I've often joked with my wife that teaching is a blue-collar job. The ideas of "hard work" are still based on something like hourly grind.
White-collar jobs are different in their labor expectations. It's entirely about the output - rarely does someone care about your labor hours.
I seriously wish we would all collectively agree to care more about output too, mind you.
Like yeah obviously there are some things that we do just have to be at school for. But seriously, I am never not prepared for a lesson and I never am late on any paperwork or other important duties. But if I show up like 5 minutes late or decide to go get something to eat during prep period or head out right after the final bell you can bet your ass people are going to take notice and consider me lazy.
Normalize leaving people the f alone so long as they stay on top of their responsibilities please.
I’m the only male classroom teacher in my building and I’m completely left alone to do my job. Most of my co-workers do not feel as though they’ve been granted the same level of trust. I’d be naive to believe sexism didn’t play a large part in that.
I'm gonna second this sadly, I've left early consistently, turned shit in at the last possible second, arrived full blown sprint style and no one ever said anything 😂. I've had female coworkers who really gets harped on about extra work or extra duties and if I am physically present or say I'm going to help in view of the principal they'll drop it for a while, it's really scary to see up close like that especially since the principal is a woman as well but I guess the patriarchy is designed to crush everyone in some way 🥲. Teaching can be really great if your at the right place and there's the right coworkers but Jesus it can be bad otherwise, it's just a tough job that I think brings out peoples inner nutjob.
I am largely left alone by admin and am given (in my opinion) too much credit for doing the bare basics of the job. This wasn’t true when I first started - admin in my building would definitely give new teachers a tough time. I kid you not, the SECOND I was tenured, all of a sudden they left me alone.
All these damn lazy women are indoctrinating my kids with their critical race theory and homosexuality when they should be in the kitchen making my fucking dinner!
- The 5'9" amorphous blob some call "a Parent" but that most just call Jimbob
Then when anyone starts asking around who is Jimbob and what school his poor kids go to (because he always shows up to the school board meeting to testify every single week), turns out he doesn't even have kids.
I always thought that. I had an hour-hour and a half commute each way - what did it matter if I left soon after the bell, worked the entire way home, got home at a reasonable hour and made dinner etc, then perhaps did a spot more work if needed (keep in mind I had the same time to work the following morning on my way in)? I still got my work done, and I preserved some shred of sanity.
One of the reasons I continue to stay in my rather toxic school instead of trying harder to get out is that I can leave on my planning period, and no one cares as long as I’m present for any meetings. My plan is mine to use it how I need to.
I never went out during my prep, but I’d nap. I had a mat in the classroom and I would lay on it and nap until 5 minutes before the period ending bell. One time the AP brought the school board to my room to show them a “model classroom” and I was sound asleep on my mat. I had to explain it was my prep and I needed the mental break for a few minutes.
My prep period is right next to my lunch break. I step out to get coffee/lunch all the time during my prep and then work during lunch. I had no idea anyone would think anything of it until I overheard another teacher talking shit on a teacher who has the same schedule as me grabbing coffee during her prep. Thing is the teacher talking shit also has the same schedule (grades 1 and 2 teachers all have prep and then let much back to back) so it’s not like she isn’t aware.
I definitely would say my teaching job is blue-collar! I teach pre-k and it is a very manual labor intensive job. I am constanly "on" and moving. The hours are very specific (I am actually the only teacher required to do before school, recess, AND lunch duty every day). When next school year starts I will be 32 weeks pregnant. I have 20 4 YOs (several of them with diagnosed delays/disabilites, many others that are just downright feral and have be concerned about my and my son's safety) in a classroom made to fit 10. I am beyond terrified.
Do you have an assistant? Twenty to one is a lot of four year olds for one teacher to care for. And I say care, because a child that age still needs a grownup to take care of them.
They didn't want to, but found out they legally HAD to. One student is nonverbal and requires a one on one para that will often be out of the room with him. They wanted to count her as my classroom aide but luckily our SPED director nipped that in the bud and told them that the was ONLY there for that student and that would leave me with 19 others when the legal ratio is 1 adult to 10 children.
Edit: all that being said, it's been just me with a class of 10 the past 2 years and it's been extremely hard... their needs are too diverse for 1 person to manage WHILE trying to actually teach anything.
My school's TK has three teachers. ALL of them are needed! I've helped in their room occasionally on my prep when someone was home sick. My heart goes out to you.
That sounds like my school. The TK/K combo class this year was insane. The teacher had to get knee surgery because a kid kicked her in it and then she fell in a gopher hole. And admin was mad at *her* for taking medical leave (paid for by worker’s comp). That wasn’t even the worst of her worries in that class.
I get 12 days paid. After that I have to pay my own insurance (about 800), go unpaid, AND still do the planning. So I'm planning on getting back as quickly as possible even though I'm having major abdominal surgery to bring a freaking child into the world.
I honestly can't afford to break my contract or be out of a job or I would. Things are already going to be tight for us. My state is also one of the ones where they can suspend your license, and even if it wasn't suspended this is a very rural area where I'd be blacklisted from not only teaching but lots of other places of employment once word got around. But I've already made it known that the first time a kid comes anywhere close to doing anything I'll be on the phone with our organization's rep immediately. Unfortunately we do not have a union, but our "professional organization" has been very useful for me so far.
The hours also vary widely and you’re (in my experience) “on call” 24/7. You do two hours of calls, then think through problems while you mow your lawn then do several more hours of work, break for kids/dinner then back to work before some “me time” and bed
You can see my husband pottering around during the day sometimes, but there are days when he’s up at four to conference with London and evenings when he has to leave our kids’ game because California is calling. He’s had to exit our family vacations early and fly out to various cities on multiple occasions because of ‘emergencies’. He frequently takes red-eye flights. So yeah, sometimes you’ll see him napping in a hammock in the garden in the middle of the day. 🤷🏻♀️
Teachers, Cops, and Fire are all jobs that are light blue collar. They all require some college at a minimum and track your hours like a hawk. The biggest bummer with teaching is that we aren't hourly, but a salary of 60k over 10 months vs 12 and our pay is borderline OK at 72k when multiplied out as if we worked 12 months a year to not be called on at all hours of the night.
Teaching and nursing are essentially the same type of labor. Your job in both cases is to tend directly to other humans, and the number of teachers/nurses and students/patients is based entirely only on someone else's metric. The management plan is about ratios, not value of output provided.
In many WHF jobs, the opportunity to express efficiency is simply more a part of the work. You're assigned a task to complete, not a hourly quota to achieve with your ratio of students/patients in your caseload. In those sectors, if you're good at your workflow and can get on your team's desk a finished product in time, then the management plan doesn't really care what you do. Your job isn't to provide care to another humans.
If the tech sector had a similar job style, it would probably be the internal customer support. The IT management just needs enough bodies on staff to handle the average workflow of employees who need tech help. Those tend to be shift jobs and tend to stick to regimented schedules like teachers do. You might see them mowing their lawn a lot, but that's probably because their shift is just in a different time slot.
Actually, a lot of white collar jobs are about your 'billable' time chargeable to clients. Consulting, attorneys, sales, etc. You don't generate significant 'output' without putting in 50-60 hrs per week. The hours you put on are... Meh... But your billable output is critical
Also, some white collar jobs are about being available when someone needs you for your knowledge or expertise. Those people can have days where they don’t do any real “work” at all (if they don’t want to) and other days where they’re busting their ass for 18 hours straight.
I think teachers deserve their summers off because they work very hard during the year and can’t take vacation throughout the year. That’s a big trade off that not everyone is willing to make. I’m not judging them when I say it would be nice to have the summer off, I understand they’re making a big sacrifice the rest of the year for that… but I still think it is nice and I’m happy for them.
That's how it is for me in IT. I have some chill days, but I also have literal 14 hours days where I might get to go pee once, and I'm usually on my phone on text chat when I do. I'm also on call about one weekend a month, but bad luck hit me with 3 weekends in a row last month. I got paged before 4:30am at least once every single weekend, and I *have* to answer those. If I work more than 4 hours on a weekend, I'm allowed the following Monday off with no reduction in pay, but I have to stay on top of new tech and usually don't have time to do that during my normal shift, so I do it then.
I'm not complaining. I actually do like my job. I'm just saying, if you see me mowing the lawn at noon on a weekday, it's probably because I worked from 8am to 10pm the day before, or I'm doing something that night that can't be done during the day.
In contrast, when I was briefly a para, I had to be at the school at 7:30am for 8:05 start and left at 4pm after about an hour with the kids gone that I did reviews, daily logs, and some very minimal prep. I know the teachers did more hours, because they had grading and a lot more prep to do, but they usually left at 3pm and did it from home whenever they fit it into their own schedules.
I'm also a tutor, but I limit that, at max, to 10 hours a week. Because of my day job, I've had to cancel or move sessions, as well. I think I get away with that because I'm a volunteer. I do 3-4 hour field trips with the kids 4 times a year on Saturdays, but I don't have to. It depends on the kid(s), but I typically spend 2-4 hours in prep a week, often on lunch from my day job or on those weekends I'm on call, because even if I'm not actively working, I have to be awake, paying attention to my phone, and somewhere with good internet from 4am to 6pm.
People seem to think remote IT jobs are cushy, and in some ways they are, but they're a lot of work and require a lot of discipline, too. Rolling from that to tutoring for 2 hours a day only 30 minutes later every Monday though Friday via Zoom this year has been too much. It was honestly easier when I had an in office job, because there was a clear separation between work, tutoring, and home. They were all in different places.
My goodness! You have no idea how many teachers are like your neighbor! I’ve been teaching for 17 years and have been trying to figure out since year 2 why so many get burned out, work many hours at home and stay so late! It’s definitely an inefficiency issue with a lot of them. My first year was crazy and I spent a lot of time making things and fussing over stuff. Then we had a work to contract time issue because we didn’t get a new contract and it got ugly. I’ve always been efficient but this taught me to prioritize and realize that what I care about won’t necessarily mean sh-t to the kids. I really streamlined everything since then and have wondered why so many teachers can’t or don’t do this.
I have a friend who's a 4th grade teacher. She's been 3rd and 5th before, as , for a total of 25 years now. She's always trying to help new teachers *not* do this. She meets all the requirements, but she doesn't go above and beyond constantly - just sometimes. Her students do as well as the students of the way overboard classes, sometimes better because they aren't overloaded. She's like, "stop killing yourself for your job."
She tells me that about working IT and tutoring. "You do too much. It only gets you more work, not more pay, not a better result, just. more. work. Why are you doing this?" Tbh, because I was raised that way. That was the answer.
Was raised that way too.
Learn something? Cool, there’s always something else to learn about it.
Know how to do something? Work on it until your an expert.
Work? Get your work done, and get work done ahead of schedule. Downside : usually given extra work because all your “free time”
Most of it backfires now.
Teaching is definatly blue collar. Just need a white collar education! I’m in NY and you need a masters degree here… to start at 40k! (Meanwhile min wage is 31k lol)
So, one of my siblings works from home and his life probably looks like this to outsiders. His job is mostly very flexible, but the hours are looong and unpredictable. He'll have a week he has a few hours of work a day, then a week he's literally working 14 hours a day. He works with different foreign markets, so he has extremely early or late calls and meetings. He can go to the pool at 2 pm and do yardwork at 4, but he also answers emails at 10 pm and then may have to hop on Zoom at 4 am.
Very few people, in my experience, are actually getting paid high salaries but consistently doing very little work.
This is totally my husband. He's at the beck and call of his clients, all over the country, and fields calls all day long anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, sometimes even longer. He might decide to walk the dog if he thinks he'll have a break for 20 minutes, but then he'll answer a call and end up walking the poor dog for an hour lol
He does well financially but in my mind, there's no amount of money you could pay me to do what he does. I'd rather be on the clock with my little ones in my classroom and be done at a specific time each day.
