What’s your laundry doing in the meeting room?
Climate crisis/rising energy cost solved – just do everything at the office.
This is apparently meant as serious advice:
Office workers could be better off at their desks than working from home from October because of the money they will save on heating, making coffee and charging devices.
Becoming an energy freeloader who outsources the bulk of their consumption to their office, local café or gym over the next few months could save you about £28 a week, roughly £120 a month, from October.
This assumes you worked in the office five days a week and charged a phone, laptop and smart watch while you were there, made two cups of tea or coffee and reheated your lunch, and that you could shower there or at a gym or sports centre five days a week.
But who the hell wants to shower at the office instead of at home after leaving the office to get the office stink off you? Who the hell wants to go home stinking of office and go on stinking of office until you go back to the office the next day?
This would outweigh the average of about £22 you could spend on petrol driving to and from work over five days, based on the average UK commute of 59 minutes a day published by the TUC in 2019. If you cycle to work you will save the full amount, but train commuters could be better off staying home.
In other words you’d save £28 but lose £22 in the process, leaving you with a triumphant £6 savings at the small small cost of going to the office instead of not going to the office. Also you’d have to do all your coffee-making and lunch-heating and device-charging and even showering at the office. Does that sound worth £6 to you? Or to anyone?
Not to mention of course the strong likelihood that the boss would not be particularly thrilled to have you showering and washing your undies and cooking your dinner at the office.
Especially if the boss is already doing the same thing….
It sounds so terribly crowded.
How many offices have showers?? Anyway this is all just a matter of inventing red herrings to chase, while governments let industries run wild.
My place of work has showers…but who would want to shower there? They are showers that you stand under in full view of everyone and everything. Why? Because they are showers to use if someone gets a chemical spill, and you aren’t expected to get naked.
I spend altogether too much time at work. I don’t choose to spend more just to save a few dollars on making coffee. Besides, our water is so bad I bring coffee from home anyway.
I work from home/remotely now, and I’ve been doing it 100% since 2007 (and most of the time before that, only coming into the physical office one day a week). There’s actually no place for me in my firm’s physical office; it would cost them money to have the physical space. On the rare occasions that I’m there, I hang out in a conference room. There is no way in hell that I would ever work in an office again, much less shower at one. It’s simply too convenient for me to stay at home, and I suspect that those people who can do so would agree. Why commute in traffic for 30 minutes when you can sleep an extra 30 minutes? Why come home to a messy home when you can spend the tail end of your lunch break cleaning the kitchen or vacuuming the carpet? I stay in close contact via Teams/Slack/telephone with my colleagues (many of whom also work from home) all day long during the work day, and we meet our deadlines, so why should we be in an office? There’s no advantage, at least not in our profession.
I suspect that a lot of these not-so-well-thought-out articles are the result of persons trying to rationalize forcing employees back into offices after several years of working from home.
I rent an apartment, so I don’t have an electric bill. But £120 a month?
Colin, according to this website*, current typical UK electricity cost is around 26p/kwh. That’s about 50c/kwh in NZD. By comparison I pay 31c/kwh including tax, but then there is a daily charge to add. I live in a cold climate area, but in a very energy efficient home. Averaged over the year my energy use would be ~NZD168/month (plus the daily charge) assuming 6500 units per annnum. The UK’s GBP120/month given the price difference comes out about 5500 units per annum. I’m assuming that in the UK the electricity covers everything including water and space heating.
What’s more scary is the projected price increase coming over the northern hemisphere winter.
Still, I wouldn’t be going to work to shower unless I was truely desperate I have to say.
* https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk
For context – the prices (retail) energy suppliers can charge are heavily regulated in the UK. The system is vastly overcomplicated but for simplicity here it boils down to a fixed charge (per day) and a per kWh rate (both are actually regional, cf. the 26p/kWh quoted above). Most media commentary talks about a “price cap” in terms of an average household which is supposedly easier for the consumers to understand but is totally confusing if you’re trying to figure out the underlying details.
Both fixed charge and usage rates increased significantly in April. The 6-monthly review has recently concluded that from Oct 1st the usage rate will go up by ~80%, and that it’ll be a 3-month review from now on. Most “experts” seem to be projecting another 50% rise for January. Unsurprisingly, people are not best pleased by this.
That £120/month figure is going to be based on the new rate of ~48p/kWh. Not the current one.
As an unrepresentative datapoint – I’m currently paying 29.33p/kWh plus 41.27p/day (in East Anglia). My supplier hasn’t announced what their new rates will be but they are certainly going to be exactly the maximum permitted – I haven’t bothered to try and look up the actual regional rate because this is harder than it should be.
Homes vary, but using electricity for all water and space heating is not typical; mains natural gas is probably more common than not. Typically a household pays the same (retail) supplier for both and the prices are regulated very similarly to electricity. Gas rates are rising by a larger percentage than electricity, and are projected to keep doing so – but the baseline is much lower so the overall cost per kWh is still heavily in favour of gas. I currently pay 7.36p/kWh plus 30.5p/day.
Oh, and also, that £120/month figure is suggested as how much could be saved per month by the office shenanigans. It’s not the total expected monthly bill.
More on the original topic – the regulated rates only apply to households. Business accounts aren’t regulated so you can bet your office energy use costs your employer significantly more* than it would you at home.
* (making quite a few assumptions for simplicity here)
Interesting. Thanks Banichi.
Honestly. Why would anyone even bother showering if they are working from home? Or get dressed for that matter. Stay in your pyjamas all day and save washing and ironing work clothes.