Working from home definitely has its perks. Crawling back into bed in between Zoom calls, putting on your laundry after typing out an email, and basically never wearing a bra, are all things we’ve grown accustomed to over the last two years of pandemic chaos.
So, when Boris Johnson announced that staff were no longer required to work from home from January 27, many people were fairly devastated at the prospect of commuting and returning to the office.
‘Please don’t make me go back to the office to interact with people,’ wrote one Twitter user.
‘They can’t make me go back to the office, I’m not ready!’ added another.
‘I’ll have to resign, rather than go back to the office,’ claimed a third.
To try and ease the pain of leaving our pets, pyjamas, and duvets behind, The Rail Delivery Group has created a scheme to offer commuters a chance to win some quite tempting perks. You can get breakfast food from Greggs, a coffee from Pure and even free audiobooks to keep you occupied on the way.
In order to be eligible, you just have to sign up through the National Rail website and enter what journey you’re taking that day. After choosing which reward you want, you’re then sent a code and a link with instructions of how to redeem it for your latté, flat white, or bacon bap in store.
Scheduled to launch in the next few weeks, the programme will also offer mindfulness aids and music streaming services to hopefully make the packed morning trains slightly less of a shock to the system.
Rail Delivery Group’s Chief Executive Jacqueline Starr has said the scheme’s aim is to ‘encourage and support commuters as they return’ to work. Meanwhile, Pure CEO Spencer Craig emphasised that they’d seen their customers drop by over 50% while work-from-home restrictions were in place so are looking forward to welcoming commuters back.
But some users on Twitter weren’t swayed by the freebies: ‘If I wanted a bacon sandwich I’d cook it myself,’ said one.
‘As someone who thinks hot food on trains is grotesque…the idea of a free bacon sandwich for travelling on the train makes me meh,’ added another.
Over half of UK workers (52%) have said they would leave their job if they were forced back into the office full time, according to research by Momentive. In fact, 11% feel so strongly about working from home at least some of the time that they said they’d quit on the spot.
So, while free bacon sandwiches and audiobooks are nice, it might take a little more from company owners and managers to maintain the flexible work-life balance that many of us have gotten used to.
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