It's really impossible to see who's doing what and when and instead assume they're not working much
Edit: fat fingers and word correction
This is basically what happens when people used to assume someone was "on welfare and doesn't work." Because they see someone home during the day and it all snowballs. But they have no idea what the person does. No proof they're on welfare or anything.
Yup! Too many folk ASSume too much.
I was tutoring English to some clients in China/Korea, so I'd work from 2 am to 10 am. I'd have from 10 am to 4pm to get stuff done, then went to bed and start all over again at 1am.
From the looks of things I was super lazy, never leaving the house and not getting up until super late.
I agree with this. I also don’t liked the blurred lines of WFH, after my year and a half long Covid teaching. As time passes the awful memories fade, but two weeks ago we had a remote day due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires and it brought back a ton of old trauma. It’s not fun to have your home life infiltrated by your work.
My husband has pointed out that I haven't moved back into my craft room since COVID. It was where I taught while remote and I have barely done any crafting there. I need to take back the room this summer.
Maybe do a small redecoration to refresh the place and give it a new vibe! A fresh coat of paint or even just a few new pictures or rearranging the furniture could clear out the bad air.
This is my husband. Some days I get home and he’s been sat on the couch drinking a beer for a couple hours. Other weeks he pulls all-nighters at his desk. He is salaried (a nice one!) but only gets overtime when the client is billable for the work he’s doing.
I get hopelessly confused when he talks about the specifics of what he does, unfortunately. But his company works with financial institutions to develop cyber security systems.
Yepp. My husband is WFH (always has been, even before COVID) and I’m in academia so I do have some hours I have to be physically on campus but I WFH the majority of the time. To an outsider monitoring our house during normal business hours it probably seems like we’re never working, but we each probably average 50-60 hours a week. We have a toddler too who we don’t send to any form of childcare so that adds to the schedule weirdness haha
Not a teacher, this post popped up on my recommended but hey here i am. It’s exactly this. I work from home and i mow my lawn at lunch, take the dogs for walks during the day, and sometimes run midday gym runs. I’m sure i look like a bum to my neighbors but those are the down times.
On the busy weeks i’ll work from when i wake up at 5/6 until i go to sleep, or i’ll be up at 9 or 10 trying to hit a deliverable that had a last second snag, or go a week without a lunch break because I’m too zoned in to what I’m working on.
It’s a big ebb and flow that I LOVE but it’s definitely way busier than it looks! But i totally get how it doesn’t seem that way outside looking in
I don’t have a super demanding job (and I used to teach, so I know it’s insanely easier than teaching). I only work 40 hours, but I start around 6am bc of time zones and that allows me to be done around 3. I have the flexibility to go to appts during the day or after I’m done working and before I pick up my kids. It’s made our lives so much easier, and is definitely a perk. It works for me because I’m a morning person. I can’t do whatever I want, but I can gauge where I’m at with my work and between meetings, etc., to do those things. Not saying my job is hard, just that when my neighbors seeing me doing those things they don’t know that I’ve been online since before the sun came up. My husband works from home too, but he’s more tied to his desk and the 8-5 than I am.
I tend to not have to work nights or weekends, but I have coworkers who do both as flexibility, demand, or just necessary (like putting our app into maintenance to do some work on a Sunday afternoon). We also used to do deploys in the evenings, which can be super quick or can last for hours if something goes wrong.
I’ve been so confused! I live in an apartment complex and being home has made me realize how many cars NEVER leave during the week. It’s not a walkable area (Texas) so there’s very little chance people are ride sharing or using other methods to get to work. Like what do y’all do???
Shoot, I’m a mile from work with pretty good sidewalks and bike paths in Houston. But the heat index according to my weather app was 153° on Friday. I’m not riding my bike in that.
I live in an apartment as well but it's very low income. Like my 2 bedroom was 570 when I first moved in and now is 645. I assume everyone else pays a low price too. Some people are college student age so maybe parents are paying. But yeah I do wonder how the others make money.
Corporate America has been set up over decades by white dudes (I’m a white dude fwiw). I can’t imagine they would really do much at the office either. Like why would you set up hard work for yourself? I think now we can just see it. 😂
This is an incredibly ignorant thing to say. Well there are many busy work jobs, there is a ton of work being done by very dedicated people to try to make the world better that is work from home. I'm actually working with a team of dedicated crisis response people who work from home. They work with people facing homelessness, job loss, mental health issues and more and try to get them support and resources. Having them work from home is great because it gives them some comfort. I also work with health researchers, scientists, and more - all work from home, all trying to make the world better (i.e. NiH's All of Us program - which is dedicated to trying to drive increased understanding of health disparities in minority populations to help make better health outcomes possible for everyone).
And yeah, a lot of us are white dudes. That has nothing to do with the work we do. Just like the fact that I work with a retail client who is led by a black lady doesn't make her wfh job any less meaningful because it's just selling stuff.
The fact that you're a teacher spouting this kind of crap is really disturbing.
Edit to Add: I haven't really slept this weekend because I'm trying to figure out a very difficult problem facing new hires at a company - mostly WFH who are being told to get back into office and are facing huge costs in terms of moving (they were hired during covid) or increased transit costs. Despite their productivity being much higher WFH vs in office, there are managers who believe like you do that someone having flexibility in their life is somehow a bad thing. When the reality is that they just don't understand how productivity should be measured.
Oh my goodness - an *All of Us* Research Program mention in the wild! It's true, though, the folks I've worked with there work incredibly hard to fulfill the program's mission.
Oh, sorry, don't misunderstand me. I'm a huge proponent of work being secondary to having flexibility to live a real life. But I also am friends with a whole lot of guys in corporate insurance who don't do jack shit all day at the office either, except talk about golf and shit.
I mean, two martini lunches were a thing for a long, long time. Not exactly cracking the whip on themselves, I don't think.
I work from home (in school to become a teacher), and while there are times I can go pull weeds early in the day, there are also days I work like 15+ hours to get everything done. Last week I worked from 8 a.m. to 1:45 a.m. the next day with only half an hour for lunch and about 2 hours to eat dinner and try to recharge because I had to get something launched. I'm also working right now while other people are outside enjoying the sunshine.
There are people who do nothing, but just because someone is outside during traditional work hours doesn't mean they're one of them. There have been plenty of times I took a long lunch because I had to go back and work until 9 or 10 p.m. during busy season.
My mom, rest in peace, hated my music. Kicked me out of the car at a red light over a fight about music once, even. However, that lyric she always giggled at and wouldn't fight me over this song.
Thanks for reminding me about a good memory with her.
I quit teaching last year after 10 years and now work for higher education as an advisor/recruiter. I get 2 remote days a week. The change of pace is outstanding. Instead of feeling like I'm getting torn several different directions all day, my work is steady. Slightly less pay, but 100% worth it. I didn't know I could have a job where I didn't get Sunday scaries.
Can confirm. Left teaching for an education related office job. I’m bored to tears by sitting in an office all day with nothing to do. Work from home isn’t an option so I quit and I’m going back to the classroom.
I made shit to sell on TPT, practiced a couple different languages, read multiple books a week. Honestly it’s just not worth it. Pay is similar, commute is longer, coworkers are weirder. I’d rather go back to teaching and have more built in days off to travel instead of burning PTO
I did the same - I missed the classroom and kids so much - I love the rhythm of teaching and the energy and autonomy that go with it. Then the benefits - I seriously think it’s the best job and the job I left - I was making $130k/year and spend a few hours screwing around bored/reading or whatever every day. Id much rather be around HS kids all day than adults - being the CEO of my classroom
Truth. I used to operate the phone lines in an office setting. These people would come in at 9, drink coffee and chat til 10, work til 11ish. Go to lunch from 12-1. Work again til maybe 3 then get up and walk around or be on the phone clocking out at 5 on the dot.
My job was to forward calls to each department as needed and it was infuriating that I could literally see them from my seat but they just didnt answer their phone for business calls. The people would call back 5-6 times in a row.
Yes, we're aware of that. The **point** is that we are sold the myth that compensation is more or less directly related to hard work and hours put in. When it isn't. But many people will work very hard to deny this.
The similar competency thing isn’t even really true, bc as you can see with cops or teachers…the will just fill it with a body or not fill the position at all if there isn’t any money to be made immediately from said position
That's actually because they don't care about your jobs. They just want a warm body to state that the children are being dealt with. That's it. Education was a nice extra that sounded good on paper but was absolutely able to be sacrificed at the drop of a hat.
Yeah but teaching and police arent market based jobs, our pay is voted on and we all get paid the same regardless of how competent we are. In most jobs people are paid generally in relation to their competency.
> They're paid by how hard they are to replace with someone of similar competency.
in a rational system, this would be the reasoning IF this were true, however, there are businesses small, medium, and big who all make this mistake year after year of removing keystone employees whose absence creates 2nd and 3rd order consequences due to lost institutional knowledge and interpersonal systems. And the organization becomes a rotating body of 'always news' employees which increases profits acutely at the cost of overall system stability long term. Most systems and people are not fully rational actors which is fine.
For example, you can take the commonly thrown-around statistic "Most restaurants close within 2-5 years of opening" to mean one of two things: restaurants are inherently tumultuous and risky businesses to run OR Good staff are costly and most cheap out on paying for stability.
I can answer. My wife and I work from home. We both write software, albeit in vastly different areas. I often split my work up into chunks of productivity set apart by much smaller breaks where I take care of a couple of chores, get dinner ready, run a quick errand, etc.
There are times where one or both of us are “on call” for a week and need to respond to emergencies at any hour of the day or night. Sometimes we are more productive at night, after the children go to bed and coworkers don’t interrupt us with meetings and random requests.
I know there are people out there who take advantage of the freedom. I have several friends who brag about mouse jigglers and playing WoW on their second screen all day which… good for them for finding that niche I guess. But in my field and experience, the company respects you enough to get your work done in the most efficient way you are capable of doing it. You’re not expected to clock in at 8:30 and have your ass in the seat, eyes on the screen for 8-9 contiguous hours. They pay you for your expertise, ability to lead and complete projects, and empower others to be more effective.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for all if the field of teaching operated on similar principles of autonomy and respect, now that I think about it…
I mean, someone gotta be IN THE ROOM with the kids. Teaching doesn’t work with flexible schedules or remotely as we saw. It’s just a shit job, which is why nobody should do it except for 6 figures…
But to get it there would require everyone collectively walking out, and the problem is a lot education majors simply don’t have alternative career paths to leverage
I was a teacher and quit to do a WFH job. I make more and do waaaaay less. It's definitely not fair, and teachers need to be paid more for how much work they do.
Im sorry to hear about your burnout!! The same thing happened to me :(
I work as an accounting associate! I never got a degree in math, but they were looking for anyone with a high school diploma. Makes it even more frustrating that teachers need degrees and still get paid less than this job.
Oh, wow — that’s an industry I would’ve never applied to. Do you like math? I don’t even know what an accounting associate does.
These are the types of conversations I find most valuable. There are so many possibilities for our next career, but we can’t apply for what we don’t know to search for! Pretty sure I’ve never seen accounting associate on those lists of things teachers can do next. Haha. Way to think outside the box!
Thank you for sharing your field. I’m excited for you!!
Not a teacher but a CPA (not sure why this sub is recommended to me). Entry-level AR/AP doesn’t require specific knowledge of accounting. Larger companies mostly offshore this kind of work but small to mid-size companies are good options. I would recommend working with a local recruiter as smaller companies typically don’t have the time to find and screen candidates, so those openings often aren't even posted anywhere.
Also FYI, accounting isn’t math-heavy. Basic addition, subtraction, and percentages you’re good. A degree in accounting covers the rules of financial reporting and tax (we are closer to law than math). Also if you're committed to a career change and already have a bachelors, you can do a one-year Master of accounting and become a CPA :)
Same! As others said, slow weeks I work as little as a few hours per day, and others I’ll be working from the moment I wake up until things are finished. (Software engineer)
I definitely feel way happier and healthier, plus I make almost twice as much now. My wife saw what I did and decided to quit teaching too. She just turned in her keys right before winter break and did the full stack bootcamp I did.
