I remember when my company had to go work from home for about 4-6 months during 2020 as was mandated by the government.
I remember how tough it was for me. This was a new concept, we were locked in our homes (we were literally mandated by the government to not get out of home at all for some time). What did that meant? The key employees were no longer working 8 hours a day…. we were now working 24/7. Literally. At midnight, we would get calls and had to handle it. And of course we were too scared to say anything because pandemic and loss of income was keeping all of us awake at night.
During this time, the government allowed the companies to reduce the salary by upto 50% (but on the condition that the work load will be 50% of the usual also, along with 50% of the hours worked). You can guess what happened. Many companies ABUSED this. Reduced salaries for 6 months up to the 50% allowed, while forcing people to work nearly 24/7 because … “well you're stuck at home. What else you will do”.
Luckily I have an awesome boss and while he did reduced our salary by 25% for the first month (our pay period is monthly here), he immediately went back and started 100% when he saw that we are not slacking and are working harder than normal. The owner of the company is fair man and I like him a lot. His only weakness is his family who he keeps around and of course, they rob him blindly (but that is another story for another time)
But the one thing that I will never forget during this time happened immediately when we returned to work. The cousin of the owner, who is an extremely lazy person and generally don't even know what is going on and during the entire work from home duration was not reachable. We were communicating by VoIP, whatsapp, team, emails, anything to make this situation easier by being able to work. And this guy the entire time was unavailable.
So of course when we all finally slowly returned to work (which, I know many people love but I personally hated it cause it was harder for me to balance work and life). When we returned back to work, the cousin of the owner immediately said “What a wonderful vacation you all had! Now we all must work extra hard to make up for all the lost production!”.
A) We worked our butt off to try to contain the bad situation we were in. We were unable to sleep because we were getting calls left and right, even in the middle of the night.
B) While company income was reduced (Duh, nobody wanted to pay or buy during the pandemic when people were afraid of their future), our production was extremely high and compared to the industry, we barely lost any money (many companies were bankrupt during the pandemic).
That day I concluded that work from home will forever be considered a “Vacation” or “goofing off time” to the people who don't do anything contributing in the company. Because to them, work simply means to show up to work and look busy and if you're not doing that, then you're slacking and not working. I personally am not a fan of work form home because of that experience but I know very well that it is a great thing and something that society need to normalize. The waste of oxygen that we call management will fight against it cause “it's like giving unlimited vacation!”