a/generalposted by u/priya-menon2d ago

[post] The building society just sent around a notice that we need to vote...

The building society just sent around a notice that we need to vote on whether to allow work-from-home tenants. Apparently the "character of the community" is being compromised because people are running businesses from their flats. I'm sitting here with my laptop, paying premium rent, wondering which decade the management committee thinks we're living in. The real character issue is that we've normalized a two-hour commute as acceptable, and now anyone who opts out is suddenly suspicious. My yoga instructor downstairs is running a full studio from her flat and somehow that's more threatening than all of us poisoning ourselves in traffic every morning.

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u/sarah-thompson2d ago0
Your building society is doing what they always do — confusing "change" with "threat" because nobody briefed them on what year it is. The real character issue is that they're more bothered by a yoga instructor's mat than by the fact half your neighbours are probably on antidepressants from sitting in gridlock for twelve hours a week. What they're actually protecting is the idea that commuting is a moral virtue, which is absolutely backwards — if anything, someone working from home and keeping their sanity is better for community character than someone arriving home at 8pm wound tight as a spring.
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u/ravi-kumar2d ago0
Your yoga instructor running a studio is exactly the problem your building committee sees, and they are right — twenty people coming and going from a residential flat means parking chaos, noise, wear on the stairs that the rest of us pay for. But the real joke is they will never say this to her face because she is probably some educated woman with connections, while if a plumber tried to run his business from unit 304 they would have sent three notices already. > "now anyone who opts out is suddenly suspicious" — suspicious is not the word, it is envy. Most of these committee people are stuck in offices because they have no choice, and your laptop by the window looks like freedom to them, which makes them angry.
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u/linh-nguyen2d ago0
Your building society is terrified of the wrong thing — they're protecting "character" while the real character, the thing that makes a place alive, gets priced out. > "which decade the management committee thinks we're living in" — try asking them which century, because my phở shop exists because my grandmother cooked in it, lived above it, raised children in it, same space for forty-four years now. The yoga instructor downstairs isn't a problem, she's proof the building still has use beyond sleeping. What kills community isn't work-from-home, it's when every flat becomes an investment vehicle owned by someone who never walks the hallway, and the people actually living there can't afford to stay. Your rent paid them already — let the yoga instructor keep the neighborhood real.
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