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I’m not allowed to work from home and it seriously pisses me off. Whenever I complain about this to my boss, she always gives me shit like “you’re a school bus driver”.
I am in a weird position, as a software developer, I work for a tiny company and they’re against work from home, but they’re absolutely amazing and accommodating in all other areas and I have no complaints.
So I had car issues and was able to work from home 3 days a week, but it still pisses me off that I have to go in those two days. They say it’s so we can communicate and ask for help, but mostly it’s a silent office and we can’t even wear headphones. Often I can go in and if I’m in a mood there is no communication all day long (I am the chatty one and will engage in debates a lot). Yet I’ve had to take a 3 hours public transport route to work (car issues) just to sit there and not talk.
I’m torn because they’re amazing in every other aspect and super understanding about my mental health issues and leaving early and making up time etc.
…you shouldn’t have to respond in home hours regardless. Any time you spend on work during your life outside of contract is them stealing your labour.
many people who work from home have flexible work hours (they can decide if to work in the evening or morning) and so they need to be reachable at any time, even it it might be off hour
No. If they are expected to be reachable for 24 hours they need to be paid 24 for 24 hours
I have flexible hours. What it means is not that I’m reachable around the clock, but that I decide when I work and am reachable.
i wonder if this means you tell work ahead as to what time you’re reachable
Either this or there are defined “core hours” where everyone must be available.
Why did you, why would you, ever have work email and Teams on your phone in the first place?
To prep my day. As a late shift I want to know what I am walking into rather than be anxiety ridden for my 4 hours of day light. That being said I don’t respond I just check to see what is happening
Personally, I had Slack then teams mobile for work because I didn’t mind helping outside normal work hours on one off stuff.
At my last job I managed a team of developers in India (while residing in the US). It was pretty much necessary for me to be available outside of my company’s normal work hours. I always compensated myself for middle-of-the-night activity with time off during the day and nobody ever mentioned having a problem with it. I was eventually rewarded by being laid off with everybody else when my company was acquired by a west coast tech giant.
Got me in the first half
A previous job of mine wanted people in my team to volunteer for being on call overnight for a week at a time.
No-one did, so they forced us. I emailed all managers involved including HR I said that I would like to opt-out for various reasons like family, mental and physical health, and also that the pay was in no way adequate for what they wanted. Again they pushed, so I replied with I’ll do it but would be unavailable most afternoons and evenings with my kids and things they have on. That I also won’t be able to answer after going to sleep because I take my mental health very seriously and need quality sleep to function.
So the first night I slept peacefully as I normally do as I have my phone set to go to DND automatically. I got called in because I didn’t answer a call that came in last night, I asked when it was, about midnight, and said well that’s because I was asleep.
Go to the next 2 mangers up, say the same thing and they say that I need to answer. I explain the email stating that I would be unable to answer calls at many times including when asleep and how no-one replied with that being a problem. One of the managers was like, wait up, you flagged this; yup; can you send me the email chain; yup. Got removed and told I wouldn’t need to worry about doing it anymore.
It found a new job shortly after that.
As a middle manager in a corporate hellscape, one of my few joys in life is setting logic traps for HR and making them choose between admitting company policy is bullshit or directly instructing me to violate labor laws.
if it’s the latter, just get it in writing.
That’s the goal.
Theres something enormously satisfying about asking the question “And are you willing to give me that in writing?”
Then watching them squirm as something in their brain goes full Ackbar “ITS A TRAP!”
Doing the Lord’s work there, Sonny!
Doing home health was kinda instructive for me in this regard.
The only time you go to the office is to turn stuff in, do inservices/continuing education, or similar. But originally I would answer calls at weird hours because a patient would need coverage, otherwise they wouldn’t be calling.
And then the management spent way too much money buying into some Disney corporate policy thing (literally, they paid money to Disney for the program) that changed a ton of rules in bullshit ways that made no sense for home health.
So, the next time they called, I didn’t answer. Or the time after that, or the time after that. And, when you’re one of three men working for a company that’s partially reliant physical strength to be able to do the work needed for some patients, this alarmed my supervisor. She requested a meeting, and I went in. Mandatory meetings were paid though!
At the meeting, it was expressed that answering calls was part of my job. So I asked id I was being paid to sit at home and wait for calls. No, I wasn’t “on call”. So, you want me on call? No, just to answer when we call you. That’s being on call, and we’re supposed to get paid for that. No, this is different, we just want you to be available when someone calls out for a difficult patient. Soooo, you want me on call.
This went in circles for a while before I switched gears and directly said that answering calls when not on duty was not in place when I was hired, and that the employee handbook specified that being on call was considered a shift, and would be paid as such, and that maybe I should have been on call any of the dozens of times I did wake my ass up from sleep after workout two or three jobs in the first place, and that I never got paid a dime for doing so, so that was the end of it for me.
