I Went Back to Microsoft Office After Work From Home

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And so it's not a full return to office. It is structured in a way where there's flexibility. So the idea being that you know if if everything you know in a perfect world, right, if you had uh nothing ever kind of changing in your schedule or in life, you'd have three days of the week where you're expected to go back to the office. It's not three specific days or anything like that, but you know, three days that you go. And of course, because there is some understanding that life isn't perfectly routine like that, there is sort of this this flexibility that it's actually more of like an 8 out of 12 um weeks of the 8 out of 12 week structure. So like if you look over 12 weeks, you'd be able to do, you know, eight of those where you're in the office kind of thing.

And so that means that you you have like this flexibility. It's not counted on like a per week basis. So uh nice that there's some flexibility built in, but I guess at the same time, man, this car is so annoying. It's colder today, so it's uh it's beeping at me. Yeah. So, there's some flexibility baked in, but at the same time, there's a bit of kind of challenge with this, I guess, right? And I think some of the challenge it comes from like two, in my opinion, two major things. Um, the first is like is the fact that there is like sort of the the mandate of RTO like this you must come back for it, right? you must do three days a week. I work with some people that already were doing three days a week, right? By choice. Uh just like want to be in the office and three days a week is a good good fit.

Uh for me, I was doing two days a week. So one more is really like not you know does not sound like a stretch, right? It's uh not really that much more. But uh I think that challenge is like is it now you have to. So where it felt like there was flexibility in in the decision to do so now it's it's not a uh it's a lot less your choice and that even uh I don't know like even psychologically it's just like kind of frustrating. I kind of equate it to like it's not the exact same thing, but if you're like already going to do something, this is how I feel about some things. If you're already about to do something and then someone like tells you to do it, you're kind of like now I don't now I don't want to. Uh kind of feels like that.

Um but yeah, this idea of being like you have to do it suddenly like the the it feels like a a much bigger lack of flexibility even if you were already doing it. Um, and I think that kind of ties into the second part, which is like it's uh it's not totally clear even like as a manager like how things are uh enforced, right? And I'm going to use the word enforced because uh there are like it's not just how it's tracked. I think that's ambiguous for a lot of people, but there is some some data and information and stuff shared on how it's tracked and that's why like for example I'm able to make the statement like okay it's actually like it's not just three out of five days of the week it's more of like in a 12 week period right so there's some information about how it's tracked there's u like web portals you can check where um they indic indicate like your your time at the office kind of thing.

Not like sorry, not like hours at the office, but like the where where you've been observed to have entered uh an office. So that's like helpful if you need to know. So the the tracking and the information for that like exists, but the enforcement part as a manager, I have no idea how it even works. like no one has told me. And uh that creates a bit of a weird situation, right? Because on paper, if you think about, okay, it's out of 12 weeks, there's that seems like that there's some decent flexibility, right? Like eight of 12 weeks, you have some flexibility. You could do eight weeks in a row where you're in the office every day and then you have a month where you're, you know, you're working from home. It's really like it's not it's not crazy. It's like that's that seems reasonable to me, but it kind of falls apart pretty quick um when you start thinking about some things in practice.

Okay. And I want to give you an example of even like my my last week which was the first week of RTO. So last week I was on call as primary and my shift was from 6:00 a.m. till noon and I live depending on the the drive uh if I and hitting traffic it could be an hour if I'm not 30 minutes away from the office. And obviously I know there's like I'm not I'm not telling you these times because I'm saying oh my goodness my commute is so long and difficult. Like I know some people have gnarly commutes. That's not what I'm getting at. Just stating that there's some time uh to do this, right? So, if I'm primary on call from 6:00 a.m. till noon, if I want to go to the office, I have a couple choices. One is that I can get there before 6:00 a.m.

Um, by the way, I go to CrossFit uh for for 6:30. So that means when I am on call, I have to miss CrossFit. So I don't get to go to the gym for a week. Not only that, I'm on call for 2 weeks. I'm back up in the first week. So I could go to CrossFit if I bring a laptop with me and then that way uh if I primary needs me, I can do that. But in my case, I had a busy backup shift. So I missed going to the gym for two weeks. I can't Oh, I did go to the office uh one day before 6:00 a.m. which means I'm waking up at 5 in the morning so that I can drive to the office for 6:00 a.m. Then my on call shift ends at noon, right? So then I could in theory wrap up my day shortly after that, get like 8 hours of a day in cuz I've already done my 6 hours of on call.

Um, and then like that that's not so bad, right? Like except that it's kind of ridiculously early and that I I miss out on like uh any type of physical activity. And I mean, if I did get home by following that in the afternoon, maybe I could go to a CrossFit session in the afternoon or something. But, uh, the reality is for me, if I am at the office, uh, you know, if I'm not leaving right at noon, say it's like I I eat lunch there and then I I work an hour and that brings me to my 8 hour workday. Uh, it's already 1:00. So, uh, odds are I'm not going to be leaving right at 1:00. And if it pushes to anything a little bit later than that, I'm going to start hitting traffic on the way home. And then it's like I might as well wait till after 6:00.

