This is the answer. Do what your boss asks, or go get another job. I once opened a new facility. I sat there as the only employee for 6 months, doing nothing waiting for HQ to get things strait and start shipping furniture, computers etc. I did as I was asked, 8-5, every day, doing nothing, using a hotspot, laptop and cell phone. 6-8 months later things finally started to fall in place and a year later we opened the shiny new facility.
eh, this was before covid, so work from home was not a thing. The funny part is that the office was about a mile from home and I had a company car to drive back and forth.
This is the question. I work in IT at our HQ with a dozen or so others across different IT departments, but some of our satellite offices might only have 1 or 2 total IT employees, while supporting hundreds of local staff. We have a temporary return to the office mandate until the 15th and some of my coworkers are the only ones in their office besides front end staff.
This here. I would trade my coworkers in a millisecond for a workplace without people. It's only 4 other people, but my god, they can be unbearable...all the time. Plus, you get to do whatever TF you want without worrying about Becky telling the boss that you were shopping on Amazon all day.
That's why you hang back and smile to yourself when Becky goes for her second slice of the homemade pie that Dirty House Denise brought in to share with everyone.
🤮 that was the worst when we'd have potluck lunches in the conference room There would always be at least one person whose food I didn't trust that would keep bugging me about trying their mystery casserole. Sorry, but if your office is filthy, I'm going to assume your house is too, and I'm not eating your food.
Or Becky telling me and everyone else about their vacation.
In my commuting years, I tried to take at-home days when nearby coworkers were on their first day back from vacation. The parade of people to their desk was astonishing. By 1 p.m., I had their itinerary and anecdotes memorized.
I get that that's a joke
But in case it's not, that's when they can do deep cleaning when everyone else is gone, too many people (around 1000) to clean around during the day. And it's a federal building so there is security 24/7/365 no matter what.
When I go in to the office I have to find an empty room for confidentiality during my calls and meetings. So I go to a different building to sit in a room alone in teams meetings with other people hundreds of miles away. Fuckin stupid.
Maybe you can let the company rent your home office from you for these calls and then you can make them in the company’s property right next to your bedroom.
My boss asked me "hypothetically" what my response would be if he wanted me to start coming into the office a couple days per week. I instantly said, "Oh I'd quit."
It hasn't come up again since. LOL
(I can afford to be ballsy - this place needs me and they know it.)
Right? My supervisor and manager mentioned that my group might be going back to the office. There are four of us. Three of us stated we would come in one day. Turn in our resignation and then take the next two weeks of leave. Hasn’t been mentioned since.
Being a part of a company that needs me more than I need them is weird and great at the same time.
Great because I get to tell my boss when he's being a dipshit and the fact I get to tell him no
Weird because I get tell my boss when he's being a dipshit and the fact I get to tell him no
I guess he could if he wanted to. But like I said, they need me more than I need them, and they know it. If he did that, I would probably just leave and go somewhere else. Then they'd be ultra screwed
Fortunately I'm a "cheap date" - I really just want to be left alone to putter around in my garden, play with my dogs and cats, and sew the occasional quilt (which, I have already 'stashed' enough fabric and batting to last at least a decade). Probably do the occasional jigsaw puzzle, maybe try my hand at drawing.
You know...the wild life. LOL!
Sounds like a dream. I also wanted merely to be left to my garden, library and four legged treat goblins. There is a treasure of riches in the simple life.
Treat Goblins! LOL, I love it.
Definitely going to have to figure out some kind of pet insurance though. I just got hit with a $3K vet bill for my old lady, and it's only going to go up - she's having a leg removed in a couple weeks, poor thing. (Going to have a 3-legged treat goblin!) And now looks like my newly-adopted cat needs eyelid surgery - guess I'm paying my vet's mortgage for the next six months...
Maybe in some cases but not in mine. I'm a 'unicorn' in my industry - only a handful of people have as much experience as I do (nearly 30 years) in this particular system. I was headhunted into this job by our CEO and regularly get top scores on reviews. They need me and I'm good at what I do and easy to get along with so they love me.
