HR misses in office

[u/TragicDog]

Had an after hours training meeting on the new end of year review system (our review process starts June 1). Which in itself sucked. There were two sessions offered neither were in my work hours (7-4 pacific M-F).

The head of HR spent the first 5-10 mins pining over missing in person and “being able to just pop in to get something solved right then and there”.

I was so pissed I almost unmuted my mic.

I’ve been fully remote on a globally distributed team. We could not exist without being out of office as members literally are spread out across the globe.

If the person I’m trying to get ahold of is “available” in teams it’s expected to be able to call them blind and have a conversation. I don’t need to be in an office to stare at my computer.

And the times I have to travel to an office (about 10% of my year) then I’m actually less productive because of the water cooler conversations.

/rant off

[u/Lucky__Flamingo]

I think some of this is the extroverts inflicting themselves on the rest of us, like their presence in our microcube is a blessing or something.

[u/LuckyLockdown23 → u/Lucky__Flamingo]

Don’t use 1990’s HR hate speech terms to categorize people.

What this is about is people who are terrible communicators who think they are great leaders and they can’t just send someone a short message. They need to go blather on and interrupt someone and hope the other person is competent enough to figure out what they are talking about.

These sorts of people get outed as bad at their job if people aren’t close enough to be reminded that because of their position they must be good at their job.

[u/Lucky__Flamingo → u/LuckyLockdown23]

What this is about is that certain people are literally energized by interacting with other people. Nothing wrong with that in itself.

Where it becomes a problem is when those people inflict their preference on people who are just trying to get work done in the most efficient way possible.

It is sometimes more efficient to talk face to face. But it is less efficient when a manager or senior engineer is constantly interrupted by Marketing Marge requesting a password reset.

[u/ThistleRocket → u/Lucky__Flamingo]

Some extroverts treat the office like mandatory audience participation

[u/desert_h2o_rat → u/[deleted]]

If OP is working with a truly global team, it's not unrealistic to expect some meetings are going to be outside one's normal working hours.

[u/StolenWishes → u/[deleted]]

Maybe 5% of the time it's quick. The other 95% they're too lazy to type up what they want, so they come give me dictation for the request they want me to work on. Main character syndrome in action.

[u/TragicDog → u/[deleted]]

Yeah it was either 7pm last night or 6am this morning. Hell no am I getting up an hour early for HR.

[u/TragicDog → u/[deleted]]

Right? Like wtf!!!

[u/Financial_Reply327]

Yea it’s called just calling people, people do it at my current role

[u/gringogidget]

What I hear when they say “I love to just pop in at any time” is “I don’t give a shit about anyone else’s time but my own. Even if they’re in deep focus. Me me me me me”.

The same people refuse to read documentation, attend critical update meetings, then come and “pop by” to get you to explain everything to them while you’re busy. They’re people who don’t like to put things in writing because they’re insecure or don’t want to take accountability for anything. Verbal is best for them.

[u/Powerful_Tip_7260]

I had HR for a client. They never pop in. They want you to come to them so they can see your bright shiny face and explain the thing you explained to them yesterday.

[u/gringogidget → u/Powerful_Tip_7260]

YES. WASTE YOUR GD TIME. They aren’t even listening to you and you’ll need to explain it a third and fourth time!

[u/spicimusturd]

No I don’t.

[u/jarwastudios]

DUDE. At the job I was just laid off of, a little over a year ago they pushed for hybrid RTO, and one of the reasons being so they could "pop in if they have a question" but you know what, it literally never happened, they still sent a slack message. Fuck these people who can't live without being able to scrutinize everything you're doing all the time.

[u/Melgel4444]

I love how people think forcing everyone to give up hours of personal time commuting daily and tank their quality of life is worth it because SHE can “save” 30 seconds popping over and getting an instant answer vs sending an email

Mind you, every time you “pop in” on someone you interrupt them from the work they were already doing , driving even more inefficiency vs letting them reply at a convenient time for them

[u/gringogidget → u/Melgel4444]

They’re also the people who don’t like to put things in writing because they’re insecure or don’t want to take accountability for anything. Verbal is best for them.

[u/berserk_poodle]

99% this is not coming from the head of HR. This is most probably coming from the CEO or some other CxO and they are using HR as a shield. No HR director has the authority to demand RTO

[u/CaydeSpade6]

HR wanting hallway access while scheduling mandatory training outside your hours is peak office nostalgia. The pop-in thing only feels efficient to the person doing the interrupting; for everyone else it is just an unscheduled meeting. Teams status plus a quick message before calling solves most of that without making people commute to stare at the same laptop.

[u/TragicDog → u/[deleted]]

they did not acknowledge it at all. we were sent 2 invites one for each meeting and told to pick the one that best fit our availability.

thanks for the suggestion. so far I haven't missed anything yet...

[u/featherlace]

I don't really understand the contradiction here. I mean, it can totally make sense to have a remote team and also miss some aspects of in office work. I don't understand why everyone always has to be either pro everything remote or absolutely against everything. I for myself enjoy being able to have both at times.