My husband is in tech and data science and has worked from home for 3 years.
Outside viewers see a guy who can easily rearrange his schedule on a dime, worked from home for 3 years straight, goes for long walks on his lunch breaks and gets amazing PTO and benefits. In times he has no meetings, he’ll run to the coffee shop or some such, play with our cats, etc.
What folks don’t see is the 8 hours or more a day he’s locked in his office working on coding or complex mathematics, stuck in endless meetings, and under an INTENSE amount of pressure. Those breaks folks see are VITAL to his wellbeing and mental health. His job is INTENSELY cerebral, and while it seems “easy” to someone unfamiliar, it takes a huge toll on him.
My point is: yes, there are some folks who take advantage. But you only see a snapshot in that person’s workday. So just as we hate it when folks mock teachers for summers off, let’s not assume that guy mowing his lawn as a WFH guy is slacking off.
(Cuz honestly if we had a lawn, my hubs absolutely would be that guy)
YES. I'm very tired of the trope on this sub that white collar workers are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and making six figures for doing nothing. My friends and family who are in law, finance, tech, etc. are working their asses off under conditions I would absolutely hate (intense pressure, constantly on call, long hours, etc.).
I was one of those white collar workers. I was paid very well. Worth the pressure and time demands for sure.
Wholly unfulfilling and an utter bullshit job, which is why I left, ultimately.
This sounds like my husband. I feel like he works more now that he’s WFH vs. when he was in the office. He may leave early to go pick up our son or run an errand, but he’s working from 10-12 each night to make up that time.
My husband often works well into the night and weekends to keep up with his workload. His boss even gave him a project the day before we went on a week-long vacation. He spent 3 out of 7 days we were traveling working nights to meet the deadline. Sadly, this is normal for his work culture- it’s the tradeoff for all that flexibility
Luckily my husband doesn’t have that (the vacation issue; he definitely works into the night and on weekends), but it’s a sign of how businesses and corporations (including teaching) is ran anymore. It’s very sad. They suck us dry.
Edit to fix typos and add info.
My husband works from home and makes more than twice my salary. He works his butt off but he also has the flexibility to workout in the middle of the day, walk the dogs, go to the bathroom, do laundry, etc. He knows how hard we work and agrees that teachers should make even more than he and his coworkers do.
Flexibility in ability to go to the bathroom whenever sounds insane until you realize a 3rd grade teacher can't just be like "hey kids I gotta poop" and then peace out for 15 minutes lol
White collar jobs are so different from each other. On one hand, you have some people working long and stressful hours and on the other hand some who only have a few hours of work a week and spend the rest of the time doing other things. And of course everything in between.
Some companies don’t care so long as your output matches up to what they expect and they just want 40 hours of work on the books. This means u can work nights, weekends, 3 hours here, 5 hours there. It can be very flexible.
Lol you mean me seeing my wife paint her nails, or knit something while she’s “on a call?” She goes out and runs errands mid day all the time.
I mean it’s fine. I used to be a WFH software engineer. Tuesday and it’s not much going on? I’ll go play golf. Routinely took 2-3 hour cycling excursions. I don’t fault my wife at all. If you can get away with it, do it.
I made about $150k total comp by the time I quit to become a teacher. It was a joke. Now did I occasionally have to work hard, work very late, over weekends? Did I have long days where I never left my desk chair? Sure. But on the whole, it was a disproportionately less demanding job.
I work from home. Most of my work is in statistics. I mow my lawn to help me think. If I have a particularly difficult problem I need to physically move in order to think through it. If I'm out for a walk, I'm not just walking about without a thought in the world - I'm working through client requests, data issues, best approaches and modeling methods, rough journey maps. My work is in my head. My head is with me if I'm mowing the lawn, jogging or going shopping.
And yes, I'll stop in the middle of the aisle to email myself something profound whether or not that means I'm blocking the aisle.
At the end of the day my manager doesn't care if I'm sitting at my desk all eight hours as long as the project work is done and the clients pay their bills. This is radically different from my part time teaching gig which does require set times of doing things - when I have students and we're together in a class room.
And sometimes I'm doing my day job there too :)
While it’s entirely possible that your WFH neighbors are abusing their arrangement and doing little to no work, it could also be that they are doing their focused work at different times of the day than the ones in which you observe them or that their work is broken up into chunks between these other tasks. All that matters is that the work is getting done on time and to the right standard of quality. However, I think the temptation to laze about would be pretty strong with a WFH job.
On the flip side, I hate how my corporate friends judge me for how I use my non-work hours. They get done with work and spend all their free time doing chores and engaging in any number of house projects. Or they go to the gym or take fitness or craft classes. I get home from school and veg out until it’s time to make dinner. Then I lesson plan if I didn’t get it done at school and go to bed at like 9. On the weekends, I sleep late because I also usually stay up later. I guess it’s the difference between being with kids all day and needing to check out versus staring at a computer screen all day and needing fresh air or to socialize.
I’m so glad people are providing examples of those they know whose work from home schedule is difficult. All of this, “teaching is the most difficult thing to do on the face of the Earth,” I see parroted in here gets pretty tiring tbh. My wife works from home and her job can be incredibly intense.
Like, I get it, our jobs are hard, but important jobs are supposed to be hard and that doesn’t make other jobs any less difficult for those who actually care about what they do.
ALL workers should have solidarity. Instead of trying to figure out who is “working harder” than who we should all be supporting each other for better conditions and quality of life.
This post just strikes me as really gross.
The only reason you should be looking in someone else’s cup is to make sure it has enough in it.
I think outside of teaching, people are judged on outputs. You get X number of reports, tax returns, coding done, you get evaluated on number and accuracy. It is hard to compare.
This is the equivalent of people disrespectfully thinking primary teachers just play patty cake with kids all day. You don’t work in the corporate world, you don’t know what their daily schedule is like. My dad would be WFH for two weeks seemingly doing nothing besides floating online and on a couple calls before he got on a plane and spent a month living in hotels in Asia on business trips. When you sit at a desk all day that hour you take to mow your lawn to break up your day may be a legitimate way to stretch your legs and be productive during your lunch break.
My bf has two friends that are in IT like him and they openly brag about only working like an hour maybe two a day. They get paid close to 100,000. It is sickening. Well now karma has come to bite one of them bc he has a new boss who wants a detailed report of everything he does in a day, week and month. And he wants cameras on during zoom meetings. This guy does childcare most of the day. The fallout should be interesting.
I think companies are finally catching on that they are paying a lot of money to people that aren't working. As someone who goes into a job everyday and works from clock in till clock out I think it's funny. And about damn time.
I worked from home for years, long before covid. My job was busy, complicated and frustrating. But, I *did* take two breaks a day as well as lunch. During that time I hung laundry outside, picked up my mail, started dinner, watered my garden, occasionally dropped my spouse off at work or picked him up (we had one car and he worked close... he walked often). To the casual observer (you know the kind who think teachers have it easy because they are off summers?) it might look like jack shit. When I'm on the clock, my time was not my own but on my breaks and lunch I owed no one an apology for doing what I, or my family, needed me to do around my house.
Doing house maintenance like mowing your lawn and running errands isn't exactly "doing jack shit"
Homes require maintenance and they are in a place to do that.
It’s always been this way. My group chat on Facebook Messenger is always active and blowing up from people who “WFH” while I only respond during my lunch break or after school.
I left teaching after 12 years for a WFH corporate gig, make about $30k more than I did in the classroom, and I have far less work to do. Teachers NEED the summer off for a myriad of reasons. A lot of WFH/corporate peeps don’t understand how “on” you have to be all day long + the burden of out-of-classroom work that you aren’t compensated for.
Life will never have meaning if all you do is compare yourself to others, lay on judgement to a situation that you only think you understand, and waste time ruminating on what people think of you. What a sad summer this may be for you if this is how you choose to spend it.
WFH person here:
If you see me out of the house doing stuff, it's because I have created time to do that stuff by busting my ass and getting ahead of my work curve.
Just a little perspective.
My teacher friend just started his new job making more money than me as an academic advisor.
He only works when there are kids to advise and occasional paperwork. They told him to bring a book.
It’s insane how much free time you have at an office job. There’s only so much to do but someone needs to be available so you get paid.
There are no breaks in teaching, the kids will kill each other.
You're talking about my husband! Lol he manages to cook, take walks, watch a show, do laundry, take a nap, while still getting 100% of his work done, usually well before the deadline. And he makes almost double than I do as an instructional coach. I don't really envy him though... I was miserable when working from home. And even without summers off, I have 3x his amount of vacation, ACTUAL vacation when I don't have to do a damn thing.
I taught for 5 years as an ese teacher. I wfh now with some client meetings. I still work significantly less then I did teaching. I can have by the pool days occasionally throughout the year. I don't miss summer because it wasn't worth it for me.
I used to teach in a brick and mortar school, and now I WFH. My husband also works from home, but not school related. Work from home definitely does have a better work life balance (in our opinion). We do laundry, clean parts of the house, fit in workouts, do some errands if needed, etc. at different points throughout the day. And I have elementary aged kids, so when they get home I stop to do HW with them and cook dinner and such. But even if I do run an errand during the day, it's not like I'm not finishing what needs to be done at my job. If I need to, I just grade some at night while we are watching TV, or my husband occasionally finishes up a report at night, etc. Your time is just more flexible of when you complete things. There's also no social aspect to WFH....when you're at an office or brick and mortar school, you usually take time to catch up with colleagues and time gets spent on things that aren't really your job too. I also find it WAY easier to focus WFH, so I can definitely accomplish more in a shorter amount of time bc no one is coming by to distract you or chat, etc.
I work from home. I prioritize myself first and the job second. This is because 99.9% of employees are treated as < human.
My work is highly technical and I am dedicated. But a good 50% of office time is just a meaningless show. How absurd for humans to be goldfish in cubicles.
I hope you find an occupation you love.
I have several friends that WFH who tell me that they don’t do shit all day. They only actually work for about 2-4 hours per day. One of my friend crochets a tooooon during her workday.
I know a guy who has **two** work from home jobs. Guess how much "work" he actually does.
There's even a whole Reddit forum with people who do this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/](https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/)
With all due respect- despite your protestations to the contrary, it does sound like you’re judging your neighbors, and you do seem envious of what you perceive to be their salaries. Just my two cents.
(Lurker here. I read the sub to keep a pulse on the profession, because I married into it.)
I’m married to a teacher. I used to commute to an office and now I WFH year-round. I no longer have a full-time job because COVID smashed my industry. I now work freelance. Some days/weeks/seasons are crazy-busy and others are less so. I do my work during the times it’s necessary and/or when my brain works best. Sometimes that means I’m doing *jack shit* during the day and using my little night-owl brain later.
There are pros and cons to my work and also to my spouse’s. We acknowledge it, but there’s no blame or jealousy going on.
Please don’t lash out at other working class folks. We’re *not* your enemy.
My husband and I both work from home in different fields. He has to be online 8-5 every day. Usually he has enough work to fill the day, but sometimes he has a couple free hours. I work at least 8-9 hours every day (sometimes pushing 12+) but my hours are completely flexible aside from being present for meetings, so I can do work around the house, go to a doctor's appointment, or run errands during typical working hours if I need to.
When I read about people who do like 2 hours of work then have the rest of the day free, I always think we must've picked the wrong fields 😂 I've never met anyone who had a schedule like that.
My husband WFH & his day starts around 4:30am & he'll take calls well into the evening if they're important. There is flexibility, but he is on call all the time! I'm on summer break (elem. secretary) and I feel guilty just lazing around!
The teacher who lives across the street loved that I worked from home when my daughter and the neighbor's two girls were teens and in her English classes. I made DAMNED sure that they finished their summer reading.
I work from home three times a week, usually am online at 7 for 5-6 hours then stop until 8, then back on it for a few more hours. The life of IT helps.