Might as well wait till after 6:00 so I can bypass the traffic. And then all of a sudden my workday turns into 12 hours for the week. So that's a pretty terrible setup. And again, this is uh just with my commute setup for some people would be significantly worse. Like some people I know that have their uh their like public transportation with like two different forms of it, uh their commute's going to be, you know, an hour at least an hour and a half both ways. So that's not a good setup. If I have an on call shift for the afternoon from noon till 6:00, uh I could drive into the office. Like that one's not so bad cuz I could drive into the office a little later, right? Leave after 6:00. So then I'm kind of bypassing traffic. That that setup's really not that bad.

So an afternoon on call shift, not so bad. The morning one, pretty bad. And uh okay, so we got some on call logistics to deal with. Now, the way that our on call is going to land, I might have two of my two week on call shifts that get into the the same period. So, I could take one of my on call shifts and work from home. So, I'm already using the the flexibility that's baked in, right? I'm already using half of that for one of my on call shifts. So, now instead of at best eight out of 12, it's kind of like I'm already, you know, those of those four weeks where I have flexibility, kind of like left with two. I was kind of forced, like realistically kind of forced to to work from home if I if I'm going to be starting an on call shift at 6:00 in the morning.

So, I got two weeks left for flexibility. And if I have a second on call shift, sure, the afternoon one, not so bad. Uh, but I got to do it. The other thing is like what happens if I have an on call shift in the morning and then in that you know 3 month period or 12 week period I also want to take vacation because no one has said anything about vacation and how that affects your in office days right so if you take vacation Those are days you're not counted in the office. So that would mean if you had a two week vacation and you have this four-w week flexibility, you take vacation, you are now down to two weeks of flexibility. So you have to be in the office for your your working days. You have to be in the office like proportionally more.

So, it's very interesting. You might be listening to this and you're like, "It doesn't really matter. It's not a big deal." But like, it actually is a big deal. It's a It's because on paper all of this stuff looks like there's a bunch of flexibility, but in practice, you chew that up so fast and um and there's not any understanding of how it's enforced, right? So, to briefly just kind of circle back to that. Okay. So let's let's assume like you know for myself as a manager the way that I operate is like there's always I don't care where I work uh I will always uh try to be more accommodating as needed right so and and for what it's worth I have always anywhere I've ever worked I have always felt supported by my manager or leadership uh above me the exact same thing. Okay.

So for example if someone's like I'm just making this up. Someone's like, "I only got 10 vacation days this year and I use them up and like uh we do a, you know, there's some period where we're working really hard on an incident or delivering something and someone's kind of burnt out like I would tell them take a day off, right? They don't have any vacation days left. Like take a day off still. Don't worry about it." Um, and like I said, I've always felt supported from any manager or leader that I've ever had to the same thing, right? Right. So I don't feel like I'm standing out that way. I just think that's part of like of like working with humans. So I've always felt the ability that I can do that. But now imagine I'm in this situation where someone has not been in the office by like that one day that I like have like allowed them to to take off or something.

Now all of a sudden they're in this weird situation where like they're sort of violating RTO and neither of us know what happens for from an enforcement perspective, right? So like what what happens? Do I get an email that's like your employee wasn't in the office enough and like it it stops there and then I go okay cool. Like I tell them, I'm like, "Hey, by the way, make sure you're coming to the office. Is there a penalty?" Like I don't I literally have no idea what to expect and I have not talked to anyone that knows what to expect to me. That's a big problem, right? How how can I try to be helpful in managing people if I have a set of or we all have a set of rules that we're we're now playing by and no one knows the the consequence. I just I have I I don't know how that's expected to be successful.

Um, anyway, I have a lot of thoughts on this because again, I think on paper I'm like I don't really have an issue with this, but in practice I'm like, "Holy shit." Like, there is a lot of parking spots. Come on. This sucks. Yeah. In practice, it's like not very good. Okay, let's Man, there's no parking spots here either. This is ridiculous. Okay, well, anyway, that's it. RTO, not so great. Parking not so great. Here's some spots. Cool. We'll take this one. I think it's cuz the previous class isn't finished. Um, so no one has left yet. Anyway, curious, did you end up going back to the office in recent times? I don't like it. Um, I do like seeing people in the office, but not not at the expense of uh flexibility. I don't I don't see I don't see any benefit to forcing people back.

I think if there was already flexibility, if there is flexibility and you're trying to now enforce flexibility, that doesn't feel right to me. Um, but that's my opinion. Curious to hear how you think about it. See you in the next video.