Posted by By now, everyone and his uncle have formed an opinion on Marissa Mayer’s controversial decision that forces remote employees to pack their laptop bags and report to the office. Her effective discontinuation of a hitherto popular Work-from-home policy (hereinafter referred to as WFH) has disgruntled quite a few employees and industry people. Views for and against, as well as some reasoned analyses, have gone flying around the internet.
I work in a company that allows WFH with the approval of the manager. For my part, I much prefer working in the office. When I am working at home, my five-year-old daughter clatters around in the background most of the time while I try to read two words on the laptop. She doesn’t quite grasp the concept of ‘working’ from home – the only portion of significance to her is ‘home’. She imagines a heavenly world where Mummy has surrendered all official responsibilities so she can cling to her and wring stories out of her one after another. I believe I get more work done in the office than at home.
Having said that, the WFH suits the rare occasion when you can work but you can’t make it to the office for whatever reason. I grasp the WFH straw whenever her school schedules parent-teacher meetings at around lunchtime, so that I don’t have to drive down thirty minutes just to sit in the office for a couple of hours.
I made good use of it in the early weeks of Feb when an attack of viral fever rendered me too weak to drive to office and sit in an AC haven. Instead, I heaved out the laptop and started pounding the keys immediately after packing my daughter off to school.
I guess certain people use the WFH to their advantage to goof off at home the same way they would goof off in the office. Like everything else, a few rotten apples spoil the bunch. So unfortunately, those genuine users of WFH bear the brunt of harsher policies and stricter governance.
A friend once told me about one of his colleagues who sent on email to his team with the subject line – ‘Working from today’. A few minutes later, he sent a follow up mail – ‘Working from home today’.
Looks like the folks at Yahoo won’t be seeing this kind of faux pas in their inboxes anymore!
Gargi's World 
Don’t know how this is going to fly given the culture developed around the profession to be remote & still be accessible at any given time. This might be one of those pilot program that never makes it to production.
btw: We had a co-worker few years back who studied English as a second language even at College. She would write in subject line “Work from Home”
One day someone responded “is this a suggestion or an information”?
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Haha, good one about your co-worker! I think WFH is required but to some extent with certain kinds of people it has to be well-controlled. Anyway people who go to office but have laptops are available at odd hours as well.
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Hi Gargi, yes Marissa Mayer’s new policy has sure disgruntled many people. This WFH was becoming quite a trend.
Gargi, try out the minimum subscription of Grammarly and see if it helps your writing. I tried it with two small pieces, I was shocked that I am still leaning towards using the passive voice (my CP had pointed it out to me) and I thought I was over it. Now I realize that it will need more effort.
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Hey thanks Rachna! You are right – I will indeed try out Grammarly’s minimum subscription. I got the summary report with one of my articles and was pretty shocked to find the issues! I’ll give it a whirl and keep you posted!
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