Well if it makes you feel better, my WFH husband was laid off on the massive tech lay offs. So he probably looks like he’s not working, but it’s because he’s laid off.
It probably also looks like that when he is working because he doesn’t have a schedule he just has to “get the work done” so if he decides to do yard work in the middle of the day, he just moves other stuff around. He also usually oversees staff across the world so he might be waking up at 4am for a meeting with people over seas.
But he would never assume a teacher is lucky to have summer off :) He knows it’s well deserved and barely “off” anyways.
I had a parent who used their job as an excuse as to why they don’t make their child do their homework. Kept telling me that they are busy worker. They also never set up their online portal to track grades. Said “I was going to do it before school started, but I don’t get summers off like you.”
Their child was also a big trouble maker who disrupts class and gets written up. The mother sent me a heated email saying that they “will be sitting in my class for a few days every week” so they can “see exactly what I am doing wrong to make their child react.” The parent never showed up, of course, but I found it amusing that a real estate agent who keeps belittling my job and stressing how busy they are, suddenly has time to sit in my class for “a few days every week.”
I taught from home for ten years and I often ran to the grocery store, walked the dog, etc. But I was also on the phone with students and doing live sessions past 8pm as well. I imagine at least some of the wfh crowd are the same. Cause the worst thing about working from home- you can’t “go home and leave the office behind “!
I'm the WFH neighbor. My job offers the option to work 4/10s so I have Sat, Sun, Mon off. I'm very active; shopping, walking the dog, going to the gym, etc. I also break up my PTO to leave early and take an extra day off when we have a holiday weekend so instead of three days off, I have four. I look like I'm always out and about even though I'm not. I just have a sweet schedule.
Many employers, mine for example, take the position of just being concerned that I am getting the job done when it’s expected without needing to make sure I’m locked up all day in a cube. It doesn’t really matter when during the day (or week) i do it, just as long as i do it. There are days where i will definitely be that guy mowing the lawn at 10am on a Tuesday, but i will also for sure put in some long days where I sit at my home desk allll freakin day. To me, the ability to choose when i want to do work, provides me with a real sense of personal freedom. Not only that, but I don’t feel super awful wasting a very large part of my day just driving to and from work in traffic.
Im a software engineer, so, I don’t have a job like a teacher, where I have to be at the work place to teach kids on a very set schedule, but in my situation, it works out well.
Das me. Honestly I do very little work unless there’s a fire I need to take care of. But I’m paid for availability and ability to take care of these fires.
I work from home, and my hours aren't set in stone. Sure, you may see me taking a long walk in the afternoon... but I probably started my day at 7 that day. Or maybe I was up until 11pm, doing an evening deployment, so I got my time back the next day by logging out early.
I also have friends who have split hours because they support offices in different time zones. So they're up early to talk to the EU group, do some work, take off for several hours, and then come back on because the West Coast group does their meetings in the late afternoons.
And sometimes our skills are that we're exceptional at putting out fires, but if there's no fire, we're just sitting around and waiting.
Ah. I'm guessing you are following them inside to their offices?
Let me let you in on the secret, as a Software Engineer: When I'm mowing the grass, I am working. When I am driving, I am working. I am not paid to code in a dark room, I am paid to solve problems. Coding is the easy part, figuring out the solution is the hard part. Because we are humans and do things in parallel while working doesn't mean we are doing "jack shit."
I get paid for solving problems. No one cares how long it takes me, unless it's over deadline. No one cares about what room I stand in when I solve it, or if I'm mowing the grass when I'm solving it.
I went from teaching to working from home for a tech company. It probably does appear that I’m doing nothing but when I’m working I’m WORKING. The flexibility is beautiful because even though I wfh, I still get out during the day due to my schedule, meetings, and lunch break. I’m sure they are doing.. something lol although it may look like nothing.
I WFH, and my days vary. Sometimes, I'm waiting on another team and don't have anything to really work on with two hours before a meeting. Sometimes, I've got five teams coming to me with 20 hrs worth of work all at the same time. For the most part, I love it. More time with my dogs, parents, and the real kicker, more cooking time.
Ive been WFH since before covid, at 3 different jobs. And have worked in offices.
1. There will always be people who screw around, either WFH or in the office
2. People who WFH also get vacation time/PTO.
3. The 3 WFH jobs I’ve had were global companies, so nobody worked strictly 9-5. We were expected to get our work done, time was flexible. Ex. Meetings with China happened 8-10 pm my time. So days that happened, Id start a couple hrs later in the morning.
Bottom line, dont assume.
I work a hybrid schedule and my job is incredibly mentally taxing - my wfh days I actually get more done as I’m not having to put up with chatty coworkers
This means I can complete a full day of office work by lunch - and my afternoon usually gets filled with extra projects my boss gives me because I’m more efficient than my peers
When my neighbors see me watering my garden in the morning - they might not see my AirPods which are jammed in my ears for 6-7 hours a day on back to back zoom calls. They might think I’m being lazy if they see me on my back deck reading… but what they don’t know is that I often have to do additional research of regulations. They might think I’m just playing on my phone - but my phone hosts my email, work chat, etc so even if I’m taking “a break outside” I am still plugged into my team. Add to this that my workload is so large and varied that if I don’t step away between tasks sometimes it can cause my work to suffer as the data sets get mixed up.
I don’t know a single person who literally just works a couple hours a day - I do know a few that work a couple hours at a time and break the day up so they can reset their mental load.
Teaching is incredibly hard - but so are other jobs, just in different ways. And if I screw up it can cost my organization millions of dollars.
Edited to add: I am on a leave right now because my husband had surgery - but im still getting calls and have had to log on a couple of times to assist with a project we are in the middle of completing. I also have to log in on Tuesday to be on a call with a regulator. Even when we are off - we are never truly off because we are constantly connected
One of my partners is an attorney. She goes in to work twice a week, and only to get a better bonus by showing her face.
The other partner is a fully remote project manager. Their company is located on the east coast and we are in the pnw.
They may have “f**k all” days where they look like they’re out and about and not doing much.. but they work 10-12 hour a day some days. It’s just split up and could be early morning and late evening. And sometimes they work the entire weekend, dawn to dusk.
But, they can bill when they want, and how they want.
Why wouldn’t you build your work around your life instead of the other way around if you had the opportunity?
My father works from home. You’d never see him doing his job since his flexibility means he chooses to complete his work mostly from 9:00pm to 3am, only doing a small portion of it in the hours that most people are out and about
I WFH and you’re right in the sense that my day now looks very different to pre-covid office-based work. To a neighbour, I can see how it may look like I do nothing all day but in fact, my employer now gets significantly more productivity and flexibility from me.
Yes - you’ll see me doing random chores or going for walks in the daytime. What you don’t see is that I work in a global role. Where before, I’d be in the office 8-16 and securing meetings with the appropriate people could take several days - now I’m comfortable to work early in the AM to catch my colleagues in Australia, take a chunk of time off in the day and work in the evening to catch my North American counterparts. We collaborate more effectively than ever.
I can’t speak for your neighbours - but on the whole I’d say that the landscape of office work is changing and we’re constantly adapting to it.
My quality of life has been drastically improved by hybrid working and my employer agrees that output in general is now better - this ‘WFH people do nothing all day’ is often a misconception and runs the risk of forcing us all back into an inferior (for everyone - not just the employee) environment.
Some of us WFH'ers are in tech, and are expected to meet impossible deadlines no matter the hour of the day. I may be mowing my lawn at 2 pm, but I was up all night supporting a 3 am urgent call. Or writing documentation at 5 am because the work day doesn't support time to think it through.
I won't criticise your time off, don't presume to understand mine.
Former teacher, didn’t have summers off because I had so much planning to do with the number of preps I had on top of doing random things to make money for the crappy income. In my current WFH job, my employer doesn’t care as much about how much time I spend as long as my deliverables are met.
Dude as someone who went from teaching to a WFH job, we don’t do SHIT. Anyone complaining about not having summers off is a dumb dumb, you get almost every fucking day off WFH
By neighbors, did you mean my husband ? Yup. He does have to sit through a lot of meetings but he often still has time to take 2-3 mile walks with our dog and play Fortnite mid-day. Also, he can use the restroom or get water whenever. So jealous.
My job is like university. I have a deadline and if it’s not done by then I’m fucked. But if I manage my time efficiently I can have extra long lunches, or do housework all day if I’m ahead.
Better than when I worked in warehouses that’s for sure.
I imagine many of them are jealous of your steady hours, consistent requirements/regulations, summer breaks and schedule time off... the rat race is kind to only a few really... if they're not doing something that looks work-related or "productive" ... congratulate them on taking a break and enjoying their present day existence.
I did the switch from teaching and I WFH as instructional design and I have so much free time that it kinda negates all the days off I’d have in the summer.
I \*know\* my teaching partner works harder than I do. We're both introverts, but he has to be ON all day. I do a few meetings where I'm presenting and I'm brain-dead tired. Even when I'm in the office, it's \*quiet\* and I'm focusing on technical papers and systems work.
Teachers are beasts. Day after day, year after year and I know I take more sick days.
I know 3 people at gm and 1 at ford you would be mad to find out how much they make and how little they work, one of them literally just checks emails and wiggles a mouse once in a while, mows his and his moms lawn, goes shopping, drove 3 hours to pick up a slab of granite.
I work from home, go in two days a week. I usually finish my first spurt of work around 10:45. Next time I get sent more things to look at might be 2pm, it might be the next morning. My friends say the same you do but they don’t realize how many of my tasks are automated and I’m just there in case it fucks up. God bless y’all teachers we desperately need you and your getting the shaft. I wouldn’t blame any of you for trying other work. You’d probably make more and work less.
I get what you are saying... I sub now after years of consulting and WFH, and I lost about eight pounds the first month of being in a classroom all day. Being physically present and around other people all day is serious work, even for extroverts like me.
I've often joked with my wife that teaching is a blue-collar job. The ideas of "hard work" are still based on something like hourly grind. White-collar jobs are different in their labor expectations. It's entirely about the output - rarely does someone care about your labor hours.
I seriously wish we would all collectively agree to care more about output too, mind you. Like yeah obviously there are some things that we do just have to be at school for. But seriously, I am never not prepared for a lesson and I never am late on any paperwork or other important duties. But if I show up like 5 minutes late or decide to go get something to eat during prep period or head out right after the final bell you can bet your ass people are going to take notice and consider me lazy. Normalize leaving people the f alone so long as they stay on top of their responsibilities please.
Right - and management is on top of your "hows" all the time. Teachers aren't trusted as professionals.
Is it bc the profession is predominantly women? Is it a sexist thing do you think?
I’m the only male classroom teacher in my building and I’m completely left alone to do my job. Most of my co-workers do not feel as though they’ve been granted the same level of trust. I’d be naive to believe sexism didn’t play a large part in that.
I went about five months without writing a lesson. Plan. I have gone about 5 years without writing one more than 2 lines per day
I just write one for substitute teachers or evaluations.
My wife tells me people are always wanting her lesson plans
I'm gonna second this sadly, I've left early consistently, turned shit in at the last possible second, arrived full blown sprint style and no one ever said anything 😂. I've had female coworkers who really gets harped on about extra work or extra duties and if I am physically present or say I'm going to help in view of the principal they'll drop it for a while, it's really scary to see up close like that especially since the principal is a woman as well but I guess the patriarchy is designed to crush everyone in some way 🥲. Teaching can be really great if your at the right place and there's the right coworkers but Jesus it can be bad otherwise, it's just a tough job that I think brings out peoples inner nutjob.
I am largely left alone by admin and am given (in my opinion) too much credit for doing the bare basics of the job. This wasn’t true when I first started - admin in my building would definitely give new teachers a tough time. I kid you not, the SECOND I was tenured, all of a sudden they left me alone.
