>>27223

>the emotional and mental health benefits of mixing with colleagues

I don't know. To me, not having to deal with coworkers in an office environment every minute of my workday has been the most enjoyable part of this whole crisis. My mental health has actually increased from that.

>>27223
It is shameful that they're attempting to use messaging around people working from home might lose their jobs, or its less efficient because people don't work as hard - it's pure presenteeism and will backfire even more badly on them than everything else has. Many peoples/companies experience is quite different - people are MUCH more efficient working from home, it's gone the other way where for some classes of jobs people are putting far more hours in - too many.

The mental health angle is important, but not important enough. The ship has sailed - in the same way that e-commerce has fundamentally affected the high street shops, this virus and long period of WFH has fundamentally affected many classes of job, particularly those we previously considered "white collar". People are not going to go back to commuting again.

I am not going back to the office every day. Nor are most people. The government needs to deal with that and not scaremonger.

They are looking increasingly incapable and vulnerable - there'll be a u-turn about three days after Sturgeon announces a more sensible approach.

I'd rather not have to spend 1-2 hours a day commuting to and from work and having to rub shoulders with grumpy cunts and school kids on a sweaty bus.

>>27226

That's another thing you have to factor in. Your commute working from home is 30 seconds, from the kitchen where you grab a cup of coffee to your desk or livingroom table. Unless you really commute by long-distance train and find the time to get out your laptop and work on your e-mail and spreadsheets, travelling to work every day is really wasted time where you do nothing but waste fossil fuel and expose yourself to other people's pathogens.

Commuting to work is really mostly a 19th and 20th century invention, and became widespread in the age of mass production factories and ever-growing large corporations in Britain. Unless you still operate a machine on a factory floor or are an NHS healthcare worker or a flight attendant or a lab technician, there is a good chance that nearly all of your daily work can be done from home with today's technology.

As has been said, typical government scaremongering. And it's illogical, because how many times have they told us that we need to do something about our congested city centres, and now that inner city traffic has actually decreased, they are telling us that cities must not become ghost towns. Make up your minds, people.

Getting rid of mask wearing might help.

>>27230
>Your commute working from home is 30 seconds

My train journey is an hour each way - thats when it is all working perfectly - given travelling to/from the stations and waiting around, I get almost 3 hours per day back when WFH. That makes a massive difference to my quality of life. There are hundreds of thousands of people who will be in a similar position.

>>27231
Oh behave. If you want to debate that then start another thread on it.

All this because poor old Pret a Manger have been savaged by the lack of rushed businessmen and call centre workers to buy their overpriced sandwiches. Disgraceful.

If there's one good thing to come out of it it's that people might realise having a Tory government is like having your slightly dim Year 10 head of year in charge of the country- The only thing they care about is if you're working. It doesn't matter if the work you're doing is any good, or even if it needs to be done at all, but above all it's important that you're working.

Did anyone else hear that radio ad campaign a few weeks ago with the totally not subliminal slogan LET'S GET BACK TO WHAT WE LOVE. They've been at this for a while now because the absolute last thing they want is a progressive, positive change in the shape of Britain's workforce.

Eerily similar to "We’re Going to Have to Let Some People Die So the Stock Market Can Live", innit?

Are they still doing the £120~ fine for parents who don't send their kids back to school? I saw the headline on a discarded paper the other day so don't know the details. On the face of it that seems like pure extortion; forcing lower income people to risk the health and lives of their families or pay a not insignificant amount.

>>27224
From speaking with people it seems that a lot of larger companies intend to move to working 2 days in the office, 2 days WFH and 1 day where you can choose. I expect a hybrid like this will become the norm.

>>27232
Out of interest, how did you end up with that commute? Buying a house outside of London?

>>27237

Any type of commute that involves rail to bus transfer, two buses, or similar kind of fucking around because the office isn't directly located in a city centre but rather in some obnoxious outlying area that you can't travel directly to, will be like that.

I'm a lab tech and my trust is intending to relocate the regional pathology labs into a single "super-lab" in the nearest big city. It's going to be an absolute disaster, and they'll never be able to recruit staff, anyone who doesn't happen to live around the corner will be looking at a rail-bus or a bus-bus commute. The question was raised if they're allocating land for staff parking and the answer was a flat no.

So, fuck that.