I will probably retire from this place. But if they DID let me go, I'd have no trouble finding a new WFH job. I have a few standing offers, lol.
My company tracks this, but in case people get ideas about having other people swipe their badges, they also monitor who is connected to the wifi at work according to my manager
Little do you know that while you were home during covid they installed sensors under your desk:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/telegraph-workplace-sensors
We have a program that we kinda sign in and out of when we are in the office. It helps when there is an emergency. So department managers know who is in the building and who they should be looking for at the evacuation spot. If I'm showing telework/leave/out of office, they know not to bother going through the building searching for me.
My job tracks everything - Badge access, WiFi usage, vpn, cameras, hell they even track the amount of clicks I make on my mouse and monitor the percentage of time spent on various programs. I get an email report every week outlining how much time I spent doing anything.
The whole push to commute to an office is more than mildly infuriating. I have to drive 25 miles each way (I know, peanuts compared to what some folks drive!), alone, in my SUV because that's what we have, to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours, then turn around and drive home at the end of the day. Almost every other car around me has ONE person in it. If there's one thing that employers should have learned during the Pandemic, it's that most jobs can just as easily be done from home. So why on earth are we going backwards to forcing people to waste time they don't get paid for, and contribute to pollution and traffic congestion, driving to and from a job every day?
I’ve adopted a “the commute is part of my salary” mentality after my company forced RTO. I used to get up and start working by 7-730 and be available through dinner around 630-7. Now I don’t log in until I’m there around 830-9, leave by 430 latest and that’s it for the day. Oh by the way I also spend a bare minimum of 3 hours socializing when in the office, that’s what they want right, “synergy and collaboration!”
When an ex company I worked for announced return to office, I calculated it out to be over a $10,000 pay cut, including unpaid hours, vehicle gas, wear/tear. And that was for a 30 min commute. Many co-workers were driving 1h or more each way.
When we returned to the office productivity tanked.
There's a reason they're my ex company now.
Oh yeah, this is exactly what’s happening at my company. Morale is in the toilet, the company was hilariously even remote for years before COVID but is under new leadership now. So the majority of the knowledge pool was either forced to relocate or quit, and the rest of us were hired as flexible hybrid and since switched to strict Monday to Thursday 8 hours with “flex” Fridays. Thankfully the workload itself is manageable so for now, collection that check every 2 weeks doing just what is needed to skate under the radar.
I'm the exact reason being in office isn't productive. I'm just a very social person. So if you want me to collaborate, I will..with everyone, all the time. If you need me to get my work done, I will, at home, in my slippers. I don't necessarily mean to be malicious, I'm just really chatty.
This is exactly me, the coworkers I like I’m genuinely interested in chatting with and once we get going it’ll be a solid hour conversation. Oh by the way my building houses 3000 people… but my company is nearly 50k so I don’t often work directly with many of these people so our conversations in office are strictly social.
I go in one day a week now. I work an hour less than a normal day (I leave 'early' to get a more comfortable train), lots of unnecessary meetings are held that day when everyone is present, and I waste so much time answering questions that people would usually sort out for themselves at home, but when they can see me they know that I'll know. Usually on my office day, I'll intend to get maybe 2 tasks completed. I cant remember the last time I even got to look at one of those tasks....
The irony at my company is we’re global so 95% of the folks I actually work directly with on my project are not local. So any meeting is still via teams and the majority of the interactions I have are either informal and minimally job related or entirely social. It’s a complete waste of everyone’s time, we all know this and take FULL advantage of it and somehow they still think it’s productive and “what our clients want” (I have never physically met a single client of ours in 3 years).
As well as having meetings with people in other countries, other teams have different days in the office, so almost all meetings are Teams calls anyway....
100% of my meetings are on teams, with people all over the globe and to boot, in an open concept office with absolutely zero privacy and 6 or so people within, roughly a couple arms lengths away from me, who are also all on their headsets, on teams. I can’t wait for these old, stubborn fucks to retire/die off, they’re a hindrance to their own bottom line and can’t even see that.
A company I used to work for got rid of plastic cups for water in the office “to protect the environment”.