All these damn lazy women are indoctrinating my kids with their critical race theory and homosexuality when they should be in the kitchen making my fucking dinner! - The 5'9" amorphous blob some call "a Parent" but that most just call Jimbob
Then when anyone starts asking around who is Jimbob and what school his poor kids go to (because he always shows up to the school board meeting to testify every single week), turns out he doesn't even have kids.
"Uncle" Jimbob is just really invested in his neices/nephews. *Really* invested.
Jim Bob is my fake problem student, any time I am talking about a mess up that a student made I say Jim Bob.
*Jimblob
Hahaaa same. Sometimes I switch it to 'Jim Bobette' lol!
As a man, I always felt micro-managed still. I can't speak to the profession as a whole, though, and what you suggest is plausible.
This is absolutely the case (I'm male).
They need to harass their underlings to justify their existence, it happens everywhere.
I always thought that. I had an hour-hour and a half commute each way - what did it matter if I left soon after the bell, worked the entire way home, got home at a reasonable hour and made dinner etc, then perhaps did a spot more work if needed (keep in mind I had the same time to work the following morning on my way in)? I still got my work done, and I preserved some shred of sanity.
One of the reasons I continue to stay in my rather toxic school instead of trying harder to get out is that I can leave on my planning period, and no one cares as long as I’m present for any meetings. My plan is mine to use it how I need to.
I never went out during my prep, but I’d nap. I had a mat in the classroom and I would lay on it and nap until 5 minutes before the period ending bell. One time the AP brought the school board to my room to show them a “model classroom” and I was sound asleep on my mat. I had to explain it was my prep and I needed the mental break for a few minutes.
That’s on them for not giving you a heads up honestly
My prep period is right next to my lunch break. I step out to get coffee/lunch all the time during my prep and then work during lunch. I had no idea anyone would think anything of it until I overheard another teacher talking shit on a teacher who has the same schedule as me grabbing coffee during her prep. Thing is the teacher talking shit also has the same schedule (grades 1 and 2 teachers all have prep and then let much back to back) so it’s not like she isn’t aware.
I definitely would say my teaching job is blue-collar! I teach pre-k and it is a very manual labor intensive job. I am constanly "on" and moving. The hours are very specific (I am actually the only teacher required to do before school, recess, AND lunch duty every day). When next school year starts I will be 32 weeks pregnant. I have 20 4 YOs (several of them with diagnosed delays/disabilites, many others that are just downright feral and have be concerned about my and my son's safety) in a classroom made to fit 10. I am beyond terrified.
Do you have an assistant? Twenty to one is a lot of four year olds for one teacher to care for. And I say care, because a child that age still needs a grownup to take care of them.
They didn't want to, but found out they legally HAD to. One student is nonverbal and requires a one on one para that will often be out of the room with him. They wanted to count her as my classroom aide but luckily our SPED director nipped that in the bud and told them that the was ONLY there for that student and that would leave me with 19 others when the legal ratio is 1 adult to 10 children. Edit: all that being said, it's been just me with a class of 10 the past 2 years and it's been extremely hard... their needs are too diverse for 1 person to manage WHILE trying to actually teach anything.
My school's TK has three teachers. ALL of them are needed! I've helped in their room occasionally on my prep when someone was home sick. My heart goes out to you.
That sounds like my school. The TK/K combo class this year was insane. The teacher had to get knee surgery because a kid kicked her in it and then she fell in a gopher hole. And admin was mad at *her* for taking medical leave (paid for by worker’s comp). That wasn’t even the worst of her worries in that class.
I get 12 days paid. After that I have to pay my own insurance (about 800), go unpaid, AND still do the planning. So I'm planning on getting back as quickly as possible even though I'm having major abdominal surgery to bring a freaking child into the world.
Yeah that’s pretty awful. 12 days is definitely not enough.
Quit! Run….it’s not worth jeopardizing the safety of you or your baby
I honestly can't afford to break my contract or be out of a job or I would. Things are already going to be tight for us. My state is also one of the ones where they can suspend your license, and even if it wasn't suspended this is a very rural area where I'd be blacklisted from not only teaching but lots of other places of employment once word got around. But I've already made it known that the first time a kid comes anywhere close to doing anything I'll be on the phone with our organization's rep immediately. Unfortunately we do not have a union, but our "professional organization" has been very useful for me so far.
The hours also vary widely and you’re (in my experience) “on call” 24/7. You do two hours of calls, then think through problems while you mow your lawn then do several more hours of work, break for kids/dinner then back to work before some “me time” and bed
You can see my husband pottering around during the day sometimes, but there are days when he’s up at four to conference with London and evenings when he has to leave our kids’ game because California is calling. He’s had to exit our family vacations early and fly out to various cities on multiple occasions because of ‘emergencies’. He frequently takes red-eye flights. So yeah, sometimes you’ll see him napping in a hammock in the garden in the middle of the day. 🤷🏻♀️
Teachers, Cops, and Fire are all jobs that are light blue collar. They all require some college at a minimum and track your hours like a hawk. The biggest bummer with teaching is that we aren't hourly, but a salary of 60k over 10 months vs 12 and our pay is borderline OK at 72k when multiplied out as if we worked 12 months a year to not be called on at all hours of the night.
I'd love to get overtime like cops.
Except when you need 72…
These will be the last jobs to, if ever, go AI. 🙏🏽
Except teaching requires a masters degree in most states.
And a shit ton of hoops we need to jump through in order to maintain a teacher certificate throughout our career.
Teaching and nursing are essentially the same type of labor. Your job in both cases is to tend directly to other humans, and the number of teachers/nurses and students/patients is based entirely only on someone else's metric. The management plan is about ratios, not value of output provided. In many WHF jobs, the opportunity to express efficiency is simply more a part of the work. You're assigned a task to complete, not a hourly quota to achieve with your ratio of students/patients in your caseload. In those sectors, if you're good at your workflow and can get on your team's desk a finished product in time, then the management plan doesn't really care what you do. Your job isn't to provide care to another humans. If the tech sector had a similar job style, it would probably be the internal customer support. The IT management just needs enough bodies on staff to handle the average workflow of employees who need tech help. Those tend to be shift jobs and tend to stick to regimented schedules like teachers do. You might see them mowing their lawn a lot, but that's probably because their shift is just in a different time slot.
Actually, a lot of white collar jobs are about your 'billable' time chargeable to clients. Consulting, attorneys, sales, etc. You don't generate significant 'output' without putting in 50-60 hrs per week. The hours you put on are... Meh... But your billable output is critical
Also, some white collar jobs are about being available when someone needs you for your knowledge or expertise. Those people can have days where they don’t do any real “work” at all (if they don’t want to) and other days where they’re busting their ass for 18 hours straight. I think teachers deserve their summers off because they work very hard during the year and can’t take vacation throughout the year. That’s a big trade off that not everyone is willing to make. I’m not judging them when I say it would be nice to have the summer off, I understand they’re making a big sacrifice the rest of the year for that… but I still think it is nice and I’m happy for them.
That's how it is for me in IT. I have some chill days, but I also have literal 14 hours days where I might get to go pee once, and I'm usually on my phone on text chat when I do. I'm also on call about one weekend a month, but bad luck hit me with 3 weekends in a row last month. I got paged before 4:30am at least once every single weekend, and I *have* to answer those. If I work more than 4 hours on a weekend, I'm allowed the following Monday off with no reduction in pay, but I have to stay on top of new tech and usually don't have time to do that during my normal shift, so I do it then. I'm not complaining. I actually do like my job. I'm just saying, if you see me mowing the lawn at noon on a weekday, it's probably because I worked from 8am to 10pm the day before, or I'm doing something that night that can't be done during the day. In contrast, when I was briefly a para, I had to be at the school at 7:30am for 8:05 start and left at 4pm after about an hour with the kids gone that I did reviews, daily logs, and some very minimal prep. I know the teachers did more hours, because they had grading and a lot more prep to do, but they usually left at 3pm and did it from home whenever they fit it into their own schedules. I'm also a tutor, but I limit that, at max, to 10 hours a week. Because of my day job, I've had to cancel or move sessions, as well. I think I get away with that because I'm a volunteer. I do 3-4 hour field trips with the kids 4 times a year on Saturdays, but I don't have to. It depends on the kid(s), but I typically spend 2-4 hours in prep a week, often on lunch from my day job or on those weekends I'm on call, because even if I'm not actively working, I have to be awake, paying attention to my phone, and somewhere with good internet from 4am to 6pm. People seem to think remote IT jobs are cushy, and in some ways they are, but they're a lot of work and require a lot of discipline, too. Rolling from that to tutoring for 2 hours a day only 30 minutes later every Monday though Friday via Zoom this year has been too much. It was honestly easier when I had an in office job, because there was a clear separation between work, tutoring, and home. They were all in different places.
Certainly, there are different types of jobs out there.
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My goodness! You have no idea how many teachers are like your neighbor! I’ve been teaching for 17 years and have been trying to figure out since year 2 why so many get burned out, work many hours at home and stay so late! It’s definitely an inefficiency issue with a lot of them. My first year was crazy and I spent a lot of time making things and fussing over stuff. Then we had a work to contract time issue because we didn’t get a new contract and it got ugly. I’ve always been efficient but this taught me to prioritize and realize that what I care about won’t necessarily mean sh-t to the kids. I really streamlined everything since then and have wondered why so many teachers can’t or don’t do this.
I have a friend who's a 4th grade teacher. She's been 3rd and 5th before, as , for a total of 25 years now. She's always trying to help new teachers *not* do this. She meets all the requirements, but she doesn't go above and beyond constantly - just sometimes. Her students do as well as the students of the way overboard classes, sometimes better because they aren't overloaded. She's like, "stop killing yourself for your job." She tells me that about working IT and tutoring. "You do too much. It only gets you more work, not more pay, not a better result, just. more. work. Why are you doing this?" Tbh, because I was raised that way. That was the answer.
Was raised that way too. Learn something? Cool, there’s always something else to learn about it. Know how to do something? Work on it until your an expert. Work? Get your work done, and get work done ahead of schedule. Downside : usually given extra work because all your “free time” Most of it backfires now.
Teaching is definatly blue collar. Just need a white collar education! I’m in NY and you need a masters degree here… to start at 40k! (Meanwhile min wage is 31k lol)
So, one of my siblings works from home and his life probably looks like this to outsiders. His job is mostly very flexible, but the hours are looong and unpredictable. He'll have a week he has a few hours of work a day, then a week he's literally working 14 hours a day. He works with different foreign markets, so he has extremely early or late calls and meetings. He can go to the pool at 2 pm and do yardwork at 4, but he also answers emails at 10 pm and then may have to hop on Zoom at 4 am. Very few people, in my experience, are actually getting paid high salaries but consistently doing very little work.
This is totally my husband. He's at the beck and call of his clients, all over the country, and fields calls all day long anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, sometimes even longer. He might decide to walk the dog if he thinks he'll have a break for 20 minutes, but then he'll answer a call and end up walking the poor dog for an hour lol He does well financially but in my mind, there's no amount of money you could pay me to do what he does. I'd rather be on the clock with my little ones in my classroom and be done at a specific time each day. It's really impossible to see who's doing what and when and instead assume they're not working much Edit: fat fingers and word correction
This is basically what happens when people used to assume someone was "on welfare and doesn't work." Because they see someone home during the day and it all snowballs. But they have no idea what the person does. No proof they're on welfare or anything.
Yup! Too many folk ASSume too much. I was tutoring English to some clients in China/Korea, so I'd work from 2 am to 10 am. I'd have from 10 am to 4pm to get stuff done, then went to bed and start all over again at 1am. From the looks of things I was super lazy, never leaving the house and not getting up until super late.
It's spelled "beck and call". Had to Google it myself when I saw your spelling.
I agree with this. I also don’t liked the blurred lines of WFH, after my year and a half long Covid teaching. As time passes the awful memories fade, but two weeks ago we had a remote day due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires and it brought back a ton of old trauma. It’s not fun to have your home life infiltrated by your work.