>>27233
> The only thing they care about is if you're working.
If that were true they wouldn't have had a lock down.

>>27239
They did their best not to have one.

>>27236

It would really be a win-win. What companies care about is productivity. If working from home two or three days out of the week means your employees can get more work done, partly because they are happier due to not having to brave a stressful office environment every day, then that improves productivity right there. It also means they can scale down their fixed cost, because they can move from a fixed-desk workplace model to flex-desk, at least for part of their staff, and thus probably save on monthly office space rent.

That said, most people only take jobs with long commutes because they can't find a job in their field near where they live or because they can't afford to live where they work. I have a friend who lives in Luton and is an archaeologist, and she works full time at a museum in London, mainly doing visitor tours. There is positively no work for archaeologists in Luton (there isn't much in London either, to be fair), but her salary would also never be enough for a flat or a house in London. It's about 70 minutes door to door for her every day by train, but she is fine with it.

>>27238 Some of the buildings will get chopped into housing, if the commercial customers dry up. With any luck, we can have both WFH and more intermingled work / home areas.
Of course, what will actually happen will be a fuckup of monumental proportions as commercial landlords apply pressure to stop their world collapsing. I have no idea what form this will take.

>>27245
Not sure what it's like in the UK but Louis Rossmann has been doing some real estate videos and has mentioned that landlords in NYC are hiking up the price for rent when there is fuck all business due to people working from home.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu3PipmF2Ng

>>27247

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/19/londons-greenwich-market-stalls-face-closure-following-huge-rent-increase

100% of my social interaction is at sork, luckily I can't work from homd, would commit suicide if I did

>>27248 "In a letter to stallholders, Knight Frank said it has been forced to put up rents because the market is “running at a considerable loss”, with fewer stalls operating and only four days of trading a week. It says the losses are “simply not sustainable” for the owner, Greenwich Hospital."

'Fuck you, pay me', they said to a completely mobile customer base who, even if on a lease, will just say fuck off, and fold.
Shut in a month?

Commercial landlords have always preferred voids to rent reductions - the former is a temporary blip, the latter revalues their estate which, if they're running on borrowed money, can fuck them. Seems daft-but-sane.

>>27234
>Eerily similar to "We’re Going to Have to Let Some People Die So the Stock Market Can Live"

It's not really worked. Most of the developed world market indices have bounced back whereas the FTSE had a slight recovery and then levelled out way below what it was before the crash.

>>27288

Just goes to show what I was saying when we went into lockdown. A massive, massive chunk of the UK economy is based on either pointless, needless make-work and sheer vapid consumerism. That's the kind of stuff that's going to really struggle bouncing back.

Personally, I'm ready to go back to work and we all know the malingerers will be protected. My profession allowed for working from home before the pandemic and there's a definite decline in productivity if you reach 3 days wfh not just in focus but because you can't walk over to someone's desk.

Jokes on them. I pack a lunch and cycle because I'm stingy.

>>27289
That's not how the stock-market works.

>>27290

>That's not how the stock-market works.

Go on then, Rishi, elucidate us.

>>27291
He's right - it's not how the stock market works. The market is based on sentiment, not fundamentals. >>27289 can pretend to be I-told-you-so about it on his analysis of those businesses, whether right or not, it makes no difference to how the markets work, and therefore the charts shown are specious.

All the people working from home wanking themselves off about how much money they're saving and how much better their lives are is making me very bitter.

>>27293
Just wait until they need to get some printing done.

>>27293
Give us the other view then.

>>27295
It's not another view, my job just doesn't allow me those benefits. The relative value of my job has therefore decreased.

>>27294
I had to print something out, sign it and scan it for work. My bastard HP printer, which by design I never use, decided it was out of black ink and wouldn't just print in dark blue. Cue me trying to order some and finding out that printer ink was (is?) sold out everywhere. In the end the best deal I got was from a Gibraltar-based eBay seller for £35 quid or thereabouts, about double the price. I'm tempted to see if I can somehow claim that on expenses.

>>27297
Why didn't you just scan your signature then Photoshop it in? You could even plop the text onto a scanned blank piece of paper for effect.

I visited Central London today for the first time in five months - quite incredible how quiet it was.

I was the only person in the train carriage on the way there. Waterloo in the middle of the day was like the very end of the day when there are only two trains left, and its a few lonely people figuring out how they now get home. I had a (great) lunch in a restaurant, where my companions and I were the only patrons.

