Sis used to work at an MNC that allows her to work from home, literally everyday. But apart from the days she feels unwell, I’ve never seen her work from home. Once, I asked her why and she said she doesn’t like working from home.
Now that I’m working from home, I realized I prefer to go to the office as well, except I don’t have an office to go to. It’s a different story doing freelance work from home and working for a company from home. I have no problems working from home as a freelancer. And while I enjoy the freedom, I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of things like the chance to bond with colleagues. Especially since I don’t speak Korean, I don’t know what’s going on with the largely Korean text over online platforms. But at the same time, I think it’s good practice for me. I just need to put in the effort to read and use the dictionary, except that a Taiwanese colleague who speaks Korean once told me, “the language they use in the chat room cannot be machine translated.”
Oh well, fun!
I guess what I really want is not to work from home, but the option to work from home. Now that my office is in Korea, I don’t have the option to work from home; I can only work from home (although I can go some cafe but that’s not the point). As Rachel would say when Phoebe tells her “you don’t hunt…”
“Well, I’d like to have the option.” (←haven’t made a F.R.I.E.N.D.S reference in a while)
There’s just no pleasing people, is there?
I have tried working from home as well, gave up after 4 months. It was a job that many friends envied as it was a permanent job , quite reasonable pay and flexible hours. But I find myself working more, and the line between personal time and work time become blurred. I often find myself nothing to do on a weekday afternoon and busy on weekends… not exactly the type of lifestyle that I wanted.
Yea, if there’s an office and colleagues, I think I would rather go interact with people rather than sit at home and do nothing. But I can’t deny that my first couple of weeks working from home was more productive than I had thought.
Did you give up working from home or did you leave the company altogether?
Left the company, mine was like a unit by itself and everyone on the team worked from home. We used WhatsApp / email/ phone calls to keep up with work. There’s a severe lack of real people interaction (read: talk about non-work related stuff). Its more like u only talk abt work, and not build bonds with your colleagues.
But I agree with u on the productive work part- 1st month was great (minimal disruption). The last few months were not, and non-verbal communication can also lead to a lot of misunderstandings.