>>15125

Working from home isn't for everyone. My job is completely WFH, being self employed, but at a friend's workplace, they've scaled back WFH because they have found that many employees and teams are more productive after all when they're working in-house. He's told me that now if you ask to work from home regularly for a significant part of the week, you have to have good reasons, such as childcare, health problems or similar things. They'll then do a four week trial, after which your performance is reviewed before you're greenlit to do it permanently. They also no longer allow more than a third of a team's members to work from home at any given time.

>>15130
>they have found that many employees and teams are more productive after all when they're working in-house.

Flies in the face of most of what I've experienced and read about the subject. Getting rid of the commute alone saves employees a tremendous amount of time and stress.

>>15131

It probably depends on the industry and the kind of work you actually do.

All jobs that can be done from home with no loss of productivity are non-jobs. Fake jobs. Economic hallucinations of a job.

Doctor can't work from home. Supermarket can't work from home. Mechanic can't work from home. Plasterer can't work from home. Any job that has "admin" in the title? Literally doesn't exist. You are not contributing to productivity, you only have a job because everybody's afraid of the implosion it would cause if you were all unemployed. You are a recipient of benefits but nobody has had the decency to tell you.

This is one of my trademark completely hyperbolic and reductive takes, but that little twitch of indignation it gives you is because you know there's still a nugget of truth to it.

>>15150
Website repairman can work from home (although I wasn’t allowed to because of other duties). If you want a non-job, all sales jobs are non-jobs and this is true. The sales people at my work don’t even ring people; they just sit there and wait for customers to come to them. They get commission for doing the same thing that you do on the till in Asda.

>>15151

How socially capable do you need to be to be a salesman? I would be physically incapable of doing the "why don't we go ahead and add the premium package on" sort of spiel, but I can pretend very well to be personable and will be able to answer actual questions about whatever I'm selling in great detail.

>>15130

There's no way I could WFH because I have a practical job, but even the thought of it sends me a bit mental. When I was at uni I had to do all my work in the library as I simply couldn't get into work mode in my living space. I even thought about renting office space for it, despite obviously not being able to afford it, such is my need for compartmentalising work.

I've never had an office job though, so probably I'd get used to it or install a David Cameronesque gypsy caravan in my garden if the alternative was a cubicle surrounded by people called Sandra.

>>15152

>I would be physically incapable of doing the "why don't we go ahead and add the premium package on" sort of spiel

Broadly speaking, that's what they pay salespeople for. You don't need commission and incentives to just be helpful, you need it to compensate for the death of your soul. The job of a car salesman isn't to sell you a car, it's to sell you a finance package and high-margin add-ons, which is where the dealership actually make their money.

Things are a bit different in business-to-business sales, because products and services are often extremely complex and customised to a particular client's needs, but there's still a fairly strong adversarial element; the obvious example is that most B2B suppliers don't publish prices, because the price of anything is "as much as we reckon we can squeeze out of your procurement department".

>>15150

I don't want to make a value judgement about "non-jobs", but I will observe that any job that can be done from home is top of the list for jobs that will soon be done by AI. If your boss only interacts with you via email, they could just as easily interact with a similarly-skilled AI agent.

>>15154

>Things are a bit different in business-to-business sales

This is where I think I'd be in with a chance, because I don't give a fuck about overcharging a business, if anything that would breathe new life into my soul. But as the only product knowledge I have is aircraft parts, there's probably limited opportunities for me.

>>15155

The UK has a lot of aviation parts manufacturers and suppliers and aircraft leasing companies, all of whom have a sales team. Unfortunately sales experience nearly always trumps product knowledge, so you'd probably be looking at a relatively junior role with a salary in the £25k-£35k range. On the plus side, once you did have a bit of sales experience you'd have a skillset that could transfer to pretty much any area of commercial sales.

>>15155
You sound very similar to me. You could do pre-sales or something like that, which really is not a job in any way but is perfect for your situation. I used to do lead generation for printer products in a call centre, and while it was the very bottom tier of employment, I was utterly sick at it. You get paid fuck all, but it’s a job you can walk into off the street and quit after two weeks if you don’t like it.

Be very careful with any sales job in a call centre, however, because while you can just walk in and out of an infinite sequence of these jobs, they don’t expect you to stay and it’s almost impossible to sell anything. The so-called top salespeople in those offices just take the old sales leads off people who have quit, and that’s why they always seem to be ringing people who actually want to buy stuff while you are being told by receptionists to piss off all day for a living.