What was startling was talking to my friends, who were a mixture of married/older and younger/single - there was an obvious generational gap between those of us who have saved money/gained time during the lockdown and happy to stay in it and those who were suffering very badly and itching to "go out" again. I don't know how we resolve that tension, but it was obvious and stark.

I've heard figures of transport being 40% back to normal, with trains/buses moving to 90% when the schools go back - anecdotally it was nowhere near that today - more like 10% of what I would expect to see. We might be back to normal-ish in twelve months time, but we're going to be nowhere near normal in any part of 2020 and I was struck by the noises coming out this morning encouraging us to go back to work/we're all going to lose our jobs, and what I saw on the ground.

I am very excited by the societal reset that this presents - although it was weird seeing London like that, I feel a lot more optimistic that the virus will drive lasting, positive change in our working, living and travelling habits. We are not going back to "normal"; everything has changed for good.

>>27300
Fucking over 65s, again. Oxygen thieves.

>>27301
>over 65s
Never before have so few done so much to squander the prospects of so many as our outgoing pensioner generation. The prolonging of human life through medicine was a mistake.

>>27290
>there's a definite decline in productivity if you reach 3 days wfh not just in focus but because you can't walk over to someone's desk

I'm finding it great not to be pestered every 10 minutes by someone asking me a dumb question that they can't be bothered to try and figure out themselves. They still call me, but it's now only if they've got something important to ask.

I'm a lot more productive with fewer distractions from doing my actual job, especially not having to sit in so many pointless meetings. For the social aspect Slack, Teams and instant messaging means I'm still keeping in contact with people.

>>27299
>there was an obvious generational gap between those of us who have saved money/gained time during the lockdown and happy to stay in it and those who were suffering very badly and itching to "go out" again. I don't know how we resolve that tension, but it was obvious and stark.

Most people I know who are itching to be able to go into the office are those who don't really have the space to set up a proper workstation because they're either in a house share or living with their parents. If you have your own place it's great.

>>27301>>27303
In their defence they're not experiencing what it's like so they're being fed the media narrative that loads of people are on a jolly and refusing to go back to work because of how good they're having it.

I thought the Tories were in favour of ghost towns.

>>27303
>so few

Well that's the problem, isn't it? It's not 'few', there are fucking loads of them -- a boom, one could say.

The UK economy could lose almost half a trillion pounds of output if workers fail to return to their offices, a study estimates.

Douglas McWilliams, a former chief economic adviser to the Confederation of British Industry, has warned the economy will not return to its pre-pandemic size until 2025 if home working continues in its current form, which would add up to at least £480bn in lost activity.
McWilliams said: “‘If we carry on working at home when at least half want to return, we run the risk of turning into a 90% economy with GDP stuck a 10th down off its peak.”

McWilliams added that the damage from a permanent shift to home working would be severe because the economic activity generated by commuting and socialising could not be replicated by people working from home. However, the CEBR forecast is based on nothing changing with home working, which McWilliams stressed “more likely it will”.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/30/no-return-workers-offices-could-cost-uk-economy-480bn-pounds-cebr

Project Fear strikes again.

>>27363
Can we compare the economy to a god that demands human sacrifices yet?

>>27363
>Last week one of the best known, the sandwich chain Pret a Manger, added to the worries about how sustained remote working would impact businesses by saying it planned to cut nearly 2,900 jobs following the desertion of high streets.

If an overpriced high street sandwich shop failed to see the forest for the trees when high streets started imploding a decade ago, I'm not inclined to shed a tear for them now. That goes doubly so for any of the more white collar/City firms in crisis.

I don't know what the future holds but as long as it has fewer mind-numbing commutes and a bit more quality of life, I couldn't give a toss about the state of the economy at large.

>>27365
>Pret A Manger demands go beyond traditional requirements for fast-food workers (such as courtesy, efficiency, and reliability) to such tasks as having "presence", demonstrating a quirky sense of fun, and exhibiting behaviour consistent with being inwardly happy with oneself. Pret A Manger uses mystery shoppers to ensure that employees deploy markers of a positive emotional state. Employees who exhibit markers of latent sadness face consequences such as not having a bonus.

It's about time they went to the wall. That's without mentioning tax avoidance and their ownership structure.