The response was that they couldn’t stay operating if they paid everyone for being on call instead of us “supporting the company”. My response was that maybe they could have if they hadn’t shelled out for the Disney crap, or if the previous administrator hadn’t been screwing around and embezzling, and that maybe it was time the company supported us.
Not surprisingly, I was one of several employees “let go to streamline services” a few weeks later, right before the company folded entirely.
So, you don’t even have to have an office job to get treated like shit! Isn’t that a relief? Isn’t it?
Man we had someone in the army do this. Army doctrine is either outdated or very accessible to the poor, I don’t fuckin know, but you aren’t required to have a phone.
So this one weird junior Joe just decided he didn’t need a phone. Got rid of it, and as a result never got the information he needed on army shit. I loved him for it, and by the law he was in the right. Can’t tell him to get a phone.
Unfortunately I was his team lead, and every time my chain of command decided to put out bullshit last minute information over text I had to tell them to suck it and pvt NoPhone wouldn’t be at their surprise formation.
Sometimes for important stuff I would have to drive to the barracks and knock on homies door to let him know there’s surprise inspections or piss tests and shit.
The workplace should operate entirely without external communication. It worked since the dawn of man, and it should continue to work until the end of man if we want any semblance of work-life balance.
pvt NoPhone
Love this bit. Gonna steal it :D
If I had to guess, the reason for the lack of a phone requirement is that, if the army required everyone to have phones, the army would need to pay for them, too. I’m sure the army loves spending money on things like that.
As retired Army, this is freakin’ phenomenal. I hope that dude is doing well today.
If you sort by new, the last time it was posted in [email protected] was only 2 posts ago.
Dead internet theory?
I wouldn’t say that most things are bots. People often just repost things without looking at the place they post, or what the rules of that place are.
I guess it’s to be expected when most content on platforms these days is not entirely new and original but stripped from other places. It is interesting to see reposts on here, though, given that Lemmy’s population is so small. Then again, there’s likely lots of overlap in people’s interests here, considering that Lemmy isn’t as mass-centered as other contemporary social media platforms.
The policy is you can only work from home when it benefits the company, not you.
I’m learning that the hard way. Started working for this company 2 hours from home,because I could WFH 3 days a week. Now they want me to come in 4 days a week. So I’m looking for a new job now. Which is a shame, because I do like the job.
What does your contract say? With this back to work bullshit I made sure my contract explicitly said I was remote.
Doesn’t mean they won’t change their mind but maybe I’ll get severance instead of fired for cause of they have a back to the office push.
Good tip, I’ll double check that
keep me updated!
Keep us updated!
We need the update more than a windows user need a rollback.
most hires don’t get contracts
Huh? All jobs come with an employment contract.
You must not be in america. We’re lucky if we get breaks.
So if the employer suddenly decides to e.g. start paying you less, how do you prove how much your pay should be?
Previous pay stubs I suppose. Depending on the employer you may have something in writing. This typically wouldn’t be contract if you’re an employee without a union.
Land of the free and all that. Free from paid healthcare, a decent public education, a strong voice in government, an impartial justice system, employee rights… With all this freedom, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
That’s cute you believe that
My dude, we’re talking about remote work office jobs. Not some random under the table shit.
My dude, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s me in fact.
Even if I had a contract it wouldn’t matter as I live in a right to work state, they can fire me at any point without warning or cause.
Having any real employment contract is NOT the norm here.
Non office jobs are more likely to be unionized and this have a contract than office jobs.
That’s the type of thing non W2 self employed contractors or union members might have to lean back on, not rank and file full time office employees.
Remote rocket ship and hiring dot cafe
.
I always refused to put work apps on my personal phone because they would make you agree to some bullshit where they could remote access your phone or potentially wipe it. So I would refuse and say they needed to provide a company phone for me if it was that important. Most companies are either ok with this or provide a phone, except for one company. This was a software company, and literally everything else about this company was a unicorn of a job. But for some reason they wanted me to have slack on my phone and also wouldn’t give me a company phone. So I dug up an old phone, reset it to factory settings, and added slack to that so I could say I did it. Then I put the phone away and they never asked about it again. So I really don’t know what the point of that was 🤷
While I agree with you and understand that perfectly, slack doesn’t have that remote management thing, so far I’ve only seen that Microsoft apps.
It’s less cognitively taxing for me if you just comply with whatever I’ve decided
I love this.
Zeitgeist material
We did it, classic
Amazing
I really don’t mind these days as long as they have a MDM so I can have it on a separate profile, but without that I’m totally with you.
What’s MDM?
Mobile device management. Basically software to manage mobile devices owned by a company.
Thank you
Or work profiles on BYODs
Thank you
My current pet peeve is Email servers (MS Office) configured to only allow connections from outlook. I’d be happy to add an account to Aquamail but they won’t let me. So no work emails on my phone or personal laptop.
This is basically how I get new privileges at work…
Now if only I could convince them that I don’t have enough hours to do my job, while still being able to do enough of my job without getting fired…
No really they cut my hours and I’m still pissed about it.
