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Five Ways My Life Has Gone Downhill By Working Five Days A Week In the Office

The good outweighs the bad, but I would still prefer to be working from home.

By Shamar MPublished 2 years ago 5 min read
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Five Ways My Life Has Gone Downhill By Working Five Days A Week In the Office
Photo by Cris Saur on Unsplash

After being unemployed for a week back in September, I have been greatly enjoying my new job since. My colleagues are great, the pay is good (it could always be better), my workload is manageable, I’ve been able to learn quickly and, I have a career in the field I want.

However, with all the good always comes some bad, no matter how big or small. Despite the pandemic forcing companies to work from home or create hybrid working models, I have to be in the office five days a week.

Five days a week after I’ve been working from home in my own comfort zone since March 2020? Great, here’s one change I don’t want to adapt to.

The companies main reason for getting me to come in is so they can train me properly as they don’t believe that learning through Microsoft Teams or Zoom is efficient enough. After my last job was all-online and all-nightmare, I can see where they are coming from.

Lucky for me, work is a twenty-minute walk from my house which is an absolute blessing when you live in the capital city. Currently, for the past three months, I’ve been averaging 7,000 steps a day!

For the past three weeks, I’ve been working extra hours to rack up Christmas money which includes waking up earlier and coming home later. Needless to say, there are five overall areas of my life which has decreased since I’ve had to be present in the office.

I’m eating way more

When I was working from home, I was able to control what I ate because there was no food in front of me. Even if it was in the fridge, it was just easier to resist.

Now I’m in the office, there’s cakes, biscuits and, random snacks that people don’t want from their lunchbox. Additionally, the coffee shop downstairs sells my favourite hot chocolate, cookies and, food that I don’t need to eat but I will eat because it’s tasty.

It’s that time of the year and my colleagues are buying Quality Streets and my favourite biscuits which I never knew were my favourite biscuits until I tried them.

I don’t need this food, but my resistance is poor and here comes the Christmas weight…

I’m tired

Instead of jumping out of bed five minutes before logging on, I have to get up to shower, eat breakfast, get dressed and, walk to work.

It wasn’t so bad until the clocks went back in October and now it’s dark 24/7. So, I wake up in the dark, I walk home in the dark and, the vast majority of the day is barely lit. My circadian cycle is naturally thinking that I should be all tucked up in bed with my teddy bear and blanket thus my productivity levels aren’t so good.

Also, I can’t take a nap. When I used to work from home, I would take a cheeky five or ten-minute nap after I had eaten a hefty meal or if my body just wanted a break. Well, I can’t take a nap now because I would be immediately flagged as a cause for concern.

My fitness has decreased

As I walk to work, there are no gyms that are within walking distance from work. I won’t bring my car to work because there’s no free parking anywhere near the building, so I would have to walk twenty minutes anyway.

Gyms are scattered all over the town so I can’t get to any without a car. By the time I’m home, I’m so tired I can’t be bothered to go to the gym! My room isn’t big enough to work out in and, the area I live around isn’t the safest to run around at night.

Now I’ve settled into work, I have started spin classes again and I intend to go twice a week, but that isn’t even nearly the same amount as to what I used to do. At my old house, the gym I went to was only a ten-minute walk from my house and my kitchen was perfect for doing floor workouts.

Higher risk of getting sick

Within two weeks of me starting my new job, I needed to take three days off sick (and unpaid). Thankfully, it wasn’t coronavirus, Someone had invited a nasty cough and cold into the office and I caught it badly! If I was working from home, the risk of me catching a bug from a colleague is nearly nil.

There’s another bug that’s going around the office right now at the other end of the room — well, they can stay at the other end of the room. I cannot afford to get sick again!

My writing has been neglected

When I was working from home, if I didn’t have that much work going on, I’m able to open my personal laptop and do some writing. I can’t take my personal laptop into work with me and do some writing, I’ll be fired!

Because I’m so shattered after doing my extra hours and sometimes spin class, there’s no energy left in me to write. It all gets postponed to the weekend.

After three months, I popped the all important question to my manager in our meeting, “When will I be working from home?”

“Do Wednesday’s sound good?”

Yes, yes they do sound good. Very good indeed.

I’ve been told I’ll be eased into working from home to make sure I am able to get on with work and feel comfortable. Hopefully by the New Year I’ll be working from home three days a week like the rest of the team.

self help
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About the Creator

Shamar M

26. UK Based. Moans about everything (but in a fun way).

Follow me on Medium.

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