Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.
I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real.
I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home but whether you get more work done is debatable. And there is always too much to lose by speaking the truth.
> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.
It's not a matter of being spoiled or not. I'm talking about what is necessary to get the job done and the elimination of redundant rules that serve no purpose.
You can make that point about literally anything. People in X situation have it worse than people in Y situation, therefore Y situation is actually fine. It's a deflection without any actual merit.
If this were a widespread attitude surely the office workers would be paid less than physical laborers (and, frankly, they probably should be). I do a lot of physical work (that's my two primary jobs) and people don't spend their time fuming over people with soft hands—that's kind of a "loser" thing.
At the same time, that office worker has to take time out of their free time to get exercise while the Amazon driver gets paid to exercise on the job. There's a lot of health risk with not getting daily exercise.
The morale effect might be real for you, but for a large group of workers, their morale has improved since WFH. On my team of 24, only one chooses to work in the office...
Individual morale and team morale are separate. I have no doubt that their individual lives improved a lot (e.g., being able to freely do personal chores), at the expense of team morale (feeling like a part of a team at work).
>>>> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.
That's been part of workplace culture even when most people were in-office. The "office" and "factory" people had noticeably different working conditions. Moreover, the remote workers were largely invisible -- if we dealt with them at all, it was through their boss, or some kind of ticketing system.
> The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.
And farmers working hard manual labor from before sunrise to sundown, in heat and UV exposure would look upon factory workers as spoilt. So what? Are you against progress? You aren't one of those "I had it hard, so these damn kids should too!" boomers are you?
Now imagine working on an assembly line on your feet all day versus your office day job. The people on the assembly line would look at you like the most spoilt people in the world.
I personally hated going into the office, but the morale effect is real.
I think the main thing is people cannot be trusted to honestly tell you if they work better from the office. It's a nicer life working from home but whether you get more work done is debatable. And there is always too much to lose by speaking the truth.