The hard thing about working from home is that I'm so ridiculously productive I finish everything I set out to do in substantially less time but unlike when I'm on-site, any time I spend not actively working is "time theft" or "not really working and invalidating of remote work as a legitimate option" whereas when I'm on-site there is a substantial amount of time spent chit-chatting with coworkers or being interrupted from my work by random pointless things that aren't my primary job duties, or literally just sitting at my desk reading a book in a mostly empty library on-call in case a patron needs something during those particular 2 1/2 hours.
All of those things are valued and validated as legitimizing the need to physically be on-site, but when I work remotely things that constitute reproductive labor like household chores or other things I need to do to maintain myself as a worker and keep myself going are seen as things I shouldn't be doing while on the clock, even though they do seem more relevant to my ability to be a productive worker than small talk with coworkers or reading a book at my desk.
For instance, my main goal for the day was to write a collection development guidance document. This would have taken me multiple days on-site because it would be frequently interrupted and juggled with other things to do. Working remotely, I completed a rough draft in just one hour. So like, now what do I do for the next 6 and a half hours. That was my assigned duty for the day. Read a book and wait for emails to come in?
I end up just reading a lot of Kirkus Reviews and Book Riot after I finish my goals for the day.
The disconnect between people who talk about the value of in-person office work being "community" and the ability to socialize while also acting like remote or flexible schedule workers are less productive and less valuable or more likely to be off-task is so like weirdly obvious and visible that I never understand how they don't get it...
When I go to the office I talk with my coworkers all day about what TV shows we're watching, movies, videogames, my team lead talks about his teenage & college age kids alot. I don't like really pay attention to sports but about half my team talks about the Eagles games. Me and the new team member talk about our media piracy setups, we spent all last week talking about the pros and cons of jellyfin over plex.
I get like a fraction of the work done if I'm in the office. And yet, here they are, mandating that our 2-remote/3-office schedule now means 3-office takes priority on holiday weeks so i lose a work from home day this week for seemingly no reason, and for what? So I can do less work at the expense of having to take the bus or drive? It's stupid.