>>27365

Pret angled themselves as the defacto "lunch for workers" chain, and it worked - even a dead high street could support a Pret if there's offices about.

They're a notoriously bad company in terms of management though, so fuck em.

>>27364

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

>>27367
They did, and they were excellent at first - but they are WAY too ubiquitous to survive this as they are and I really don't think they deserve to.

I work(ed) in a particular part of London where there are eighteen (18) branches within a one mile radius of where I work. I'm sure they did that for a reason (they get the business) but it isn't healthy or sustainable.

I didn't realise that when ITZ happened you had to BUY_YOUR_OLIVEPESTOMOZARELLAFOCACCIO

>>27380
Any right thinking person already has most of those things stashed in bulk already.

>Latest figures show that just over a third (37%) of white-collar workers in the UK are back at the office, compared with over three-quarters of employees in Germany, Italy and Spain, and 84% in France.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/01/trickle-not-a-torrent-workers-in-canary-wharf-and-manchester-return-to-the-office

>Civil servants tell staff there is no point coming back to work as a second wave will mean more WFH

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/31/civil-servants-tell-staff-no-point-coming-back-work-second-wave/

>>27420

We're the progressive ones for once. Now if only we could adopt the French work week too...

>>27369
I'm dying to know why there are Betfred shops on three of the four corners of this small block.

>>27422
Go chat with your boss if you want less hours, I'm all good thanks.

>>27425
Fewer.

>>27424
That is appalling - and you already know the answer. I think there should be byelaws protecting people from that kind of thing.

>>27424

High-street bookmakers haven't really been about sports betting for some time. Most of their revenue comes from fixed-odds betting terminals, which are basically slot machines on steroids. As of 2018, the industry was averaging profits of about £1,400 per machine per month. Each shop is only allowed four FOBT machines by law, so in areas with high demand and low rents you'll often see multiple shops in close proximity.

A reduction in the maximum bet size in 2019, combined with the shift to online and mobile gambling since lockdown, means that a lot of these shops are likely to close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_odds_betting_terminal

>>27425

Why?

Before you answer, be aware that I won't accept any answer other than you are a professional blow job quality assessor, Ferarri test driver, or other ridiculous fantasy dream job.

The reason I suspect you're going to give instead isn't actually an answer, because you should already be getting paid more in the first place.

>>27437
I don't think I'd want to be a blowie tester. I bet there'd be lots of grating teeth.

>>27438
>>27437
It would be exhausting and you'd get very sore then very calloused, assuming it is possible to get penis callouses. How many blowjobs a day are we talking? If it's more than three or four you'd start to dread it.

>>27439
>>27438

You know how a taste tester for tea or soft drinks or whatever works, where they just take a sip, swill it around, then spit it out? You can't actually drink the stuff all day long.

You don't actually spaff in their gob as part of the assessment, because that'd affect your judgement of the next dozen. You'd have a checklist of how much tongue work they're doing, if their teeth are getting in the way, if they go for the cheeky bum finger. That sort of thing.

I'd give them a good ten minute window each if it as me, but that might be overly thorough. A good blowie tester can probably give you an accurate rating in as little as three.

>>27440
Nonsense, if you're testing blowies you need to experience their technique from soft to spaff. Just having them go at you for three minutes would be like wine-tasting where somehow you can't smell the aroma or taste the aftertaste.

>>27440
>I'd give them a good ten minute window each if it as me, but that might be overly thorough. A good blowie tester can probably give you an accurate rating in as little as three.

30 seconds max to decide whether they were any good. It's quite obvious from the "off" whether the person is experience or putting any effort in. 3 minutes of a bad one would be torture.

>>27441

I mean fair enough if you want to do it that way, but you're only going to manage three or four appointments in our new utopian 5 hour workday, and the other blowjob rating agencies would drive you out of business with volume alone. You could squeeze more in, but it'd be unfair on the candidates who got you on your refractory period from the last one.

>>27442

I guess if you really want to push the numbers up yeah, but I'm sure there are some people out there who get a case of nerves to start with. I'd be compelled to give them at least a minute to get over the shock of the size of my knob anyway.

>>27444
You're just not going to get an accurate reading beyond the very basic rating of enthusiasm and some or no experience. My method may be slower but at least I'll be able to provide a full review.
Besides, it's not as though I'll be struggling to recruit and keep others to fill the same role for low wages. I believe your approach is a false economy and will give sloppy results.