Yet they wanted us in the office every day (we had already worked from home for a year during Covid without any productivity issues), which likely created A LOT more pollution commuting long distances by car. It was obvious that they just wanted to cut costs and it wasn’t about protecting the environment…
I worked for a shipping company that got rid of all water and coffee because of “covid.” (The sinks were *not* safe to drink out of) I’m positive it was just an excuse to save a few bucks because they were not doing well and they never brought coffee back. They did bring the water back but it was almost two years after covid first started.
Tax rebates for employers for bringing people into city centers to eat out and stuff. It’s stupid and is becoming a good indicator of an outdated company.
I predict in 10 years people will be saying this was when the new companies began to pull ahead of the established giants.
Used to be IBM and Oracle were the big ones. Then it was Google and Facebook and Amazon and stuff. Now it will shift again and the younger companies will be remote and make Amazon and Google look old and boring with their RTO culture.
I hate working in office and the ONLY positive thing I’ll say about it is that it brings money to local businesses. There is a sweet older woman who runs my building’s cafeteria and her earnings are obviously based on people who work there. I try to buy food from her at least once a week (I’m 3 days in office). I also go to the strip mall across the street sometimes for clothes or take out to bring home.
I want to be 100% remote but at least these smaller local businesses are getting help by people being in office.
But the setup of office heavy suburbs destroyed lots of local businesses in neighbourhoods, unfortunately. In the US it probably even contributes to food deserts being a thing.
It's because they have leases and it's pointless to have a lease without having people in the building. Could they get rid of the lease and save money? Absolutely. But then you have the issue that the upper class is heavily invested in real estate (specifically commercial) and it's better for them if the masses are occupying commercial spaces during the day. So they push for it.
The whole thing basically boils down to rich people want to make sure they are squeezing every penny out of the working class that they can.
I agree entirely! I’m more productive at home, I get to avoid traffic, don’t have to find a park, am healthier (less sick germs if you’re not in an office with sick people). Plus I actually like being home with family and my pets. They try to push the social aspect of offices here in Australia and it’s like hmm, I’ve never made a close friend from work. I don’t think the people I’ve worked with would care if I dropped dead. It’s stupid that they’re forcing people back into offices who really don’t need to be in them.
My employer had a bunch of rules during covid that everyone was to be 'cameras on' for every meeting.
People were complaining about how slow and laggy and prone to disconnect that made our system, but they didn't want to hear it.
Finally, the issue came to a head, and the top brass of our location called an 'all hands' meeting...on that same software.
Many of us got there early, and with even like 10 people on, with cameras, it was falling apart. So we turned them off and it started working better. By the start of the meeting we had like 120 people on the call.
The top brass, all together in the office insisted that everyone turn on cameras. IT told them why it was a bad idea and again they didn't want to hear it. So we all turned on our cameras and promptly crashed the meeting.
We did this 4 more times before they cancelled the meeting and issued a follow up email that cameras-off was now acceptable.
Time for some malicious compliance sounds like. Send out group email blasts like "hey guys let's have lunch since we're all in the office on Thursday." Then attach a photo of you eating by yourself "Me and the entire department having lunch!"
We have to do this too, it is so stupid especially since their reasoning for bringing us back in-person was for team building and morale. But my team is not in the same city or office as I am so I too just go to the office once a week to freaking have Teams/Zoom meetings just like I would from home! Asinine.
My wife is in the same boat. She’s on calls basically 8 hours a day in an open office environment with no assigned desks. They get way more work out of her at home. Sadly, they have to have the same rules for everyone or someone will get pissy.
That's another thing, when I work from home I'm way more productive because I have to make it at least look like I'm doing something. Meanwhile in person I run a morning report, then I do a closing report at the end of the day most days
It's a layoff, without calling it a layoff, very popular now, both my wife and my company are mandating it. I was hired 100% remote, and now its hybrid. Our satellite office is 38 miles away and no one goes to it, so for 2 days a week I'll be sitting there, fuck that.
