I WFH, every year one of the goals that the rest of the team decides is that it’s “so great” to see each other in person. The past few years haven’t worked out but one did. I spent hours in a couple of airports, the huge expense for the company, I spent days away from my family, and for what? So you could look me in my same face you would see if we turned cameras on every once in a while? My husband says I’m being weird, but I legitimately want to know, what is the benefit? I hate being there and have to play nice so you can…look me even closer in the face?
How you felt, going bonkers, is roughly how many introverts feel being around people. So, the three years that introverts felt good in the history of… forever, many of us would like to keep that. I just ask that extroverts respect how shitty the workforce is especially for introverts and maybe try to get their social needs met in their personal life and not demand that work time also fit only their needs. At the expense of others.
As an introvert, as much as I feel weird aroind people, I feel even weirder video chatting with people I’ve never met in person. In that situation, I have no idea how to read people and the expectations are way harder to try to meet. This makes meetings even worse until I meet them.
While I agree that forced in person work daily is insane, the OP is complaining about meeting people in person once after many years, which feels equally as ridiculous. IMO even for widely dispersed teams, meeting a few times a year seems ideal.
Some people do not care about reading people or meeting expectations of people at work. They just want to do whatever is strictly necessary to get some money to live, and then get away from the whole thing.
They may not care, but reading people and meeting expectations of your colleagues is pretty much a bare minimum level of functioning for most professional positions.
I’m a massive introvert and would love to not have to rely on those social aspects of work, but they undeniably make me more effective at my job and make life easier in the long run. It’s no different than physical exercise or any of the million other things in life that might be a bit unpleasant but are ultimately good for you.
Well… no
As long as you don’t get fired, there’s no need to do any of these things, if you literally don’t care what happens at your job, then there’s no need to be effective or anything like that. You don’t need to be liked, you don’t need to care what your coworkers think, you just need to do enough work that it’s useful to employ you.