1 mo. ago • 92%

I can't imagine being paid to act like I enjoy working in the office

Company on TikTok got ROASTED for posting this incredibly cringe and honestly infuriating TikTok about how there's two people working in office during Thanksgiving in the USA, and it's just the two of them, no one else is there, but they still have to come to the office. They thought they were really doing something here and going to make people laugh. But they are so out of touch with reality. Almost every other company I've heard of let's people work from home during this time, but not these truly soulless corporate shills, of course. And they had the audacity to say that they enjoy working in the office, and it's not even a good office with cubicles, mind you. It's one of the open concept ones where there's no privacy and you have to hear everyone fully....

65 comments

it's hilarious how the idea of open concept office is "to encourage cooperation and stuff" when in reality all that happens is that it drives people to get noise cancelling headphones so they don't hear Garry chewing gum as noisily as humanly possible, or all the "hmmmm Mmmhhmmhhh" sounds he makes while eating lunch at his desk. (Seriously, Garry, you're not making love to it.)

Or Chatty Kathy on the phone gossiping about this or that.

People are weird. the world was a better place when we didn't realize how weird.

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- corporate accounts payable, nina speaking.. just a moment
  
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  Sounds like a bad case of the Mondays
  
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- It also hinders cooperation ime. I still go to my coworkers desks to talk because I’m not going to speak over a few people’s heads to discuss something. It’s just that now I can’t have privacy when discussing things. Which I’m convinced is the actual reason for them. Boss can see how much you’re chatting with people and can see when you’re talking unions
  
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  Mostly, it started with small startups and then big corpos thinking “hey they were successful! And their team looks happy!”
  
  So they emulate it. The thing is something that works for groups of 5 doesn’t work so well for more than that.
  
  Also, yeah. There’s probably somebody in the corporate decision tree that realizes it’d increase opportunities for middle management to suck the soul out their minions, but usually the people pushing it are just stupid, and trying to be “hip” and “cool”, and all “how do you do, fellow kids?!”-ish cuz they read about it in a Forbes magazine.
  
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You do know some jobs can't be done remote right?

It's possible the two people are the two with jobs that require some potential in person intervention (IT being the main case)

If something physically fails, you can't exactly fix that remotely.

The fact only 2 people remained says to me they prolly had that sort of job, or, some people genuinely prefer working in the office.

Sounds crazy but some people don't have a comfortable set up at home and find it easier to focus in the office. I've had data where construction was right outside my window at home so yeah, I went into work to have some quiet.

Most of the time I prefer WFH, for sure.

But to pretend that literally everyone can always wfh, and always wants to, is silly and you've gone too far off the other end.

And the statement at the top implies the two people chose not to take PTO anyways. Maybe they wanted to save their PTO for christmas/new years.

Stop being so judgy lol

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- I’ve worked in it for 30+ years and I will assure you, if you want people to come to the office in this day and age, just in case something critical might fall over, you’re doing it wrong.
  
  It’s no longer the age of kernel panics on your sluggish HP D9000 anymore. Although.. where the f did I put the boot tape again now… fml. Effing tapes dammit.
  
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  If this is one of those shitty companies that makes people come into the office I could see IT guys wanting to do some maintenance when folks are gone. I remember back in the day I patched a few hundred Windows machines on a holiday because I could get it done faster without having to pull Karen away from her Freecell game.
  
  Of course, back then I had to go from PC to PC with a Windows update disk which isn't the case anymore. Maybe they needed to route some cables? Do some network maintenance?
  
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- This. You might be an engineer or scientist who works part of their time in the office part of the building and part time in a workshop or lab.
  
  Chill out about what other people are doing with their lives.
  
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  Resibrands is basically franchises for painters and home improvement folks. These are not engineers or scientists.
  
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- Would the people who have to deal with hardware not be... where the hardware is? They seem to be sitting in random places.
  
  Seems pretty obvious it's marketing, not reality, though.
  
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  For IT or something, if you have an outage because a piece of hardware failed, then you need to look at your network redundancy. single points of failure like that shouldn't exist- and it's been that way for decades if not longer.
  
  if IT is in on a holiday, it's more likely either that their company wants on site coverage because "reasons"... or it's patch day.
  
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  The hardware is probably in a climate controlled room beside them. And they’re at the desks monitoring things in a quieter and less restrictive space.
  
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- I didn't interpret this as it's bad to make people come to the office that physically need to be there or that it's judging them for not taking PTO. I interpreted this as a cringe showboat where they try to show how cool it is to be in the office and everyone should love being in the office. The commentnand response at the bottom about the open floorplan say it all.
  
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- There are also people who gasp DON'T like working from home
  
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- You do know some jobs can’t be done remote right? But to pretend that literally everyone can always wfh, and always wants to, is silly and you’ve gone too far off the other end. Stop being so judgy lol
  
  I don't disagree with what you're saying, but why are you so aggressive and honestly toxic in the way you talk? No offense, I'm just pointing it out. Your tone is extremely vitrolic and hostile, which is honestly unneccessary. You're acting like someone just insulted your wife in public or something.
  
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  Not OP you've responded to, but the post really sets the tone for that.
  
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  Is OP's tone really any different than your post?
  
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I might get roasted for this, but as a person who likes to work from home, I did exactly this with a friend on some holidays that both of us didn't feel the need to take PTO on (we did get to take this PTO later) and it was a blast, having a huge office just for us was really fun.