You talk to loads of colourful people as an estate agent.

I've been in touch with an OAP in his early 80s, who is planning to sell his house to go into assisted living with his wife, but he hasn't quite found the right place.

So I rang him today, two weeks since the last time, as we had agreed.


- So how have you been?

- (in a watered down Manc accent) Is that an honest question? You are asking me how I've been?

- erm, yes... yes, I suppose it is *headscratch*

- Well, my back is fucking killing me, the doctor isn't sure if the ulcers on my leg mean he'll have to amputate, I can't get it up anymore, and my wife has onset dementia. What do you think? Is that enough of an update?

I tried to be comforting, and he told me that he is indeed still interested in selling the house, possibly even through me, once he's found a place to go. But we very quickly left it at that and he hung up.

There are days when you're more a social worker than an estate agent.

>>15158

I once worked for a call centre that booked NHS appointments. I feel where you're coming from, though there it's perhaps more expected.

>>15159

I don't mind people telling me their personal misery. If you're not prepared to hear that kind of thing from a client, then maybe the estate business isn't for you.

I still enjoy what I do. But the key to being good at it, in the long run, is to not just see the money, but to also have a genuine interest in people's life stories. The majority of them will pick up on that, and that kind of human touch can be your unique selling point as an estate agent that they'll end up entrusting with selling their property.

>>15158

There's been a few times now I've had to make deliveries to people who frankly need help. Proper hoarder cases like from Life of Grime, usually they are elderly or disabled and they just have nobody to help them sort their shit out, but their houses are fucking biohazards. They'll need me to carry their stuff up stairs or whatever because they can't do it themselves, and I'll do it because it would be harsh as fuck not to, and usually stop for a bit more of a chat than your would with anyone else, because I'm probably the only human they have interacted with for weeks.

But some of them, you can kind of tell how they ended up that way. Old geezers who will get rude and mildly abusive towards you because you put a box down in the wrong place next to their bowl of rotting cat food left out for a cat they haven't seen in years or whatever, at which point it's tempting to think, "Well you can get to fuck then, I am under no obligation to do anything further than fling it over your doorstep." But obviously, you do have to bear in mind that like I said, that's likely symptomatic of their entire predicament in a nutshell.

>>15161

To me, there's two kinds of old people. Those who are bitter about the whole world and their situation in life, and they'll spend their days constantly moaning about a million different things. And then there are the ones who get more chill and easy going the older they get.

I'm 50 now and I'm perhaps not that far from that fork in the road, but I can only hope I'll end up as happy and serene as some of the pensioners I know. I was quite an angry young man in my 20s and throughout much of my 30s. Which is another way of saying I was cripplingly unhappy with myself. But I can honestly say I've turned a corner. I'm happier in middle age than I could ever hope to be at 25.

Scottish guy on this call apologised for his accent at the start. That's not even close to a problem, the problem is his mic sounds like he dipped it in cooking oil. He probably did, you know, to deep fry it afterwards.

That last bit was very hack, I'm sorry everyone.

>>15163
"Youre accent's fine mate, your mike sounds like it's been battered"

Anyone else's MS Outlook turned all pink and purple in the browser? I don't have anything against Prince but it's a very gendered experiance.

>>15165

Maybe switching to Thunderbird is a good idea after all.

>>15165
Mine is the same shade of equally gendered blue that it's always been. Your computer must just have turned gay.

There's been air con wars this week, which essentially boil down to "the skinny people feel cold but the fat people are still too warm."

Potential buyer for a property was all like "where do I sign?" at the viewing earlier this week. Four-bedroom suburban family home for just shy of £550,000. He was going to talk to his bank and pretty much told me he'd have it "all sewn up" by the end of the week. I was a bit suspicious when he didn't return my voice mails yesterday, but today and really since yesterday evening he's flat out ghosting me.

You don't spend long working in the estate business without dealing with people just like that. It happens every so often. But it's still annoying. Have your head straight if you can and want to afford a place, before your bank tells you the obvious. I'm still guessing that that's what happened, but yeah. It isn't complicated.

Thing is, nobody will ever tell you that they can't afford a property after all. IF they'll still talk to you, they'll tell you this, that, and the other about how they suddenly have doubts "if it's right for them". When in reality, lack of money and funds is the main reason 90 percent of the time, while they'll honestly admit to it not even five percent of the time.

>>15169

Sounds more like just an average chancer to me.