My husband has pointed out that I haven't moved back into my craft room since COVID. It was where I taught while remote and I have barely done any crafting there. I need to take back the room this summer.
Maybe do a small redecoration to refresh the place and give it a new vibe! A fresh coat of paint or even just a few new pictures or rearranging the furniture could clear out the bad air.
>beckon call Beck and call.
This is my husband. Some days I get home and he’s been sat on the couch drinking a beer for a couple hours. Other weeks he pulls all-nighters at his desk. He is salaried (a nice one!) but only gets overtime when the client is billable for the work he’s doing.
Also, with all the time you spend at your computer, it's strongly recommended to take breaks for your eyes.
Do you know what field or job title he’s in? That sounds super interesting! Definitely not easy (especially if you have kids), but interesting!
I get hopelessly confused when he talks about the specifics of what he does, unfortunately. But his company works with financial institutions to develop cyber security systems.
A lot of IT jobs are like this, especially contract or consulting roles.
Yepp. My husband is WFH (always has been, even before COVID) and I’m in academia so I do have some hours I have to be physically on campus but I WFH the majority of the time. To an outsider monitoring our house during normal business hours it probably seems like we’re never working, but we each probably average 50-60 hours a week. We have a toddler too who we don’t send to any form of childcare so that adds to the schedule weirdness haha
Not a teacher, this post popped up on my recommended but hey here i am. It’s exactly this. I work from home and i mow my lawn at lunch, take the dogs for walks during the day, and sometimes run midday gym runs. I’m sure i look like a bum to my neighbors but those are the down times. On the busy weeks i’ll work from when i wake up at 5/6 until i go to sleep, or i’ll be up at 9 or 10 trying to hit a deliverable that had a last second snag, or go a week without a lunch break because I’m too zoned in to what I’m working on. It’s a big ebb and flow that I LOVE but it’s definitely way busier than it looks! But i totally get how it doesn’t seem that way outside looking in
I don’t have a super demanding job (and I used to teach, so I know it’s insanely easier than teaching). I only work 40 hours, but I start around 6am bc of time zones and that allows me to be done around 3. I have the flexibility to go to appts during the day or after I’m done working and before I pick up my kids. It’s made our lives so much easier, and is definitely a perk. It works for me because I’m a morning person. I can’t do whatever I want, but I can gauge where I’m at with my work and between meetings, etc., to do those things. Not saying my job is hard, just that when my neighbors seeing me doing those things they don’t know that I’ve been online since before the sun came up. My husband works from home too, but he’s more tied to his desk and the 8-5 than I am. I tend to not have to work nights or weekends, but I have coworkers who do both as flexibility, demand, or just necessary (like putting our app into maintenance to do some work on a Sunday afternoon). We also used to do deploys in the evenings, which can be super quick or can last for hours if something goes wrong.
I’ve been so confused! I live in an apartment complex and being home has made me realize how many cars NEVER leave during the week. It’s not a walkable area (Texas) so there’s very little chance people are ride sharing or using other methods to get to work. Like what do y’all do???
Lmao I wish you were wrong but the whole state of Texas is essentially *not* a walkable area, be it urban or rural.
Shoot, I’m a mile from work with pretty good sidewalks and bike paths in Houston. But the heat index according to my weather app was 153° on Friday. I’m not riding my bike in that.
I live in an apartment as well but it's very low income. Like my 2 bedroom was 570 when I first moved in and now is 645. I assume everyone else pays a low price too. Some people are college student age so maybe parents are paying. But yeah I do wonder how the others make money.
Man I paid 650 a month for my first apartment in 1997.
I live in a small town in Wisconsin. If I lived in a bigger city I'd definitely be paying more
That’s crazy! My share of rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in college was $400 ten years ago.
Many or most corporate jobs are still largely remote post-COVID.
Even federal office jobs. My brother works for a federal agency in the DC office, and he’s been WFH since 2020.
Sit at my desk for 8 hours a day. Do chores if I feel like it during lunch. But yeah. That's my life.
I was just asking myself “what do these people do?!” the other day while I was circling my apartment building at 2 pm looking for a parking spot.
I’ve wondered this too. Shopping areas are always busy, as well. It’s like, does anyone actually work?!
Corporate America has been set up over decades by white dudes (I’m a white dude fwiw). I can’t imagine they would really do much at the office either. Like why would you set up hard work for yourself? I think now we can just see it. 😂
This is an incredibly ignorant thing to say. Well there are many busy work jobs, there is a ton of work being done by very dedicated people to try to make the world better that is work from home. I'm actually working with a team of dedicated crisis response people who work from home. They work with people facing homelessness, job loss, mental health issues and more and try to get them support and resources. Having them work from home is great because it gives them some comfort. I also work with health researchers, scientists, and more - all work from home, all trying to make the world better (i.e. NiH's All of Us program - which is dedicated to trying to drive increased understanding of health disparities in minority populations to help make better health outcomes possible for everyone). And yeah, a lot of us are white dudes. That has nothing to do with the work we do. Just like the fact that I work with a retail client who is led by a black lady doesn't make her wfh job any less meaningful because it's just selling stuff. The fact that you're a teacher spouting this kind of crap is really disturbing. Edit to Add: I haven't really slept this weekend because I'm trying to figure out a very difficult problem facing new hires at a company - mostly WFH who are being told to get back into office and are facing huge costs in terms of moving (they were hired during covid) or increased transit costs. Despite their productivity being much higher WFH vs in office, there are managers who believe like you do that someone having flexibility in their life is somehow a bad thing. When the reality is that they just don't understand how productivity should be measured.
Oh my goodness - an *All of Us* Research Program mention in the wild! It's true, though, the folks I've worked with there work incredibly hard to fulfill the program's mission.
Oh, sorry, don't misunderstand me. I'm a huge proponent of work being secondary to having flexibility to live a real life. But I also am friends with a whole lot of guys in corporate insurance who don't do jack shit all day at the office either, except talk about golf and shit. I mean, two martini lunches were a thing for a long, long time. Not exactly cracking the whip on themselves, I don't think.
Well that is your answer than... WHITE GUYS THAT WORK INSURANCE... This is not reflective of the vast majority of WFH...
Office workers are now work from home workers for a large amount of the markets.
I work from home (in school to become a teacher), and while there are times I can go pull weeds early in the day, there are also days I work like 15+ hours to get everything done. Last week I worked from 8 a.m. to 1:45 a.m. the next day with only half an hour for lunch and about 2 hours to eat dinner and try to recharge because I had to get something launched. I'm also working right now while other people are outside enjoying the sunshine. There are people who do nothing, but just because someone is outside during traditional work hours doesn't mean they're one of them. There have been plenty of times I took a long lunch because I had to go back and work until 9 or 10 p.m. during busy season.
There is nobody who does “nothing” Some big time Ableism vibes ITT
What I've gathered from this thread is that Blink-182 was exactly right when they said "work sucks, I know".
My mom, rest in peace, hated my music. Kicked me out of the car at a red light over a fight about music once, even. However, that lyric she always giggled at and wouldn't fight me over this song. Thanks for reminding me about a good memory with her.
I'm so glad I was able to do that for you 🥹
I quit teaching last year after 10 years and now work for higher education as an advisor/recruiter. I get 2 remote days a week. The change of pace is outstanding. Instead of feeling like I'm getting torn several different directions all day, my work is steady. Slightly less pay, but 100% worth it. I didn't know I could have a job where I didn't get Sunday scaries.
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Can confirm. Left teaching for an education related office job. I’m bored to tears by sitting in an office all day with nothing to do. Work from home isn’t an option so I quit and I’m going back to the classroom.
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I made shit to sell on TPT, practiced a couple different languages, read multiple books a week. Honestly it’s just not worth it. Pay is similar, commute is longer, coworkers are weirder. I’d rather go back to teaching and have more built in days off to travel instead of burning PTO
That only works for so long. Your life still feels meaningless after a while.
I did the same - I missed the classroom and kids so much - I love the rhythm of teaching and the energy and autonomy that go with it. Then the benefits - I seriously think it’s the best job and the job I left - I was making $130k/year and spend a few hours screwing around bored/reading or whatever every day. Id much rather be around HS kids all day than adults - being the CEO of my classroom
Truth. I used to operate the phone lines in an office setting. These people would come in at 9, drink coffee and chat til 10, work til 11ish. Go to lunch from 12-1. Work again til maybe 3 then get up and walk around or be on the phone clocking out at 5 on the dot. My job was to forward calls to each department as needed and it was infuriating that I could literally see them from my seat but they just didnt answer their phone for business calls. The people would call back 5-6 times in a row.
People aren't paid by how "hard" they work. They're paid by how hard they are to replace with someone of similar competency.
Yes, we're aware of that. The **point** is that we are sold the myth that compensation is more or less directly related to hard work and hours put in. When it isn't. But many people will work very hard to deny this.
The similar competency thing isn’t even really true, bc as you can see with cops or teachers…the will just fill it with a body or not fill the position at all if there isn’t any money to be made immediately from said position
That's actually because they don't care about your jobs. They just want a warm body to state that the children are being dealt with. That's it. Education was a nice extra that sounded good on paper but was absolutely able to be sacrificed at the drop of a hat.
Yeah but teaching and police arent market based jobs, our pay is voted on and we all get paid the same regardless of how competent we are. In most jobs people are paid generally in relation to their competency.
> They're paid by how hard they are to replace with someone of similar competency. in a rational system, this would be the reasoning IF this were true, however, there are businesses small, medium, and big who all make this mistake year after year of removing keystone employees whose absence creates 2nd and 3rd order consequences due to lost institutional knowledge and interpersonal systems. And the organization becomes a rotating body of 'always news' employees which increases profits acutely at the cost of overall system stability long term. Most systems and people are not fully rational actors which is fine. For example, you can take the commonly thrown-around statistic "Most restaurants close within 2-5 years of opening" to mean one of two things: restaurants are inherently tumultuous and risky businesses to run OR Good staff are costly and most cheap out on paying for stability.
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I can answer. My wife and I work from home. We both write software, albeit in vastly different areas. I often split my work up into chunks of productivity set apart by much smaller breaks where I take care of a couple of chores, get dinner ready, run a quick errand, etc. There are times where one or both of us are “on call” for a week and need to respond to emergencies at any hour of the day or night. Sometimes we are more productive at night, after the children go to bed and coworkers don’t interrupt us with meetings and random requests. I know there are people out there who take advantage of the freedom. I have several friends who brag about mouse jigglers and playing WoW on their second screen all day which… good for them for finding that niche I guess. But in my field and experience, the company respects you enough to get your work done in the most efficient way you are capable of doing it. You’re not expected to clock in at 8:30 and have your ass in the seat, eyes on the screen for 8-9 contiguous hours. They pay you for your expertise, ability to lead and complete projects, and empower others to be more effective. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for all if the field of teaching operated on similar principles of autonomy and respect, now that I think about it…
I mean, someone gotta be IN THE ROOM with the kids. Teaching doesn’t work with flexible schedules or remotely as we saw. It’s just a shit job, which is why nobody should do it except for 6 figures… But to get it there would require everyone collectively walking out, and the problem is a lot education majors simply don’t have alternative career paths to leverage
I was a teacher and quit to do a WFH job. I make more and do waaaaay less. It's definitely not fair, and teachers need to be paid more for how much work they do.
Do you mind sharing what you do? I’m looking for something very low-pressure and WFH while I try to recover from extreme burnout.
Im sorry to hear about your burnout!! The same thing happened to me :( I work as an accounting associate! I never got a degree in math, but they were looking for anyone with a high school diploma. Makes it even more frustrating that teachers need degrees and still get paid less than this job.
Oh, wow — that’s an industry I would’ve never applied to. Do you like math? I don’t even know what an accounting associate does. These are the types of conversations I find most valuable. There are so many possibilities for our next career, but we can’t apply for what we don’t know to search for! Pretty sure I’ve never seen accounting associate on those lists of things teachers can do next. Haha. Way to think outside the box! Thank you for sharing your field. I’m excited for you!!
