  Except for a few of us with specialist kit & software. But all desks have humongous monitors and keyboards and mice.  We've even been given these for use at home.  Until recently when someone realised how much it was all costing and now they are getting the manky old 15" monitors and grubby peripherals out of storage to give to any new joiners.

A hard drive is the storage inside PC's, Laptop's etc and a router is a device that is part of a computer network that transfer data so I'm not sure what your trying to say in this sentence.

Do you mean your desk no longer has a desktop PC and instead just has the monitors, keyboard and mouse and you use a laptop dock to quickly connect to your laptop to them and remove it when leaving?. If so and you also have this at home sounds like the best solution, if not then ask then might be a good idea to look into laptop docks.

TELLIT01

Many companies now have systems where as little as possible, other than the operating system is stored locally i.e. on the 'C' drive.  I suspect that is what Brie means.  No documents or applications are on the local device.

elsien

I work from home some days and have finally (after several yea't rs of having work stuff all over my dining room) cleared space so my home office can fit all my work stuff in.
I don't think of it as being a work space particularly, because my desk top is in there for all my personal admin, browsing etc. So it's a personal space that happens to have work items in it, rather than the other way round, and I don't dread going in.
Having said that, my laptop and files stay out during the week, but on Friday evening everything goes away out of sight so I'm not reminded of my ridiculous caseload every time I go in the room of a weekend. I don't have start of day/end of day routine as such, but I am very strict about turning the work phone off and not looking at emails out of work time. I'm never going to start early because I have better things to do of a morning. I take my lunch break out of the office, and ideally out of the house just to get some air. The bit I find hardest is switching everything off at 5 pm - I tend to think just another 5 minutes then realise it's already gone 6.
Still working on that one.
I only need to unwind on the days when I've been out doing visits, and the going home drive does help with that. On homeworking/laptop days I just go out for a walk instead - not just because of stress but because sitting all day at a computer does my head in otherwise.

Homeworking only works for me because I'm out doing visits 3 days out of 5. on average. 5 days a week at home and I'd probably be job hunting. 

curtis122

"They are making it out like they need the time in the car on the way home to do this and can't do this at home but i don't understand why."

Why? because as I said when I don't have that 'time' if I've had a stressful or annoying day then I offload it to my husband and I don't want to burden him with my work issues or I'm still thinking about things or being annoyed by things into MY evening. Thats the 'Why'. Its nice to have that time so I don't take it home, when I get home its out my system and I have a good evening. Its wind down time. I don't like that to be at home.

74jax

My brother is very senior in HMPS, some of the things he sees and has to deal with in a 'normal' day are quite horrific, I'd need a month to recover and even then have nightmares, he says he progresses it, mentally 'parks' it and moves on. But its definately not a clock of from work and then ooooo I'm home now. 

Barny1979

Our workplace referred to them as “thin clients” where you just log onto the server, but it’s not a computer or laptop.

LillythePink

We've had 2 lockdowns here, the first one i was able to work in the office - there were about 4 of us in the building and I loved it especially as it was during a stressful time work wise.

The second, I wasn't allowed to and had to WFH and I hated it. 

During the first and normally,  I worked a lot of extra hours......early starts and work in the evenings - but that's fine as I was going back to the office, however, during the WFH period I just couldn't face doing any extra work outside of my contracted normal working hours - it felt like it was invading my home life.  My work definitely suffered and I know it was just me but I just couldn't help how I was feeling.

I went back into the office at the earliest opportunity.  I felt I needed the structure of the working day....leaving home etc - so I totally get that.

If I had to isolate for any reason, I would try and make the most of it but do worry about how I would react again.

We have boxes at home which were issued to us, but no screens etc which I had to take from my desk the last time.