The worst part of working from home is now haunting reopened offices
&quot;Emergency&quot; WFH at my workplace have been slashed, everyone back in full since the start of the month. No reason publically given, been privately told &quot;not about people like you, but some others have taken a 2 year vacation so management is fed up&quot;. I have emails from the CEO personally thanking me for my commitment in going way over what was expected when basically saving the institution during lockdown, so now I also feel kind of personally insulted and victim of ham-handed collective punishment.<p>I hate being back: My gear at home is better, I have to work in uncomfortable clothes and at a room temperature that makes me sweat within minutes. I have to work in an N95 mask since we are packed in small 4 person cubicles and COVID numbers are still too high in my area. I&#x27;m spending more on gas and wasting time in traffic. I&#x27;m eating worse quality food. I keep getting interrupted by exactly those sames guys that took the 2 year vacation. I feel hard to concentrate and I&#x27;m angry all the time so my output has suffered.<p>I keep sending IMs to people I work with, we never need to actually meet.<p>Now you have to apply for a new more restrictive WFH scheme. Those wanting to sign up to it had a meeting with our direct manager where he tried to discourage us with thinly veiled threats about &quot;special performance measuring procedures&quot; and trite arguments about how it is unfair not being here for the people that want to come.<p>We applied the same, but now HR is telling us that they can&#x27;t approve our WFH requests since they can&#x27;t guarantee that our screen setup at home is safe and we haven&#x27;t completed a &quot;Data Display Device Setup and Handling&quot; course in the last three years. They don&#x27;t know when the course will be offered again. I&#x27;ve been programming for more than 35 years now, so again I kind of feel doubly insulted, both by the bare faced obstructionism and ridiculous particular hurdle.<p>I&#x27;d leave, I even feel I&#x27;m morally in the wrong for not leaving. But the thing is that the pay is good, that I&#x27;m of an age prone to experiencing ageism in the job market, and also this is a place where I have ample slack for tuning my output and inmerse myself in side projects or personal improvement, so their loss...