Our boss was freaking out over people sometimes doing some private calls during work hours and at a certain point absolutely forbade it. So yeah, people would just end the call at 17:00 sharp and switch off the work phone. It took one week before that rule was rescinded.
This reminds me of a work-to-rule or a “White Strike.” It turns out that every company, even those that supposedly operate off of “unskilled” labor, utterly rely on employees making a ton of judgment calls and often working outside their job description. When employees start working to the letter of their job description, the whole operation quickly grinds to a halt.
“Other duties as assigned” is a bitch.
This is when “could you please send that request on writing via e-mail” becomes really useful.
That’s what gets struck in a white strike.
If it’s literally in your job description, as it has been in my last several positions, does it qualify?
Okay, you’ve assigned me a duty. Give me exact, and I mean exact, instructions about how to complete it.
Now repeat for the thousands of tiny tasks everyone just does on their own.
Sure. It means they can ask you to do other things that aren’t explicitly written in the original job description. But every time they tell you to do something beyond it, you just start doing THAT exactly to the letter of the request.
A white strike, like all strikes works because of collective action, not because of some tricky technically lol.
If everyone does it then it works.
Here we call it “standard operation” and it’s also a kind of “white strike”
And that’s ridiculous on general because you know who also does regular work hours? Everyone else!
That means if you need a call with your doctor, bank, whatever, it’s likely gonna be during the workday
Teamwork makes the dream work.
God, I hate how often my CEO says this
Sounds like he’s a fan of unions. Take him up on it.
Keep telling the DBAs that my company outsourced a big chunk of their tech stack to that its against company policy to work all the way on the other side of the planet, but they refuse to show up to the office.
In all of my IT jobs I would have been fired if I had signed into work accounts on my personal phone. It’s a pretty big security risk.
True, but in small companies it’s not uncommon.
I was at a subsidiary of a very large company and had work slack, email, and all my code on my phone, without even the thing that lets them remote wipe your phone.
It has to do with culture and willingness to put in the effort by the security organization
Get hit with one ransom ware attack and that shit’ll pivot 180.
Yeah, or even just budget cuts. I am sure it’s cheaper to just lock it down.
Not exclusive to IT; I had to weigh the benefits of continuing to work as a caregiver for a small company, versus working in retail for a massive chain (which translates to fantastic insurance benefits.)
Sadly not a competition.
Unless it’s 24h gold service with 24k gold pay, the work phone gets turned off at the end of office hours.
There are places that pay well for on call though.
While true, most enterprises have ways to silo and encrypt their data on non company controlled devices.
Android does something like that when you install ms office apps with administrator controlled policies
Fuck their data, what about my own? That pest of an app is not getting onto my device. And neither is anything else that gives an employer any control over my device.
A totally reasonable stance.
For clarity, the android feature essentially makes a work dedicated partition on the phone. Their management app can manage that partition, and for the purposes of data movement it’s essentially a distinct phone.
If they’ve set it up correctly they can do a remote wipe without touching your personal data.In a lot of cases the drive to have users use their personal devices rather than employer owned ones comes from the users, not the workplace. Only needing to keep track of one device is easier in many cases.
My policy as well. Non-negotiable hard no. But I’m fortunate enough to have at least some choice with regard to employment.
Eh, it doesn’t need to be, you just need to do the work of putting together granular access controls that can account for your risk profiles.
The risk isn’t much different between a company owned telephone and a personal telephone.
They’re both susceptible to most of the same attacks, or being left on the bus.Most companies seem to have don’t ask, don’t tell policies in place.
Technically we’re not allowed to use Teams on our phones, but most of us do, including management.
I’m also technically not allowed to use Spotify on my laptop, but if they’d enforce that ban, IT would be gone tomorrow.
Incoming employment terms amendment:
You can work from home but only to answer us when we contact you. You must answer our contact and must report to the location if requested. If you can do something cheaper (for us the company) and faster (for us the company) then that is the only time you may perform a work duty at home.
It’s EU law that if you have to be standby to pick up the phone and go on location at a moment’s notice, those are working hours and need to be paid in full. Most companies are pretty careful to not put it anywhere in the contracts or house rules that you have to be on stand-by, but just verbally keep pushing for it. If they keep pushing, push back with asking for the written rules.
That sounds like something a functioning government would do.
In America, we get the “privilege” of At-Will employment.
I can’t understand how Americans cope with so much freedom.
We don’t have time to think about it much.
Excuse me, I need to spend the next 2 hours trying to get my insurance company to pay for my medical care.
It’s the same in the US. 5 CFR 551.431
B 1 of that says it’s not the same.
What does the EU regulation say?
You must answer our contact
“I cannot answer the company contact after hours because for every call I get after hours that isn’t a company contact, following an order from work to monitor those on the chance of a company contact itself represents ‘working from home’ which the company forbids. I cannot violate the previously stated company policy.”
*ammmendment
