Working from home may eliminate the daily commute and offer greater flexibility, but it comes with a different kind of frustration for many employees: convincing people around them that being at home does not mean being free. One woman has highlighted this everyday struggle in a relatable video, saying the toughest part of remote work is often making others understand that it is still very much a full-time job.
(Also read: Delhi woman says WFH has ‘killed’ her social life: ‘Nobody talks about what you quietly lose’)
‘Yes, we are actually working’
Priyanka Dandriyal shared a video on Instagram showing her work-from-home setup. Instead of focusing on deadlines, meetings or workload, she drew attention to a problem that remote workers frequently encounter.
Text overlaid on the clip read: “What's the hardest part of WFH? Not the workload. Not the meetings. Not even the deadlines. It's convincing everyone that, yes, we have work. Yes, we are actually working. Yes, we are working just as hard as anyone in the office.”
She summed up the message in the caption with a short line: “WFH ≠ Work From Holiday”.
{{/usCountry}}She summed up the message in the caption with a short line: “WFH ≠ Work From Holiday”.
{{/usCountry}}Watch the clip here:
Internet users debate WFH vs office life
The clip prompted mixed reactions, with users sharing their own experiences of remote and office work.
One person questioned whether working from home could really be considered as demanding as commuting to an office. “It takes one hour to reach the office, another hour to get back home, and then there is a 10-hour shift at work. I highly doubt anyone with a work-from-home setup works that hard,” the user wrote.
Another person, however, argued that remote work can sometimes be even more exhausting because the boundaries between professional and personal time become blurred. “Actually, WFH is harder than working from the office because there are no specific working hours. They expect you to be available 24/7 just because you are at home,” the comment read.
Others related directly to Dandriyal’s point. “I am not only one facing this problem,” one user said.
Echoing the same sentiment, another added, “Yeah, people think you’re always free and available just because you work from home, as if the company is paying you a salary for doing nothing.”
(Also read: Techie says ‘liking a 9-to-5 job’ should be normalised: ‘It doesn’t stop you from living your own life’)
HT.com has reached out to the user for her comments, and the copy will be updated once her response is received.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)