>>27447

Blow Job Certification and Classification Worker's Union would like a word m8

I think someone would need to suck a variety of dicks to be properly assessed and graded. Someone proficient with an averaged sized dick may struggle with a lengthy or girthy member. Also, I'd imagine men like different things from a blowie.

>>27449

Good point, it'd really have to be more like a British Board of Felatio Certification.

God bless are great nation.

>>27452

My only counterpoint is that covid changed both public perception and circumstances, so I don't think it is purely hypocritical of the rags.

>>27453
I'm fairly sure the top two predate covid, I've seen a much older version of this.

>Downing Street denies existence of back-to-work campaign as office staff stay home

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/03/boris-johnson-rishi-sunak-tax-deal-brexit-local-lockdowns/

If your campaign is overwhelmingly unpopular pretend it never happened.

Pret are now offering a subscription service; up to 5 coffees a day for £20 per month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54012055

>>27463
Not bad on the face of it

>>27464
>>27463

With the aim of increasing peoples' caffiene dependency?

>>27466

It's a desperate effort to increase footfall - if you're coming in several times a day for your "subscription coffee", you might buy a cake or a butty while you're there.

It's not going to save the innumerable branches of Pret that have infested the nation's city centres like petit-bourgeois pustules, but at least they're trying.

>>27463
It's terrible coffee though. When they start a sandwich subscription I AM IN.

I think this kind of thing will catch on.

>>27468

I say on the face of it because it sounds too good to be true.

5 coffees _every day_ at Starbucks would costs >£400 a month.

So I'm guessing there are plenty of caveats to this deal.

How can anyone have 5 coffees a day and not feel like shit and/or blow their arse out?

>>27472

I must drink at least 4 a day, and I think at this point it's the only thing keeping me regular. I tried cutting back a bit ago and it was like my bowels turned to stone.

>>27471
How many people will pop into Pret five times a day? At the very most I imagine it'll be three; one on your way to work, one on your lunch break and one on the way home. Let's say that's fifteen coffees a week so sixty over the space of a month. It does not cost Pret anywhere near £20 in coffee beans, milk, etc., to make sixty coffees; even if they had 150 drinks in a month that's still a healthy gross profit.

It'll create a regular cash flow, it may lead to an uptick in the number of sales of sandwiches and it should increase their market share; if you have a subscription and you want a drink then you'll be more likely to go to Pret and not have to pay anything extra for it rather than going into Costa or Starbucks for it.

>>27475

Fuck Pret and the metro drone urban 6 pound Gyoza box lunch timers. They should have got a job in IT and learned how to make their own cheese and pickle sandwiches.

>>27516
>Gyoza

Get some Pierogi from your local Polski Sklep and bung them in the microwave. They're almost the same thing, and cost a lot less.

I never thought I'd say this but I'm enjoying homeworking less since my kids went back to school. The house is too silent and I'm finding myself easily distracted.

>>27591
There's a primary school behind my flat. I often work from home anyway and before 'rona I used to get annoyed by the sounds of their screaming from the playground when I was trying to work, but the silence really bothered me once it was gone. Now it's back I don't mind it at all.

Work have started bringing the admin teams back to the office. Apparently because some people have grumbled about having to go in they're making those still working at home, including those self isolating for medical reasons, work an extra hour to compensate for it.

>>27703
How can they make you work an extra hour? You should work to whatever hours you are contracted to work.

>>27703
What the fuck? Talk to your union.

>>27711
I suspect I'm getting half the story, but I do know that the admin staff still WFH are working an hour a day longer than those going into the office. It'll probably turn out that those in the office are working 5 hours per week less than they're contracted to.

>>27714

I would guess it's something to do with people not getting full breaks/lunch hours or what have you due to social distancing in the shared areas of the building.

We were doing that for a while at mine but then some unfathomably small minded tedious bint decided to go on a crusade about how some people were unfairly abusing the ability to have a shorter lunch so they could leave early and then it sort of petered out. There's one of them in every workplace isn't there.

>>27703
That's just straight unfair and your employer should be challenged - people WFH are generally putting in far more hours than contracted at the moment.

>>27714
Is this new? Plenty of people were expected to be on their phones or laptops (Phone Guy or not) working on their commute to and fro. It wasn't right then, and it isn't right now.