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Working from home vs. commuting to work during and after the pandemic

Where do you work during and after the pandemic?

  • I work at home doing office work

    Votes: 24 49.0%

  • I commute to my work place

    Votes: 10 20.4%

  • I am unemployed / a student / a homemaker / retired

    Votes: 1 2.0%

  • I sometimes work from home and sometimes commute to my workplace

    Votes: 14 28.6%
  • Total voters
    49
tripwire said:
[1] They renovated the office for more open space, cutting down on the # of desks, and so the office doesn't have capacity for *everyone* to return all at once anyways.
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They did that for us already before the pandemic, even though most people were expected five days a week. Considering vacations, days out of office, etc., they were already able to cut them down.
 
Tuesdays are definitely busiest at my office. Friday is ghost town.
 
I went to the office today. PATH was busy in the morning and at lunch, about 60 to 70% of the pre-pandemic crowds, but it fell off a cliff and was empty in the late afternoon. Some food court shops are still closing down shortly after 2:00 p.m. where before they would stay open until 4 or 5:00 p.m. to get the late lunchers and people picking up something on the way to take home. It looks many people who go in to the office are leaving for the day early to "log in and finish work when I get home". Several people where I work are doing this, including me today when I saw others do it. I use the 504 to go to and from the office and noticed the afternoon rush is more staggered, starting earlier, but then less crowded overall, maybe only 50% of normal. Morning rush on the 504 on the other hand appears back to about 80% of normal. So obviously there's a discrepancy there with 80% a.m. and 50% p.m. so the staggering of departures out from downtown from 2 to 6:00 p.m. is the only way I can think to explain it.

I'm not sure if that carries to GO because there isn't the continuous choice of departure time early afternoon. It also might be a thing where people who live downtown are trusted to be able to get home quickly, say in less than 30 minutes, and so are allowed to do that (which I imagine would certainly wrankle the long distance commuters and create some office political storms).
 
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It will be an interesting experiment this morning given the weather. I suspect many who have the option of working from home today will do so, and perhaps some managers will accommodate their teams to all stay home.
Sort of a long term projection of mine that days with large numbers of people working from home will become more correlated with bad weather, or uncomfortable weather +/-30 degrees in the summer/winter.
Normally our office would have about a 75% compliment in on Wednesday's, but many people have already posted this morning on Teams they are going to stay home.
 
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I think it also varies depending on the next day's weather forecast, because people want to get their office time in on the good days of the week, so they plan ahead. For me it doesn't matter because I go in 5 days a week even though I don't have to, but interesting to see the patterns becoming clear.

But I would say that there's a general trend that downtown is filling up again, week by week, though that varies by day.
 
My father took his second "COVID holiday" i.e. taking a trip with the money he saved from no longer taking the 407 five-to-ten days a week. I reminded him that most of those savings have been gobbled up by grocery prices, so he's probably even.
 
These days I am prioritizing my days in the office to be the less-crowded days where I have a hope of getting work done in peace.
 
I just like being in the office around other people and wish everyone was there more, and that's been improving lately, especially Tuesday/Thursday. And when there's no thunderstorm in the morning.
 
afransen said:
These days I am prioritizing my days in the office to be the less-crowded days where I have a hope of getting work done in peace.
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Ya, I can't stand a certain few people at my office who still come in only once a week and then use that day mostly for socialising and wandering around chit-chatting, and then demanding I stop and spend 15-20 minutes to catch them up with their "tell me what you've done in the past week".
Uh, would know what I've been doing if you were here more often.
I deliberately avoid going in on the one specific day each week when I know they will all be there.
 
evandyk said:
It's probably also been gobbled up by whatever he paid for the trips! Flights and accommodation have increased substantially.
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Last summer the wife and I took a cruise to the Baltic (Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Germany and Norway). Covid and the 2nd (3rd?) Russo-Ukraine War kept some people away, as the ship had less than 700 passengers when it's rated for 900. So the prices were good. We're looking to book another trip with the same line (Viking), and I'm surprised to see that the prices for flights and the ship remain reasonable, perhaps 25% higher than we paid back in 2022.

My favourite remote working time during Covid? In March 2022 I was in the UK visiting family when I tested positive (the whole family had already had Covid, so they didn't care), so I failed the testing and had to postpone my return flight for two weeks. After the required five days quarantine I traveled solo back to London and found a nice hotel near Royal Albert Hall. A few days later I tested negative, and then decamped for the top floor cafe at the Marks and Spencer flagship store, from where I sat for three days connected to the office via my iPad, with a parade of scones, clotted cream, jam and teapots beside me. I remember walking through Kensington Gardens on the phone with the office during a warm March afternoon, and thinking, this is life. Thank you Covid.

But it's a good thing I went when I did... https://www.ft.com/content/51550de4-5d02-4446-b5d4-1044fd2f9364
 
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