But I understand that I'm in a privileged position to make this choice and that it changes the context.

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- I think this video gets flak, because (in your scenario) not you and your coworker made a video about having fun, but your boss made you come to the otherwise empty office to act like you're having fun and use that as advertisement.
  
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- People's work preferences are their own, these guys are having fun, good for them.
  
  I always maintained I can't work from home, I was forced to teach via zoom during lock downs and even now my job is hybrid, I teach in person in a shared classroom but I don't have an office, I do all my prep and notes from home. Only I don't. My productivity genuinely dropped when I lost my office.
  
  Then I house sat for a friend who had a home office and I realised I can work from home, just not my home, because it's not set up for work and my head space in my home can't flip to that "productive mode".
  
  So now I go to the local library, which is better than my house but still not as good as an office because it's still distracting.
  
  But it depends on the type of work, I prefer lesson planning alone in quiet peace, I get so much done, but when we're developing community events I love being in our open staff room with laptops out, some of us sitting on the floor, others standing and just shooting ideas around, we always get so much done.
  
  But I've worked in other centres where that level of collaboration and communication wasn't there - we didn't have the right mix of personality types, and a workplace like my current staffroom would be chaos and nothing would get done.
  
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I guess it might be kinda cool if you like being around people and also like your co-workers.

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- Right. I love my job and I like the people I work with. I know that's not true for most people but damn, don't hate on those that are lucky
  
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  Ok but even if you do, my job requires focus. And my coworkers have phone calls sometimes. Having a bit of privacy goes a long way and it’s not like I can’t pop by and chat
  
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I work in an office cubicle. I am constantly interrupted by coworkers asking for stuff or wanting to take about non-work related things. Or I am distracted by other co-workers who are having loud conversations within 2 meters of me.

I am probably 5x more productive at home than in this environment.

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- Nowadays cubicle are a luxury. Open floor space is the new hell. We got extra bonus torture at my place, putting office desks right on the fucking factory floor.
  
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  Oh yeah I’ve interviewed for a job like that. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard. “We need people to know the engineer is reachable” ok cool, but I usually take multiple walks on the floor per day and they should know where my desk is and how to get ahold of me. I need some peace and quiet from time to time to do my job though
  
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The company:

Nooo! We love our open concept office! ☺️

Nobody asked you. Let's see what your employees think of it

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- Nobody asked the poster to respond to comments?
  
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  Edited my comment to be more clear. I'm quoting what the company says in the screenshot to defend themselves. Nobody asked the company what they think of the open office plan, if you really cared you'd ask the employees that have to put up with it.
  
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  Nobody asks me shit.
  
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- A comment on their post is none of their business? I'm not following
  
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- If they actually like it then what the fuck is the problem?
  
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As someone who worked in an office with relatively low walked cubicles, it's very disruptive to work that requires a level of concentration.

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i used to request to work on holidays so i didn't have to spend time with my shitty family lol

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Let's be real, though, it really is bliss when there's no one else around. Hell is other people, after all!

When I had mandatory in person office work, almost my entire team took time off, including the boss, leaving me and my mostly automated data job alone. I brought my steam deck on those days. It was bliss.

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The moment I ever work in an open office is the moment I jump out the window on my first day like I'm a Chinese factory slave

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- You don't need to use China for the superlative of bad work conditions when you're talking about bad working conditions in the US.
  
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  True but American workers kill ourselves with gross negligence or substance abuse not by jumping out of windows
  
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- Suicide proof windows
  
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  I can appreciate a challenge
  
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- Open office is 10x better than personal cubicles
  
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  This says more about cubicles than open offices.
  
  (I need electronics lab space, if they ever take that away, I will need to run some long running tests that make disrupting noise until they change their mind back.)
  
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  if i ever have to work in an office id want to be as far away from the other people as possible
  
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toxic corpo "culture"

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I did like working in an open office back in a previous career. I did QA and was integrated with a team of devs. It was lovely to turn to the person whose code I was testing and ask for clarification on a behavior. There really was a lot of teamwork facilitated by the lack of privacy.

The office had small rooms with doors where you could make phone calls without distracting everyone.

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Who took the picture though? /s

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What pisses me off most is the misuse of pov. If it were pov I'd only be looking at one fucking person. Porn gets it right, why can't tiktok???

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At least this time it's not the company I work for.

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I can imagine a scenario where I don’t mind open offices, all it takes is picturing a job where I never have to focus and my coworkers and I never have to take part in calls or online meetings. Oh, and I’d have to like my coworkers and not enjoy the prairie dog style chats.

Sigh, I miss cubicles… At least I can turn my hearing aids off.

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I worked over the holidays and I enjoyed it. It was chill and I got paid to do basically no work. I could have taken it as a holiday but chose not to.

I don't get why people have such an entitlement over what they're doing during paid hours. If I'm paid a good amount idc what I'm doing or where I'm doing it.

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- Rush hour traffic in big cities is like 1.5 hours each way. 3 hours of your life gone to hang out in an empty office.
  
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  ...if it's a holiday, there's definitely less traffic than usual.
  
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  Where I'll watch 10 hours of YouTube and get paid enough to afford several days of... "pleasure".
  
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Time for some Nerf!

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I really don't mind the open office. It's a good excuse not to work hard /s

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Open office floor layouts are horrible for those that need to get "into the zone" and grind through work. Nothing like being forced to hearing about somebody's "Epic" drunk'n weekend.

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