office check-in

[cellio]

Before the pandemic, I went to the office every day, as one does. Our office manager did what he could to make it an ok environment, but it has the usual pathologies. Pandemic-induced working from home has been good for me in oh so many ways. I'm fortunate to be at a point in my career where I am quite comfortable telling my employer "I really do insist". (There's some pressure, mild so far.) I'll go to the office if there's a specific reason to, like the group outing we had a few months ago, but most of the people I work with aren't local, so going to the office is social, not productive.

On the day of that outing, I learned -- via a coworker finding out the hard way -- that corporate security disables badges that haven't been used in 90 days. That makes sense, though doing it silently isn't so great. Fortunately for me, I last changed my domain password around the time of that outing, so the "time to change your password" reminder serves double duty.

A few days ago I changed my password, and today I went to the office to wave a badge at a sensor. While I was there I cleared out the last of my personal belongings; demonstrably, I no longer need to keep an umbrella or a spare USB charging cable in my desk drawer there.

Comments

[hudebnik]

My employer (G) started letting people back into the building a little over a year ago, and would like me to be in the office three days a week, but I was averaging less than one day a week, and finding that every time I came in, I spent a good fraction of the day getting my (workstation / password / security key / etc) to work after a long absence.

shalmestere's employer wants three days a week on-site, somewhat more emphatically, but she can get out of one with permission if there's an online conference or publishers' event (which she can watch just as well from our couch as from a cubicle at work, and without wearing earbuds; if she needs to talk, better at home than at the office).

In May or June I had a routine talk with my manager, and he brought up RTO "in case anybody asks me", to which I replied "We have a bunch of vacation travel coming up this summer, and would really rather it not get cancelled by catching COVID," which he thought was a good answer. Since the summer vacation season, I've been going to the office one or two days a week, until I caught COVID a week before Thanksgiving, and then shalmestere caught it. I wasn't hit hard, so I did WFH throughout. shalmestere was hit harder, and took full advantage of the five days' "excused time" (i.e. not coming out of her sick-leave balance) they offered. But now we're both negative, she's supposed to be working again, and she's supposed to be in the office three days this week.

[cellio]

Our office also reopened about a year ago and, for a time, there was an effort for all of us (here in Pittsburgh) to be in the office on the same day, because when there are only a dozen of you to begin with, and half of those are firmly staying home for risk-reduction reasons, "everybody pick a day or two" doesn't necessarily mean seeing people. So, for a while, I went in every Tuesday, seeing 2-4 other people, but the environments are different so I always had to spend time fussing with the network, resizing windows (different monitor sizes at home and the office), and so on. While it was nice to see those people (I like my coworkers), it didn't really help with anything. Eventually I stopped going. A handful of people still go in occasionally (mix varies). Fortunately, our local management isn't pressuring us. Time will tell whether pressure from higher up will trickle down to us.

"Would rather not lose planned vacations because we caught COVID" sounds like an excellent reason to avoid the office. I'm glad your manager agreed. I'm sorry to hear that shalmestere's management isn't as flexible.