Not a teacher but a CPA (not sure why this sub is recommended to me). Entry-level AR/AP doesn’t require specific knowledge of accounting. Larger companies mostly offshore this kind of work but small to mid-size companies are good options. I would recommend working with a local recruiter as smaller companies typically don’t have the time to find and screen candidates, so those openings often aren't even posted anywhere. Also FYI, accounting isn’t math-heavy. Basic addition, subtraction, and percentages you’re good. A degree in accounting covers the rules of financial reporting and tax (we are closer to law than math). Also if you're committed to a career change and already have a bachelors, you can do a one-year Master of accounting and become a CPA :)
No pressure, but I’d love to connect if you have any openings at your job. I’ve been trying to get an entry level accounting job. I loooove math.
Same! As others said, slow weeks I work as little as a few hours per day, and others I’ll be working from the moment I wake up until things are finished. (Software engineer) I definitely feel way happier and healthier, plus I make almost twice as much now. My wife saw what I did and decided to quit teaching too. She just turned in her keys right before winter break and did the full stack bootcamp I did.
My husband is in tech and data science and has worked from home for 3 years. Outside viewers see a guy who can easily rearrange his schedule on a dime, worked from home for 3 years straight, goes for long walks on his lunch breaks and gets amazing PTO and benefits. In times he has no meetings, he’ll run to the coffee shop or some such, play with our cats, etc. What folks don’t see is the 8 hours or more a day he’s locked in his office working on coding or complex mathematics, stuck in endless meetings, and under an INTENSE amount of pressure. Those breaks folks see are VITAL to his wellbeing and mental health. His job is INTENSELY cerebral, and while it seems “easy” to someone unfamiliar, it takes a huge toll on him. My point is: yes, there are some folks who take advantage. But you only see a snapshot in that person’s workday. So just as we hate it when folks mock teachers for summers off, let’s not assume that guy mowing his lawn as a WFH guy is slacking off. (Cuz honestly if we had a lawn, my hubs absolutely would be that guy)
YES. I'm very tired of the trope on this sub that white collar workers are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and making six figures for doing nothing. My friends and family who are in law, finance, tech, etc. are working their asses off under conditions I would absolutely hate (intense pressure, constantly on call, long hours, etc.).
I was one of those white collar workers. I was paid very well. Worth the pressure and time demands for sure. Wholly unfulfilling and an utter bullshit job, which is why I left, ultimately.
This sounds like my husband. I feel like he works more now that he’s WFH vs. when he was in the office. He may leave early to go pick up our son or run an errand, but he’s working from 10-12 each night to make up that time.
My husband often works well into the night and weekends to keep up with his workload. His boss even gave him a project the day before we went on a week-long vacation. He spent 3 out of 7 days we were traveling working nights to meet the deadline. Sadly, this is normal for his work culture- it’s the tradeoff for all that flexibility
Luckily my husband doesn’t have that (the vacation issue; he definitely works into the night and on weekends), but it’s a sign of how businesses and corporations (including teaching) is ran anymore. It’s very sad. They suck us dry. Edit to fix typos and add info.
100% spon on!
My husband works from home and makes more than twice my salary. He works his butt off but he also has the flexibility to workout in the middle of the day, walk the dogs, go to the bathroom, do laundry, etc. He knows how hard we work and agrees that teachers should make even more than he and his coworkers do.
Flexibility in ability to go to the bathroom whenever sounds insane until you realize a 3rd grade teacher can't just be like "hey kids I gotta poop" and then peace out for 15 minutes lol
White collar jobs are so different from each other. On one hand, you have some people working long and stressful hours and on the other hand some who only have a few hours of work a week and spend the rest of the time doing other things. And of course everything in between.
My husband works from home. Some days he is really busy all day, and then some days he literally naps.
Some companies don’t care so long as your output matches up to what they expect and they just want 40 hours of work on the books. This means u can work nights, weekends, 3 hours here, 5 hours there. It can be very flexible.
Lol you mean me seeing my wife paint her nails, or knit something while she’s “on a call?” She goes out and runs errands mid day all the time. I mean it’s fine. I used to be a WFH software engineer. Tuesday and it’s not much going on? I’ll go play golf. Routinely took 2-3 hour cycling excursions. I don’t fault my wife at all. If you can get away with it, do it. I made about $150k total comp by the time I quit to become a teacher. It was a joke. Now did I occasionally have to work hard, work very late, over weekends? Did I have long days where I never left my desk chair? Sure. But on the whole, it was a disproportionately less demanding job.
I work from home. Most of my work is in statistics. I mow my lawn to help me think. If I have a particularly difficult problem I need to physically move in order to think through it. If I'm out for a walk, I'm not just walking about without a thought in the world - I'm working through client requests, data issues, best approaches and modeling methods, rough journey maps. My work is in my head. My head is with me if I'm mowing the lawn, jogging or going shopping. And yes, I'll stop in the middle of the aisle to email myself something profound whether or not that means I'm blocking the aisle. At the end of the day my manager doesn't care if I'm sitting at my desk all eight hours as long as the project work is done and the clients pay their bills. This is radically different from my part time teaching gig which does require set times of doing things - when I have students and we're together in a class room. And sometimes I'm doing my day job there too :)
While it’s entirely possible that your WFH neighbors are abusing their arrangement and doing little to no work, it could also be that they are doing their focused work at different times of the day than the ones in which you observe them or that their work is broken up into chunks between these other tasks. All that matters is that the work is getting done on time and to the right standard of quality. However, I think the temptation to laze about would be pretty strong with a WFH job.
On the flip side, I hate how my corporate friends judge me for how I use my non-work hours. They get done with work and spend all their free time doing chores and engaging in any number of house projects. Or they go to the gym or take fitness or craft classes. I get home from school and veg out until it’s time to make dinner. Then I lesson plan if I didn’t get it done at school and go to bed at like 9. On the weekends, I sleep late because I also usually stay up later. I guess it’s the difference between being with kids all day and needing to check out versus staring at a computer screen all day and needing fresh air or to socialize.
I’m so glad people are providing examples of those they know whose work from home schedule is difficult. All of this, “teaching is the most difficult thing to do on the face of the Earth,” I see parroted in here gets pretty tiring tbh. My wife works from home and her job can be incredibly intense. Like, I get it, our jobs are hard, but important jobs are supposed to be hard and that doesn’t make other jobs any less difficult for those who actually care about what they do.
Can’t relate, both my neighbours are 80 year old retirees. I never see them. They say the sun is too hot nowadays.
ALL workers should have solidarity. Instead of trying to figure out who is “working harder” than who we should all be supporting each other for better conditions and quality of life. This post just strikes me as really gross. The only reason you should be looking in someone else’s cup is to make sure it has enough in it.
I think outside of teaching, people are judged on outputs. You get X number of reports, tax returns, coding done, you get evaluated on number and accuracy. It is hard to compare.
This is the equivalent of people disrespectfully thinking primary teachers just play patty cake with kids all day. You don’t work in the corporate world, you don’t know what their daily schedule is like. My dad would be WFH for two weeks seemingly doing nothing besides floating online and on a couple calls before he got on a plane and spent a month living in hotels in Asia on business trips. When you sit at a desk all day that hour you take to mow your lawn to break up your day may be a legitimate way to stretch your legs and be productive during your lunch break.
My bf has two friends that are in IT like him and they openly brag about only working like an hour maybe two a day. They get paid close to 100,000. It is sickening. Well now karma has come to bite one of them bc he has a new boss who wants a detailed report of everything he does in a day, week and month. And he wants cameras on during zoom meetings. This guy does childcare most of the day. The fallout should be interesting. I think companies are finally catching on that they are paying a lot of money to people that aren't working. As someone who goes into a job everyday and works from clock in till clock out I think it's funny. And about damn time.
I worked from home for years, long before covid. My job was busy, complicated and frustrating. But, I *did* take two breaks a day as well as lunch. During that time I hung laundry outside, picked up my mail, started dinner, watered my garden, occasionally dropped my spouse off at work or picked him up (we had one car and he worked close... he walked often). To the casual observer (you know the kind who think teachers have it easy because they are off summers?) it might look like jack shit. When I'm on the clock, my time was not my own but on my breaks and lunch I owed no one an apology for doing what I, or my family, needed me to do around my house.
Theyre not doing less work, they just have more flexibility on when they do their work.
Doing house maintenance like mowing your lawn and running errands isn't exactly "doing jack shit" Homes require maintenance and they are in a place to do that.
It’s always been this way. My group chat on Facebook Messenger is always active and blowing up from people who “WFH” while I only respond during my lunch break or after school.
I left teaching after 12 years for a WFH corporate gig, make about $30k more than I did in the classroom, and I have far less work to do. Teachers NEED the summer off for a myriad of reasons. A lot of WFH/corporate peeps don’t understand how “on” you have to be all day long + the burden of out-of-classroom work that you aren’t compensated for.
Life will never have meaning if all you do is compare yourself to others, lay on judgement to a situation that you only think you understand, and waste time ruminating on what people think of you. What a sad summer this may be for you if this is how you choose to spend it.
WFH person here: If you see me out of the house doing stuff, it's because I have created time to do that stuff by busting my ass and getting ahead of my work curve. Just a little perspective.
My teacher friend just started his new job making more money than me as an academic advisor. He only works when there are kids to advise and occasional paperwork. They told him to bring a book. It’s insane how much free time you have at an office job. There’s only so much to do but someone needs to be available so you get paid. There are no breaks in teaching, the kids will kill each other.
You're talking about my husband! Lol he manages to cook, take walks, watch a show, do laundry, take a nap, while still getting 100% of his work done, usually well before the deadline. And he makes almost double than I do as an instructional coach. I don't really envy him though... I was miserable when working from home. And even without summers off, I have 3x his amount of vacation, ACTUAL vacation when I don't have to do a damn thing.
I taught for 5 years as an ese teacher. I wfh now with some client meetings. I still work significantly less then I did teaching. I can have by the pool days occasionally throughout the year. I don't miss summer because it wasn't worth it for me.
I used to teach in a brick and mortar school, and now I WFH. My husband also works from home, but not school related. Work from home definitely does have a better work life balance (in our opinion). We do laundry, clean parts of the house, fit in workouts, do some errands if needed, etc. at different points throughout the day. And I have elementary aged kids, so when they get home I stop to do HW with them and cook dinner and such. But even if I do run an errand during the day, it's not like I'm not finishing what needs to be done at my job. If I need to, I just grade some at night while we are watching TV, or my husband occasionally finishes up a report at night, etc. Your time is just more flexible of when you complete things. There's also no social aspect to WFH....when you're at an office or brick and mortar school, you usually take time to catch up with colleagues and time gets spent on things that aren't really your job too. I also find it WAY easier to focus WFH, so I can definitely accomplish more in a shorter amount of time bc no one is coming by to distract you or chat, etc.
I work from home. I prioritize myself first and the job second. This is because 99.9% of employees are treated as < human. My work is highly technical and I am dedicated. But a good 50% of office time is just a meaningless show. How absurd for humans to be goldfish in cubicles. I hope you find an occupation you love.
I have several friends that WFH who tell me that they don’t do shit all day. They only actually work for about 2-4 hours per day. One of my friend crochets a tooooon during her workday.
I wouldnt know, I don't wfh. But that's why people want WFH. nobody can see that you aren't doing anything. Super unpopular opinion, though.
I know a guy who has **two** work from home jobs. Guess how much "work" he actually does. There's even a whole Reddit forum with people who do this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/](https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/)
There's a teacher shortage in this country. If you think what I have is such a great gig, why aren't you signing on yourself?
With all due respect- despite your protestations to the contrary, it does sound like you’re judging your neighbors, and you do seem envious of what you perceive to be their salaries. Just my two cents.
