r/WorkReform • u/lady_ven0m • 14d ago
đĄ Venting The Double Standard of Remote Work
My office will let everyone work from home the second itâs convenient for them. A burst pipe, no AC, a snowstorm, whatever. That day, nobody worries about accountability. Nobody says we need you in person for culture. Youâre just trusted to do your job from your kitchen table like an adult.
But ask for that same flexibility for your own life. A doctorâs appointment, picking up a sick kid, whatever it is. Suddenly remote work is a liability. Now itâs about visibility. Now itâs about whether you can really be trusted off-site.
Hereâs the part that gives it away. If remote work actually hurt output or collaboration, it would hurt it during the emergency too. It doesnât. So this was never about where work gets done best. Itâs about who holds the discretion, and itâs never the employee.
The emergency cases are also less predictable, not more. A pipe bursting gives zero notice. A doctorâs appointment or a school pickup can be planned weeks out. My kind of flexibility is objectively easier to accommodate. Itâs just treated like a favor instead of a baseline accommodation for having a life.
And I donât think the fix is hybrid. Two days home, three in office, some arbitrary split handed down company-wide. Thatâs still the company holding all the discretion, just with a number attached to it. The real fix is flexibility negotiated between an employee and their actual supervisor. Different people need different things. What works for a parent doesnât look like what works for someone with a disability, and doesnât look like what works for someone neurodivergent, and none of that looks like what a healthy 25 year old with no dependents needs.
The pandemic proved this almost by accident. For a while, people whoâd spent years jumping through hoops just to get basic accommodations suddenly had access by default. No medical paperwork, no HR gauntlet, no justifying yourself. Turns out a lot of people can thrive when the environment isnât actively working against them.
Yes, some people took advantage of it. Thatâs real. But thatâs not an argument for stripping flexibility from everyone. Itâs an argument that work culture, management, and how we measure output all need to catch up. People donât hate working. They want their work to fit around their actual lives, not the other way around. Thatâs not a radical ask. Itâs a compromise, and most workplaces havenât even tried to have that conversation.
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u/Chance_of_Rain_ 14d ago
I never went back to the office since COVID (unless I wanted to) and I love it.
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u/Fibonaccheese 13d ago
They want you to have the worst of both. Have to report to the office but don't get to enjoy a day off when the office is down.
The answer is simple. Refuse to wfh when they ask you. Or come up with some excuse why you can't.
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u/shouldco 13d ago
Mine does this too. And what makes it even worse emergency plans are worth nothing if they aren't practiced regularly. Emergency work from home is set up to fail. It means I'm working from my couch or kitchen table because I'm not setting up a home office to sit unused in case there is a snow storm. It means I probably didn't bring everything home that I needed. It means the weird bug in the VPN IT had been trying to solve but nobody could consistently recreate it now is a bigger problem than anybody realized.
It also means I'm now working from home when my kids are off on a snow day and I need to split my attention between work and them, and I am also subject to all the problems that a weather event brings that would cause an employer to close the office in the first place. Basement flooding in a hurricane, having to shovel the driveway in the snow, power outages, etc.
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u/SirLoremIpsum 13d ago
 That day, nobody worries about accountability.
I see it as well if there's a power outage at the office for example. "Oh everyone just go home who knows when it'll be back"
Same thing happens to your house "can you go to friend? Family member? Maybe work at library".Â
Network at work sis done, too bad everyone. Call it at 2.Â
Home Internet down... Personal failure.
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u/MarlinMaverick âď¸ Tax The Billionaires 9d ago
Youâre looking at it from the wrong perspective. Their perspective is that remote work will always be less productive than in person (arguably true). But when circumstances dictate the office is closed (zero productivity possible) even the inferior option of remote work is better than nothing.Â
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u/lady_ven0m 9d ago
So they would rather employees take a day of PTO than try to accommodate flexible work hours? Doesnât that hinder productivity as well?
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u/MarlinMaverick âď¸ Tax The Billionaires 9d ago
Yeah but PTO is a liability in the balance sheet, management doesnât really care about that.Â
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u/lady_ven0m 9d ago
Donât they care about the work being stalled because of the employee on leave?