It's been well over a decade but I still recognise that archetype from my days as a retail slave at Maplin's. It was always asian guys who would come in and act like they were after the highest end CCTV kit you could muster, money no object, and you'd give them the spiel because you had to, knowing full well they weren't going to. Then at the end it was always "Sound kid, I'll be back to buy it later on tonight yeh? Just gotta see me brother Abdul for the money innit".

You knew full well all they wanted is for you to be their live in person Google search and give them all the technical info about megapixels and hard drive space, so they could then order it off the internet. I would imagine a similar thing is happening with your and these prospective buyers. They're just using you for a more detailed snoop around a fancy house than RightMove can give, and bend your ear for a bit of free advice.

That said, some people are just addicted to bullshitting and I don't understand why, but it is what it is.

>>15170

The classic con, getting an estate agent to show you around a place then going away to order the house on the internet for cheaper.

>>15171

That's why any estate agent worth their salt only does sole agency, and plays it close to the vest and doesn't reveal the seller's identity until you're well into the process. And courts have ruled repeatedly that even if a potential buyer then tries to bypass you, or maybe even manages to contact the seller directly through Internet OSINT, they still have to pay you commission, especially if you as the sole-agency estate agent were the buyer's first point of contact with regards to that property.

What is even the point of estate agents in the age of the internet? I'm struggling to think of a more parasitical profession.

>>15174 Mine did the tedious legwork of filtering out fuckwits to select someone who would actually complete, then being quite good at chivying people along, necessary when solicitors bill by the hour, not by the result. They also did a better job of the advert than I would have. I don't particularly resent their fees, in hindsight. Certainly not as much as stamp duty, which is a weird tax that seems to make moving house (for a job, or whatever reason) even more eyewatering. Wouldn't some kind of gains tax (at sale) rather than a flat tax on purchase be better? dunno, obviously. Help FTBs, rein in (or at least share with the state) crazy house prices rises, no?

>>15174

>>15175 lad is right. What many people underestimate is the sheer amount of time and effort that it takes to market and then sell a property. You can fully expect having to deal with up to 20 or more people, of which ten will be complete duds (we call them "tourists" in the business), five will be iffy but still take up your time, and another three to five will be actual contenders, of whom you then hope the seller will pick the right one, who won't call you the day before and call the whole thing off.

If you think you can do all of that yourself, fine. I'm not going to convince you otherwise. It's easier than ever before to sell your house without help from an estate agent. But going by the properties I've sold, estate agents still have their place today. One clientele is elderly folk who don't have a son or daughter close by who can do it for them. And then you've got people like business executives who are so tied up in their job that they simply don't have the time. Or maybe they have to move for their job on relatively short notice. And then, people who simply feel daunted by the idea of showing their home to 20 people, and all the legal and procedural steps you have to take to sell your house.


>Help FTBs, rein in (or at least share with the state) crazy house prices rises, no?

One reason why the property market has spiralled is that you can just flip a home very shortly after buying it without any ramifications. Selling a property again at a profit after one year is just as much tax free as selling it after ten years. There are countries that have a minimum holding period for real estate. Meaning if you sell your property before that period is up, the nominal profit from the sale is taxable income. Italy has a holding period of five years, and Germany even has ten years. France has a more graduated model where the tax you pay on your sale decreases with the number of years. The effect is that in those markets, buyers and sellers see a property much more as a long-term investment, which then also often means that property markets don't spike as much during property bubbles as they do in countries without a minimum holding period.

I'm happy to take silly amounts of commission on heavily overpriced properties during market bubbles, but being on the frontline, I also see what it does to young families who are struggling to simply get a decent place for them to live. So I'd be on board with introducing a holding period like in Italy, Germany or France.

>>15176
When I wanted to buy a house, the local estate agent company for the area I was moving to were the ones selling a house I really liked the look of and could just about afford. I emailed them to ask for a viewing. No reply. I phoned them and they told me to email. Still nothing. In the end, I put in a bid on the house, offering the asking price, and they never even acknowledged it. Lastly, I phoned up another time and told them I wanted to increase my bid to the asking price + £2000, but only if they got back to me the same day. Within an hour, they called back to reject my offer on the house I’d never seen but really wanted.

For the house I bought, I asked when I could come and see it, and they said 11am on a Tuesday. I said that wasn’t convenient. They said it was then or never, because they’d have sold the house by 11:30. So I went.

Sorry if I’ve told either of those stories before. My point is: maybe you’re an estate agent because you’re just super-gay for houses, but one downside of the house price boom is that it has turned the estate agent profession into a magnet for the most inept and worthless get-rich-quick parasites in society. I assume the hardest part of your job is convincing people you aren’t like that, because I think everyone who has tried to buy a house has a story like mine.

