4 ms·

It's a bit unfortunate because there's like... there's a way to have pretty periodic meeting up in the office, if you plan ahead. Ultimately people are a bit wh

by rtpg 5y ago

It's a bit unfortunate because there's like... there's a way to have pretty periodic meeting up in the office, if you plan ahead. Ultimately people are a bit whimsical but if you're like "hey, I'm coming to the office on Thursday, you want to come in too, and have lunch?" then it could be a good booster if the option is available. I don't really blame people who want to socialize with their coworkers (I want to as well, sometimes!), it's just unfortunate that we've gotten to this point where leadership seems to be really insistent on choosing the worst way to go about this.

zamalek 5y ago
> I don't really blame people who want to socialize with their coworkers It's an unpopular and superficially brash opinion, but I honestly do. If someone wants social contact during work hours there's a really good chance that they have multiple neighbors who they could meet up with for lunch. Instead, work is misappropriated as a social venue. I'm not suggesting that we should be unsociable robots for 8 hours each day, either, or that productivity is paramount. Quite the opposite. If someone can only get 4 hours of (highly) productive work every day, and used to spend half the day chatting with coworkers, then double their pay and halve their time. Then there's also the environmental and infrastructural impact of people commuting daily for no practical reason. Everyone else, especially essential workers (who's job is usually casually linked to a workplace), suffers in traffic. Need time away from kids? A stipend for a shared workplace would cover that, instead of renting huge amounts of unused office space. Commuting (where remote work is possible) is a terrible and selfish idea no matter how you look at it.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Some of best friends were coworkers. It makes sense. We have a shared background and a shared interest. We already spend 1/2 of the time awake together, so why not more? I think your real complaint is socializing at the office. I had a German coworker once who complained about the same thing. He said, "In Germany we come to work at 9am, we work until 4pm with a 15 minute break for lunch, and we don't talk to anyone about anything other than work. Then we go to the beer hall and drink and chat until 7pm and then go home to our family. Here in America I come to work at 9am, chat with my coworkers all day about personal things, take a 1 hour lunch to chat some more, and then go home at 7pm. It's the same amount of work but none of the drinking!".
  - carlmr 5y ago
    >In Germany we come to work at 9am, we work until 4pm with a 15 minute break for lunch 45 minute is the usual break in Germany, who can eat lunch in 15 minutes? Usual workday is 8h work + 45 min break. So 9-17:45 would be usual. Or 8-16:45. There are people in union jobs with 35h work week though, that work one hour less, but if they go in at 9 they stay until 16:45. If you work over 6h in a day you have to do a minimum break of 30 minutes by law. So in your example I guess Americans stay 1:15h longer per day than what is normal in Germany.
    - jedberg 5y ago
      I'm sure he was exaggerating when he said it, but his overall point was that they work at work and then socialize after work, instead of mixing the two.

by rtpg 5y ago

zamalek 5y ago

> I don't really blame people who want to socialize with their coworkers It's an unpopular and superficially brash opinion, but I honestly do. If someone wants social contact during work hours there's a really good chance that they have multiple neighbors who they could meet up with for lunch. Instead, work is misappropriated as a social venue. I'm not suggesting that we should be unsociable robots for 8 hours each day, either, or that productivity is paramount. Quite the opposite. If someone can only get 4 hours of (highly) productive work every day, and used to spend half the day chatting with coworkers, then double their pay and halve their time. Then there's also the environmental and infrastructural impact of people commuting daily for no practical reason. Everyone else, especially essential workers (who's job is usually casually linked to a workplace), suffers in traffic. Need time away from kids? A stipend for a shared workplace would cover that, instead of renting huge amounts of unused office space. Commuting (where remote work is possible) is a terrible and selfish idea no matter how you look at it.

jedberg 5y ago
Some of best friends were coworkers. It makes sense. We have a shared background and a shared interest. We already spend 1/2 of the time awake together, so why not more? I think your real complaint is socializing at the office. I had a German coworker once who complained about the same thing. He said, "In Germany we come to work at 9am, we work until 4pm with a 15 minute break for lunch, and we don't talk to anyone about anything other than work. Then we go to the beer hall and drink and chat until 7pm and then go home to our family. Here in America I come to work at 9am, chat with my coworkers all day about personal things, take a 1 hour lunch to chat some more, and then go home at 7pm. It's the same amount of work but none of the drinking!".
- carlmr 5y ago
  >In Germany we come to work at 9am, we work until 4pm with a 15 minute break for lunch 45 minute is the usual break in Germany, who can eat lunch in 15 minutes? Usual workday is 8h work + 45 min break. So 9-17:45 would be usual. Or 8-16:45. There are people in union jobs with 35h work week though, that work one hour less, but if they go in at 9 they stay until 16:45. If you work over 6h in a day you have to do a minimum break of 30 minutes by law. So in your example I guess Americans stay 1:15h longer per day than what is normal in Germany.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    I'm sure he was exaggerating when he said it, but his overall point was that they work at work and then socialize after work, instead of mixing the two.