Work is not what it was, the future is bleak.

Working in an office day job, for a company, medium or large, is not what it once was. Only six or seven years ago working in an office was a drag, but it was a communial drag. You came into the office with your colleagues, put the time in, did your job, had conversations, even a bit of laugh. You got through it.

There was a general obedient disdain for senior management on the upper floors, it was the pecking order.

Today, office work is bad. Baron in fact. Most people work at home claiming to be more productive and therefore don’t venture into the office at all. Those that do are spread-out across office space. Effectively alone. Office space that once accommodated one hundred people now max out at five.

Those of us left in the office look around seeing the ghosts of the past around us.

Stripped out rooms and open plan spaces, imprints on the dense carpeted floor where desks once placed.

Corridors and walkways only partially lit as activity is so low it’s not worth turn the light on for all areas. Entire open plan floor left empty, slowly becoming storage for unwanted/returned/broken office stuff.

The kitchen has instant coffee and UHT milk as buying fresh milk was not being used quick enough and going sour.

Even being in the office in these sparse conditions means you are constantly on Teams calls as everyone else you work with either works from home or far away.

Occasionally a body appears in the office, new blood, well it’s just a current employee that needed to do some printing so they figured they would come in to utilise the office printer for their “work” needs. They leave, only to be seen again briefly in the future when they run out of AA batteries or A4 paper.

New starters coming into what was once office based work, especially the younger generation are missing out on very valuable face to face interactions. The experienced colleagues can't pass on knowledge. The office etiquette is lost.

Christmas parties are harder to attend or even organise. With everyone working remotely and only seeing their face on a screen through virtual meetings, if they even decide to turn their cameras on. Why would you want to spend an evening with these people.

A large percentage of work is turning up, I believe the level of work being churned out now the masses opt to remote work (working from home) is most likely less than before. I have no figures to back that up, but it's easy to be distracted. It takes a high level of discipline to work remotely, and I just don't believe the majority of people have that discipline in them. Its human nature to get one up on the system. You can take a longer break, get the washing done, chat to your neighbour, do the school run, that takes longer and longer as you realise you can get away with it more and more.

Monitoring applications will soon be widespread if the work force doesn't comply with returning to the office. Working remotely will soon be more intrusive and locked down than being in the office. The issue being that the intrusive force will be in your own home. Everything you do on your laptop will be monitored in real time. The sites you visit, how long you spend on applications and what you do on them, control of your microphone and webcam. You can cover the webcam, but can you cover the microphone completely? It is all coming.

Contractual changes will mean you have to show your face or allow the company to access the company issued laptop without notice.

Technology has enabled this utopia of workiing on our terms, mainly out of a greater good to stop the spread of infection. As the days, weeks, months and years pass, that is being forgotten and the a company's vision is that of profit, productivity and control.

The technology that freed us, will be our downfall, it will catch us in the act and we will be penalised.

Going back to the office may not be on people's priority list, but it should be, or they may face an increased invasion of their privacy they have not yet experienced.