>>15177

>but one downside of the house price boom is that it has turned the estate agent profession into a magnet for the most inept and worthless get-rich-quick parasites in society.

I'm not going to disagree with you at all on that. You're absolutely right. Because for starters, the estate business, unlike many others, has a very low learning curve in relation to what you can earn if you commit yourself to it. Practically everybody lives somewhere if they're not homeless, either they rent a flat or they own a house, so there are few people who've got no concept at all of property. It's recommended to get some additional formal training, but you can manage without it.

As you said, it's been very easy to make money in the property market the last 10 to 15 years or so, so even Johnny Big Bollox who left school without his GCSEs and was selling mobile phones until last month has a fair shot at earning a living.

And accordingly, many estate agents have no idea at all about things like customer service. But that, in turn, also means that if you do, and if word goes around that you treat your clients politely and kindly, then you've got a selling point that sets you apart from a good 70 percent of your competitors. It also doesn't hurt to have a solid business background, like I do.

All that said, the pay as an estate agent isn't spectacular. As a typical, non-management employee at an estate business who does the daily work of helping people buy and sell houses, £25K-£30K is your ceiling unless you've been in the profession for some time. Being self employed can pay considerably more, but it'll depend on your ability to attract higher value properties and clients.

>>15178

Is there a dress code that says you have to dress like Your Dad's Best Friend or is there another reason for all the pink shirts?

>>15179

No, no dress code, but you tend to dress conservatively. Because you and your client are dealing with a lot of money, it's best to do whatever you can to project trustworthiness.

But there are limits. A nicer late-model car is fine and will suggest that you are successful at what you do. But even if you can afford it, don't drive a Porsche to a viewing. Because nobody likes a cunt in a Porsche, and people will think you're just some money grubbing arsehole.

>>15180

Why did you all drive Minis in the 00s?

>>15181

Everybody did. From hairdressers to event managers.

I've always hated them with passion, even before I became an estate agent. On holiday in Tenerife one time, they offered us a free hire car upgrade from a Renault Megane to a Mini, and I refused, only to be swayed by my girlfriend's very disappointed look on her face. I guess it's more a car for women. Not sure if that's why I personally dislike it, but oh well.

Here’s a question about estate agents: how much is it like Homes Under the Hammer? I know that’s auctions rather than selling houses, but the people on there are so soul-destroying. Do estate agents deal with families and first-time buyers more often, or is it 90% private landlords buying their 20th or 30th house?

I ask partly because Homes Under the Hammer is on TV right now and I hate it, but also because I’m curious how much of it is repeat business. When my boiler fell apart as soon as I’d bought my house, predictably, all the heating engineers I called were dicks because they know you’ll only ring them once every 5-10 years. The plumbers were all nice and helpful and friendly, because people always need plumbers so repeat business is a good thing to build up. Most people almost never buy a house, which is why incompetent vermin can do it for years, but “here’s Mahmoud from Leicester who bought the property, speaking to Dion Dublin” probably does limit himself to just the good estate agents.

>>15184

Property shows are usually a dramatised or glamourised version of reality, like most reality TV.

What kind of clientele you deal with really depends on your niche. But if you are in residential property and help people buy and sell homes, then you really meet all kinds. I've sold a buy to let, two-bedroom flat to a company boss who was looking to put a cool £180K of his own money into a long-term investment. And just this March, I sold a modest four-bedroom house to a young family who were first-time buyers.

You do get people who have built their own little property empire, either in reality or in their mind, and who fancy themselves the biggest and most cunning property sharks around. Most of them are absolute cunts to deal with, not least because they try to tell you how to do your job, because, hey, they've got five properties already, so what do I know as an estate agent.

Another kind of buyer I don't really like dealing with are the ones who are mortgaged to the hilt and can just about, by the skin of their teeth, afford the property, or not. You get loads of nitpicking from them, they'll blow minor defects and damage of a property completely out of proportion and try to hustle the seller for a few grand at every turn. Like one time, somebody at a viewing said that because all the water taps and fixtures were from 1990, the year the house was built, surely he'd have to install new ones, and that should cost a good £5,000 for the whole house. So I said, "look, this house has two bathrooms and a kitchen sink. And a water outlet in the back garden and in the laundry room. Are you trying to tell me that if you shop for half a dozen water taps at Homebase, you'll walk out five grand lighter?".