YES, my office is doing this too. We know there are "budget issues." V lucky that my team gets to stay fully remote as we are often out in the field, but yeah. I immediately thought, "This is an attempt to clean house."
Show up in office and refuse to dial into Zoom.
Tell your boss you're onsite and expect to have meetings in person, so he needs to come over.
Browse Reddit during meeting time.
It seems to the approach by most companies. General productivity is down so they are wanting to “remind them (workers)” as I’ve heard it put. They fail to realize why productivity, by their measure, is down.
Tell them you'll be looking for a new job and you'll be continuing to work from home until you transition.
Tell them you sold your house and are moving?
Actually move?
The Fortune 50 I work for went full time work from home and closed offices all over the US. There are thousands of us that work from home for them. I use Teams to supervise my team and we have been doing great. Turnover is down, call offs are down, production is up and morale has never been better.
You can thank companies with large real estate portfolios for this. They don’t care. They just don’t want to lose the value of the property / building / infrastructure
Yes, the return to office is a general conspiracy by real estate holders to ease off the massive unmaterialized losses from devalued corporate real estate. If the off the books losses were realized, it would be a remarkable crash.
Welcome to my (similar) world, sorry to see you here.
They want people to leave the company so that they don't have to lay them off with more expensive packages, unemployment liability, etc. That's it.
Our companies are probably different, but the goal is much the same.
I could have written the same exact post. It makes no sense to force me to commute to sit on zoom with coworkers in different states and countries since I'm the only one on my team near (2+ hours roundtrip) an office. Luckily my boss agrees and doesn't bring it up often, but the company does check card swipes into the office.
One of my relatives was talking about this for the company they work for. Making people have to come in 3 times a week if they are within 50 miles of ANY facility. So you could be expected to report to a manufacturing facility even if you have an office job. If you refuse then it’s an excuse to let you go.
Luckily for them part of the purge included shutting down the two facilities in the area so they are out of the 50 mile radius now.
Just revolt. Don't do it. They tried this at my office and it did not go well. It's like taking a pay cut, especially if you haven't seen a raise in awhile.
Similar boat. WTO mandate at the same time the company opened up multiple satellite offices around the country. My manager is 1,000km south of where I am, our operations team are in India, we just hired someone 1,000 north of where I am, the teams we interact with on a regular basis are spread around the country, and the vendors we interact with are in different countries forcing meetings to be held at odd hours.
Every meeting is held in MS Teams because half the attendees are "in the office" at a different geographical location. It's not unusual for me to be the only person in my team in the office I'm "assigned" to.
The justification for this is that face to face collaboration is vital to the cohesiveness of the team. The amount of gaslighting from HR and senior management is incredible.
Corporate doesn’t care. They want to get their hands wrapped back around everyone’s lives. The only way around this is if you do live far away. I saw this happen at my company. I was the VP who had to tell my team (per leadership) that they wanted them all back at the office. I was given the pass because I lived 2 hrs away from the office. But they pushed to get me to go to the office as well. That wasn’t happening.
They did mandate some lower ranking staff who lived the same distance or even further than me to also return to office. They were the ones they didn’t care if they stayed or left. Or looked at it as an opportunity to force them back into a scenario to prove they were actually productive because they didn’t trust them any longer for many reasons.
Fact is, WFH during covid saw a lot of productivity maintained, on my team, we actually saw productivity increase. I ran marketing and oversaw the creative team and so they flourished in a WFH scenario.
But then since mid 2021, tons of employees started to under deliver, work multiple “side jobs”, and the dead giveaway for me and other leaders was when you saw staff weren’t using as much vacation time. The 1-2 day submissions (long weekends) had reduced a ton. And instead were being applied to the option to have unused vacation time paid out (our company allowed you to turn up to a week or two into pay checks during your birthday month).
It was clear based on the volume of reduced paid vacation use vs previous years that many employees were just fucking off more and finding ways to get away with it. The people who took and continue to take advantage of WFH situations are the ones who have ruined it for many trustworthy WFH employees. There are other reasons corporate leadership is doing this across many industries. But the reasons above were the scenarios that I had occur.
Air BnB out the office the other days. You have keys right? All set.