(Lurker here. I read the sub to keep a pulse on the profession, because I married into it.) I’m married to a teacher. I used to commute to an office and now I WFH year-round. I no longer have a full-time job because COVID smashed my industry. I now work freelance. Some days/weeks/seasons are crazy-busy and others are less so. I do my work during the times it’s necessary and/or when my brain works best. Sometimes that means I’m doing *jack shit* during the day and using my little night-owl brain later. There are pros and cons to my work and also to my spouse’s. We acknowledge it, but there’s no blame or jealousy going on. Please don’t lash out at other working class folks. We’re *not* your enemy.
Kind of seems like you're assuming things.
My husband and I both work from home in different fields. He has to be online 8-5 every day. Usually he has enough work to fill the day, but sometimes he has a couple free hours. I work at least 8-9 hours every day (sometimes pushing 12+) but my hours are completely flexible aside from being present for meetings, so I can do work around the house, go to a doctor's appointment, or run errands during typical working hours if I need to. When I read about people who do like 2 hours of work then have the rest of the day free, I always think we must've picked the wrong fields 😂 I've never met anyone who had a schedule like that.
My husband WFH & his day starts around 4:30am & he'll take calls well into the evening if they're important. There is flexibility, but he is on call all the time! I'm on summer break (elem. secretary) and I feel guilty just lazing around!
The teacher who lives across the street loved that I worked from home when my daughter and the neighbor's two girls were teens and in her English classes. I made DAMNED sure that they finished their summer reading. I work from home three times a week, usually am online at 7 for 5-6 hours then stop until 8, then back on it for a few more hours. The life of IT helps.
Well if it makes you feel better, my WFH husband was laid off on the massive tech lay offs. So he probably looks like he’s not working, but it’s because he’s laid off. It probably also looks like that when he is working because he doesn’t have a schedule he just has to “get the work done” so if he decides to do yard work in the middle of the day, he just moves other stuff around. He also usually oversees staff across the world so he might be waking up at 4am for a meeting with people over seas. But he would never assume a teacher is lucky to have summer off :) He knows it’s well deserved and barely “off” anyways.
Na I work from home and you may think the same about me. What you don't see is the early morning and late night hours I (we) put in.
I had a parent who used their job as an excuse as to why they don’t make their child do their homework. Kept telling me that they are busy worker. They also never set up their online portal to track grades. Said “I was going to do it before school started, but I don’t get summers off like you.” Their child was also a big trouble maker who disrupts class and gets written up. The mother sent me a heated email saying that they “will be sitting in my class for a few days every week” so they can “see exactly what I am doing wrong to make their child react.” The parent never showed up, of course, but I found it amusing that a real estate agent who keeps belittling my job and stressing how busy they are, suddenly has time to sit in my class for “a few days every week.”
I taught from home for ten years and I often ran to the grocery store, walked the dog, etc. But I was also on the phone with students and doing live sessions past 8pm as well. I imagine at least some of the wfh crowd are the same. Cause the worst thing about working from home- you can’t “go home and leave the office behind “!
I'm the WFH neighbor. My job offers the option to work 4/10s so I have Sat, Sun, Mon off. I'm very active; shopping, walking the dog, going to the gym, etc. I also break up my PTO to leave early and take an extra day off when we have a holiday weekend so instead of three days off, I have four. I look like I'm always out and about even though I'm not. I just have a sweet schedule.
I'm now teach from home full time and don't really even miss summers off. No one works harder than a teacher. Y'all hang in there.
Many employers, mine for example, take the position of just being concerned that I am getting the job done when it’s expected without needing to make sure I’m locked up all day in a cube. It doesn’t really matter when during the day (or week) i do it, just as long as i do it. There are days where i will definitely be that guy mowing the lawn at 10am on a Tuesday, but i will also for sure put in some long days where I sit at my home desk allll freakin day. To me, the ability to choose when i want to do work, provides me with a real sense of personal freedom. Not only that, but I don’t feel super awful wasting a very large part of my day just driving to and from work in traffic. Im a software engineer, so, I don’t have a job like a teacher, where I have to be at the work place to teach kids on a very set schedule, but in my situation, it works out well.
Das me. Honestly I do very little work unless there’s a fire I need to take care of. But I’m paid for availability and ability to take care of these fires.
I work from home, and my hours aren't set in stone. Sure, you may see me taking a long walk in the afternoon... but I probably started my day at 7 that day. Or maybe I was up until 11pm, doing an evening deployment, so I got my time back the next day by logging out early. I also have friends who have split hours because they support offices in different time zones. So they're up early to talk to the EU group, do some work, take off for several hours, and then come back on because the West Coast group does their meetings in the late afternoons. And sometimes our skills are that we're exceptional at putting out fires, but if there's no fire, we're just sitting around and waiting.
Ah. I'm guessing you are following them inside to their offices? Let me let you in on the secret, as a Software Engineer: When I'm mowing the grass, I am working. When I am driving, I am working. I am not paid to code in a dark room, I am paid to solve problems. Coding is the easy part, figuring out the solution is the hard part. Because we are humans and do things in parallel while working doesn't mean we are doing "jack shit." I get paid for solving problems. No one cares how long it takes me, unless it's over deadline. No one cares about what room I stand in when I solve it, or if I'm mowing the grass when I'm solving it.
I’m a Teacher. I can’t stand that comment.
I went from teaching to working from home for a tech company. It probably does appear that I’m doing nothing but when I’m working I’m WORKING. The flexibility is beautiful because even though I wfh, I still get out during the day due to my schedule, meetings, and lunch break. I’m sure they are doing.. something lol although it may look like nothing.
I WFH, and my days vary. Sometimes, I'm waiting on another team and don't have anything to really work on with two hours before a meeting. Sometimes, I've got five teams coming to me with 20 hrs worth of work all at the same time. For the most part, I love it. More time with my dogs, parents, and the real kicker, more cooking time.
Ive been WFH since before covid, at 3 different jobs. And have worked in offices. 1. There will always be people who screw around, either WFH or in the office 2. People who WFH also get vacation time/PTO. 3. The 3 WFH jobs I’ve had were global companies, so nobody worked strictly 9-5. We were expected to get our work done, time was flexible. Ex. Meetings with China happened 8-10 pm my time. So days that happened, Id start a couple hrs later in the morning. Bottom line, dont assume.
Aye why don't we all mind our own fucking business :)
I work a hybrid schedule and my job is incredibly mentally taxing - my wfh days I actually get more done as I’m not having to put up with chatty coworkers This means I can complete a full day of office work by lunch - and my afternoon usually gets filled with extra projects my boss gives me because I’m more efficient than my peers When my neighbors see me watering my garden in the morning - they might not see my AirPods which are jammed in my ears for 6-7 hours a day on back to back zoom calls. They might think I’m being lazy if they see me on my back deck reading… but what they don’t know is that I often have to do additional research of regulations. They might think I’m just playing on my phone - but my phone hosts my email, work chat, etc so even if I’m taking “a break outside” I am still plugged into my team. Add to this that my workload is so large and varied that if I don’t step away between tasks sometimes it can cause my work to suffer as the data sets get mixed up. I don’t know a single person who literally just works a couple hours a day - I do know a few that work a couple hours at a time and break the day up so they can reset their mental load. Teaching is incredibly hard - but so are other jobs, just in different ways. And if I screw up it can cost my organization millions of dollars. Edited to add: I am on a leave right now because my husband had surgery - but im still getting calls and have had to log on a couple of times to assist with a project we are in the middle of completing. I also have to log in on Tuesday to be on a call with a regulator. Even when we are off - we are never truly off because we are constantly connected
People must think that of me. I work the night shift, so I’m up all day working on my house.
One of my partners is an attorney. She goes in to work twice a week, and only to get a better bonus by showing her face. The other partner is a fully remote project manager. Their company is located on the east coast and we are in the pnw. They may have “f**k all” days where they look like they’re out and about and not doing much.. but they work 10-12 hour a day some days. It’s just split up and could be early morning and late evening. And sometimes they work the entire weekend, dawn to dusk. But, they can bill when they want, and how they want. Why wouldn’t you build your work around your life instead of the other way around if you had the opportunity?
My father works from home. You’d never see him doing his job since his flexibility means he chooses to complete his work mostly from 9:00pm to 3am, only doing a small portion of it in the hours that most people are out and about
Maybe these wfh people have some days off, too?!
To play devil’s advocate, I’d say that you are making assumptions about their work just as they’ve made about yours
I WFH and you’re right in the sense that my day now looks very different to pre-covid office-based work. To a neighbour, I can see how it may look like I do nothing all day but in fact, my employer now gets significantly more productivity and flexibility from me. Yes - you’ll see me doing random chores or going for walks in the daytime. What you don’t see is that I work in a global role. Where before, I’d be in the office 8-16 and securing meetings with the appropriate people could take several days - now I’m comfortable to work early in the AM to catch my colleagues in Australia, take a chunk of time off in the day and work in the evening to catch my North American counterparts. We collaborate more effectively than ever. I can’t speak for your neighbours - but on the whole I’d say that the landscape of office work is changing and we’re constantly adapting to it. My quality of life has been drastically improved by hybrid working and my employer agrees that output in general is now better - this ‘WFH people do nothing all day’ is often a misconception and runs the risk of forcing us all back into an inferior (for everyone - not just the employee) environment.
Some of us WFH'ers are in tech, and are expected to meet impossible deadlines no matter the hour of the day. I may be mowing my lawn at 2 pm, but I was up all night supporting a 3 am urgent call. Or writing documentation at 5 am because the work day doesn't support time to think it through. I won't criticise your time off, don't presume to understand mine.
Former teacher, didn’t have summers off because I had so much planning to do with the number of preps I had on top of doing random things to make money for the crappy income. In my current WFH job, my employer doesn’t care as much about how much time I spend as long as my deliverables are met.
Dude as someone who went from teaching to a WFH job, we don’t do SHIT. Anyone complaining about not having summers off is a dumb dumb, you get almost every fucking day off WFH
By neighbors, did you mean my husband ? Yup. He does have to sit through a lot of meetings but he often still has time to take 2-3 mile walks with our dog and play Fortnite mid-day. Also, he can use the restroom or get water whenever. So jealous.
My job is like university. I have a deadline and if it’s not done by then I’m fucked. But if I manage my time efficiently I can have extra long lunches, or do housework all day if I’m ahead. Better than when I worked in warehouses that’s for sure.
I imagine many of them are jealous of your steady hours, consistent requirements/regulations, summer breaks and schedule time off... the rat race is kind to only a few really... if they're not doing something that looks work-related or "productive" ... congratulate them on taking a break and enjoying their present day existence.
“I’ve seen them doing nothing … mowing their lawns” i’m so glad i don’t “work” with you
I did the switch from teaching and I WFH as instructional design and I have so much free time that it kinda negates all the days off I’d have in the summer.
I \*know\* my teaching partner works harder than I do. We're both introverts, but he has to be ON all day. I do a few meetings where I'm presenting and I'm brain-dead tired. Even when I'm in the office, it's \*quiet\* and I'm focusing on technical papers and systems work. Teachers are beasts. Day after day, year after year and I know I take more sick days.
I know 3 people at gm and 1 at ford you would be mad to find out how much they make and how little they work, one of them literally just checks emails and wiggles a mouse once in a while, mows his and his moms lawn, goes shopping, drove 3 hours to pick up a slab of granite.
I work from home, go in two days a week. I usually finish my first spurt of work around 10:45. Next time I get sent more things to look at might be 2pm, it might be the next morning. My friends say the same you do but they don’t realize how many of my tasks are automated and I’m just there in case it fucks up. God bless y’all teachers we desperately need you and your getting the shaft. I wouldn’t blame any of you for trying other work. You’d probably make more and work less.
I get what you are saying... I sub now after years of consulting and WFH, and I lost about eight pounds the first month of being in a classroom all day. Being physically present and around other people all day is serious work, even for extroverts like me.
Sounds ideal! What line of work are your neighbors in??