Nowadays, not many people can just buy a place outright, with today's property prices. And that's fine. But don't make the seller and the estate agent feel like it's our fault that you've got no financial wiggle room. You knew the asking price the moment you read the ad, so it's up to you to figure out if you've got enough money before you go to see the property.

There's a lass at work who runs marathons and goes to the gym several times a week, and she's looking to lose a bit of weight for a wedding in a few weeks where she'll be a bridesmaid.

She sits next to this obese lass who has all sorts of health issues for being overweight, and she keeps giving (unsolicited) advice on diet and exercise to her. I mean, it'd be like getting babysitting tips from Gary Glitter.

>>15188
It’s like how the town’s best cobbler has children with worn-out shoes, because he’s too busy doing everyone else’s shoes. You wouldn’t want weight-loss advice from a thin person; what do they know about needing to lose weight?

>>15189
I dunno, I don't feel like I'd want health tips from someone who can get out of breath from going up a flight of stairs.

>>15190
I'm not sure - one way or the other the fat person has felt an extreme of diet where the most the fitter person has is dairy bloat from a throth-uccino. Discipline lacking ofcourse but what're you really trying to learn? Tips and tricks about engery/weight ratios and recipes, or advice on how to sludge it at the gym? I'd rather eat well enough that saving food for later becomes a conscious choice. I see that happening far easier if the prompt was coming from someone who clearly appreciates food. Fat bakers get more business, must do.

>>15191
>Fat bakers get more business, must do.
They're definitely better stockists. Thin bakers will often sell out before EoD but fat bakers always have rolls.

>>15188

I used to be obese, I assure you, fat people know more about how to lose weight than anyone, because it's very easy to research how to do it, and very hard to actually consistently do it. There's a good five to ten years in most fat people's lives where they might as well have a degree in sports science, but still eat 30 bags of crisps after the gym.

Blob trees and mood mountains.

The gist is you get shown an image and you have to point to the character in the image who represents you so you can all talk about how you feel. I hate this exercise not only because it's a lie and you have to express yourself in a pre-set template of office acceptable emotions but because it's used by lazy people to pad out the meetings they run.

By all means these exercises are mandated and everyone treats them as a bit of a joke when really you might find out how someone is doing down the pub but there's something about just slotting one into a deck and having people spend 5-10 minutes of their lives talking about it that irks me. Not least because if I ever have to run a meeting I'll always try something new and different which even if it doesn't work energises people with novelty and also because I've yet to see anyone who actually enjoys doing them.

When someone starts emailing or messaging like a situation is of reactor meltdown importance and then gives you total radio silence once you engage. Are we all going to die if this isn't done by half-four or not?

First time in the office in about 12 days and I've had a runny nose pretty much ever since I came in.

My organisation recently had an open call for everyone to pitch ideas for new innovation, that if picked up would go through multiple rounds to refine with additional resource.

I decided to pick up on an idea I'd had for awhile based on interactions with other people but hadn't got anywhere due to a lack of capacity. I told my team that I was working on something and I worked at it in my own time as a passion project because I felt it was important and a missed opportunity. On the deadline day I shared my idea with my team and didn't get any comments at the time.

Today in my 1-1 with my line manager they told me off for doing it, said that I should have asked for their help, told me that I should not have spent time my doing it and that they can find me something else to do if I have spare time. My boss also picked at minutia in my idea itself and pointed out that I hadn't spoken to other teams even though for the initial pitch I wasn't expected to and I explained within my pitch that this was to be explored. It was very hurtful after I'd worked on it and I haven't even heard back from the review panel yet.

Why are some people like this and why do they always seem to be in management?

>>15202

Translation: "Why did you keep this obviously good idea to yourself and not let me swoop in to steal the credit for it, you bastard. You were supposed to do all the work for no reward so I can talk it up to my boss and make it sound like it was my own."

Your manager is a self serving cunt. That's by and large how you get to be a manager.

It's the paramount cruelty of our times that only managers are permitted to be passive aggressive shitbags in emails.

>>15203

Some companies just purposely stifle independent thought. Because potentially, ideas like that can upset the status quo and challenge authority of those who are above you in the hierarchy. And there's also something like respecting the proper channels.

Reading otherlad's story, maybe he should have spent his time working on the actual tasks at hand, and if he had free time left after completing them, he should have told them that he was ready to take on other tasks that they saw fit to hand to him. Then again, if by "in his own time" he meant that he was working on his ideas during hist time off work while sat at home, then they can just go fuck themselves because what you do after you've clocked off isn't any of their business.