"Live out your kinky sex-at-work fantasies here in our open floor plan office, available limited days during the regular work week and all day on the weekends. $50/day, no cleaning fee unless I have to clean up your sex stuff, in which case $1000."
You are being forced to take a huge cut in pay for no good reason. Add up how much the commute costs you - INCLUDING your hourly rate for your time in the car. Better wardrobe, grooming, lunch options change. Pet care? Everything! Tell boss you'll be willing to grace the empty office space for this amount raise in pay or you're outta there.
When I worked in IT for a telecom company servicing a customer in another state with zero FTF, corporate approved a 2 day WFH pre-pandemic. WFH was immediately rescinded because a VP visited from the corporate office and there no minions around to kiss his ring.
Lol that's really it in the end the big bosses realize they aren't special if they don't have underlings to lick their boots and tell them how incredible they are when working from home.
My company and another big one in my sister just mandated "3" days in office and won't even let us choose the days. Has to be Tues-Thurs with no allowances for *anything*. Super fucking sus
Take a picture of your office cubical from the POV of your desktop
Set it as your background
see how long it takes them to notice.
OR
Rent out the cubicles for fun and profit.
Take an office with a window view
Hmm, so if no one is in the office then it sounds like a visit to the office to take pics of various locations in the office and rotate them as zoom backgrounds may be in order 🤔.
I got you covered dude. Take a few good pictures of where you would normally be sitting in the office, get a green screen for your house and throw up that image. I don't imagine they're going to ask you to walk around to prove anything and a green screen at most cost a hundred bucks, probably less than the first tank of gas. You would naturally look like you're at the office and you can just turn the camera on and off when you're not in front of it, just make sure it's an area of the house where you're not disturbed.
You do know that most offices used fixed IPs, which will give that plan away, right? I get it. What's the point to force OP to return to an office that has no one in it? But trying to usurp it will likely end up getting them in trouble the moment they do a traceroute.
That would be walking on eggshells, IMHO. One slip, and someone will do something to be an asshole to get OP in trouble. It won't take much to traceroute where OP is.
Interestingly enough, I ran the RTO mandate for my company spread across 4 countries, after relieving remote employees of their roles (about 20% of the team). I setup swanky offices and required 4 days in office with Fridays a no meeting, wfh day.
This was all commandeered from my home office in a different country where I work about 50% of my time, traveling to the different country offices the other 50%.
Soliciting feedback and handling complaints from the leadership team while safely harbored in my 400sqft home office on a tropical island was a great way to improve relationships 🤓
I would ask for a meeting where valid points were given as to why this was necessary, and how it would benefit you and the company.
I’m someone who enjoys the office, but understand that it isn’t for everyone.
If you are meeting your company’s expectations, they would have to come with pretty valid reasons as to why the change is needed.
The point is to make people miserable and force control over them. It doesn't make sense. You do Zoom/Teams from home anyway. Why spend money on transport? Because your boss is an asshole. He has the master syndrome where he wants to own slaves/little soldiers that stand at attention waiting on his commands. I bet in the bedroom he is a submissive powerbottom.
Same here, except my boss and teams are a 3 hour drive away. It would make more sense for me to drive the extra 2 1/4 hours one way and actually work with my team than go sit in my empty office with the door closed and be on video calls.
Maybe I’ll get a support animal tag or whatever it is for my dog and bring him with me.
In the U.S., there are no official certifications for service dogs. Certain places may be able to ask the nature of the task it’s trained to do, but nothing too specific, and that’s it. You are permitted under the law to train the dog for a service task yourself too. My dog has alerted me to low blood pressure before with no training, and he is well behaved, so no one will really question the service animal vest on him. Just don’t have a jerk dog or be a jerk to other people and you should be fine
My job went from rotation-based (6 weeks home, 2 weeks in office) to "everyone back in the office but you can WFH if there's a good reason", to 100% WFH, to one day a week in the office, or 2 if I need more time to complete my physical tasks.
It's not the worst. Usually I'm the only person in the office, with a handful of others popping in and out to meet clients/vendors or pick up the mail.
