SINGAPORE: Perplexed that his boss had cancelled his remote work set-up, an employee took to social media to ask others if “bosses are generally distrustful of employees who work from home.”
In his post on r/askSingapore, the employee explained that he requested to work remotely for medical reasons. His boss initially agreed and promised to make suitable arrangements.
However, he was taken aback when his boss later changed his mind. “In the end, tells me it’s not workable and requested for me to come back to office next week.”
This left him confused, especially since he had previously worked from home without any complaints from his boss.
“This is called productivity anxiety and a lot of boss suffer from this.”
Some Singaporean Redditors disagreed based on their own experiences, claiming that bosses are not generally “distrustful.” They explained that their bosses did not care how many hours they worked from home as long as they got the job done.
Others even mentioned that they could go days or even weeks without communicating with their boss. When they did interact, it was typically for practical reasons like updates or starting new tasks.
In one case, an individual shared that their boss doesn’t interfere much with their work process and relies on their Outlook calendar for updates.
He said, “My Outlook calendar is all they can see. What I do, when I do it, free or not, they all can see. They never disturb me. As long as I finish what is required of me.”
However, others had a different experience. Their bosses tended to micromanage them to the extent that they had to report every action they took during working hours.
One Redditor shared, “I got one that told me, must be on Skype all the time, when I report for lunch, I must say so in chat.
When I come back from lunch and knock off from work, same thing. If I come back one minute too late from lunch, or knock off one minute too early, I get reprimanded.”
Another commented, “Mine made us on our zoom calls while at wfh at work hours during covid. So we need to inform that we are away from the computer if we to use toilet, eat lunch etc.”
A third Redditor also explained, “This is called productivity anxiety and a lot of boss suffer from this because of the inability to truly know if your workers are actually working or simply goofing off and only leaving work to the last minute or rushing everything entirely and spending the rest of the day doing nothing.
The thing is that put anyone in the same position and you’ll also have the same anxiety, but some people can handle it better than others.”
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