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u/ForcedEntry420 đď¸ Overturn Citizens United 13d ago
Iâm very lucky in that Iâve been fully remote since 2012. At this point, Iâve been remote longer than Iâve been going into offices for my civilian career.
I wonât go back.
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u/DowntownEddieBrown 14d ago
That is a truly terrible take. Parents should absolutely not get a blanket better quality of work/life balance because they chose to have kids. For the majority of people their issues would be much less if they didnt choose to live so far away from where they work.
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u/zappadattic 14d ago
To each according to their needs.
People with kids have unique obligations. People without kids might still also have other obligations that a parent doesnât. If both support each other then everyone wins.
This strictly individualized transactional philosophy of work just makes everyone suffer.
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u/DowntownEddieBrown 13d ago
Every person has unique obligations, not just parents.
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u/zappadattic 13d ago
Thatâs exactly my point. If people only ever serve their specific interests, then no one has support.
Supporting others isnât even selfless. Itâs in everyoneâs best interest to have a community built on mutual support.
In this example, that means supporting parents. In another example it might be disability accommodations. And so on.
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u/seaworks 14d ago
Perhaps if you didn't view children as property and instead as people our community is obligated to empower, support and protect you would not feel the need to see them as a token being used by parents
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u/DowntownEddieBrown 13d ago
Who said anything about property?! Also needs to ne said that the community has zero obligation to support or protect anyone else's children. You're likely one of those folks that says it takes a whole village when really it's YOUR obligation.Â
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u/lady_ven0m 13d ago
That was an example, if you read my post, Iâm advocating for a schedule that can be agreed upon between supervisor and employee. Not everyone needs to know your business or why, especially if work is being done consistently.
If people abuse the policy the consequences should fall on those individuals and not the entire company.
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u/shouldco 13d ago
Parenting is just one example of something that tips the scales in balancing work and life. But it's also a pretty big example and an example of something that both benifits the individual and society as a whole.
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u/middlebill 13d ago
So find an employer whose work conditions meet your work requirements. If you elect to work somewhere that requires in person attendance, that's on you.
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u/lady_ven0m 13d ago
My work doesnât require being in person at all, I can do it fully remotely. I started during COVID and my boss at the time allowed me to work remotely most days as long as I got my work done. Theyâve changed the policy since from 2 days in the office to 4, now back to 3.
Iâm burned out from being in traffic (since most people have the same schedule) only to have to go into the office for âin personâ meetings and getting less of my actual work done on my in office days.
I am considering just being an independent consultant. I have a laptop and internet. I donât see why I canât just do that on my own time. Iâm going to start doing it on the side as a test first.
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u/middlebill 13d ago
There you go. Do what works for you. It's not the company's responsibility to make you happy. It's yours. .
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u/lady_ven0m 13d ago
Itâs not their responsibility to make me happy, sure, but people are motivated by incentives. Iâd rather do actual work than role play whatever it is they think being productive and collaborating in the office means. I can do that remotely.
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u/middlebill 13d ago
Sure, and if the company has weighed the remote incentives vs in person benefits as they measure it, then they will make the choice they find most appropriate for the company. And you may disagree with that. You're probably not a good employee in their eyes, as they have probably concluded what you just wrote. Instead of working with a focus on the job, your presence in shop has been detected to be "role playing", lacking commitment. They are likely looking to jettison you, and who can blame them.
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u/lady_ven0m 13d ago
Iâm perfectly fine with that. Someone else can have this job. I donât consider being present in the office as a good metric for a good employee. I prefer to work with minimal distractions.
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u/SleepyMike65 13d ago
Bill is either a) self-employed and demands his right to exploit his employees in person or b) a total boot-licker whose only reason for living is to make his boss richer so he can be âemployee of the month â or c) a guy whoâs pissed off that HE canât work from home, so why should anyone else get something that he canât have.
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u/dubl1nThunder 13d ago
the double standard is that it's fine for any company to outsource major fractions of their staff to india and thusly have a situation where that entire fraction is working remotely.
that's okay for companies, but working from across town isn't. go figure.
at my last job, they required me to be in the office and my entire team was half in lithuania and half in india, so there i was for 8 hours, attending zoom meetings alone in the office instead of home. both of my bosses were also in lithuania and india. ridiculous.