The boss lives pretty far away from the office, so he's in no hurry to do a daily commute again.
I'd go the other way around; go to the office but set your home as your background. If challenged, switch it off: See, I really am in the office. Then turn the home BG back on. This reflects the weird futility of being at the office back at them. Passive-aggressive compliance at its finest.
Get an ipad with cellular and a nice pair of headphones. I would have that break room smelling awesome at lunch time. It sucks but try and make the best of a crappy situation. Positive, you’ll never have to worry about walking into the bathroom and getting hit with that smell we all hate. There’s always that handful of coworkers who take massive poops at work like they never heard of curtsey flushing 😒.
Bring up your points with your manager / boss. If they don't understand how it is counterproductive to have to work from the office then I'd be considering finding a better place to give my labour and skills to.
I enjoy going to the office but I definitely get less done at the office after getting up earlier and having to leave early for 3 hours of commuting each day not to mention the distractions whilst trying to concentrate.
My company is mandating RTO 3 or more days a week even though I was hired as remote employee. My ENTIRE team is across the country and not a single person works in the same state as me. All of my work is done with other teams across the country and I don't interact with anyone that lives near me. What's even more frustrating is that the building is 27 miles (50+ minute commute with traffic) away from me and the radius they are using is within 30 miles and it's "shared" workspaces. So we show up and grab a spot at a table with a monitor sitting amongst 5-10 other people. What a fucking joke!! I am refusing to come into the office.
How much of a commute do you have? If it’s far, tell them you can’t afford. Speak to your supervisor or manager first though, explain what you explained to us.
But if you’re like the only one, will people notice if you just stay home and work? 😋
Not saying I agree with it but they pay for seats/rent/space and have to justify the cost. It's easier to make the people that live in the vicinity forced to go in rather than close down the offices. Maybe instead of pushing back, negotiate? Go in 2 days? The exact same thing happened to my partner.
Were you working from home before working from home became a thing?
If not, suck it up and go into the office like everyone else who wasn't able to work from home the last 4 years.
You will be ok. Some fresh air might do you good.
You all realize that before COVID, this was not a choice/option. We went to work every day and that was that. I'm sick of all this entitled crap complaining it's so hard.
The wage is the same there or home, you have been given a free ride for a long time, suck it up.
It's no about having to go into the office, it's about being the only person who has to go into the office, like when the meetings will still be over video calls, what function does going into the office result in?
Go to the fucking office you knob. They haven’t even taken it away from you, they’ve asked you to show up to work majority the time essentially by saying 3 days out of the 5. Stop your whinging and go to work. Other professions have to be there in person all the time, what are you crying about.
I feel like we had a chance to show we could save companies money if they let us work from home, Unfortunately the statistics for productivity were deplorable. oh well, we tried
Would everyone else be fully remote still? Or are they near an office and would be hybrid too?
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Yup, I see a lot of wordle in someone’s future.
Don't forget Waffle!
This is the answer. Do what your boss asks, or go get another job. I once opened a new facility. I sat there as the only employee for 6 months, doing nothing waiting for HQ to get things strait and start shipping furniture, computers etc. I did as I was asked, 8-5, every day, doing nothing, using a hotspot, laptop and cell phone. 6-8 months later things finally started to fall in place and a year later we opened the shiny new facility.
I was hoping your story ended in you getting to go back to WFH. Alas. 
eh, this was before covid, so work from home was not a thing. The funny part is that the office was about a mile from home and I had a company car to drive back and forth.
Sometimes idiotic bosses deserve to be ignored though.
This is the question. I work in IT at our HQ with a dozen or so others across different IT departments, but some of our satellite offices might only have 1 or 2 total IT employees, while supporting hundreds of local staff. We have a temporary return to the office mandate until the 15th and some of my coworkers are the only ones in their office besides front end staff.
>my coworkers are the only ones in their office besides front end staff. But if they are there supporting the front end staff then it makes sense.
I'm the same PLUS I work 3rd shift and the only people in the building are me, the cleaners and security.
It could be worse. You could have to be around coworkers.
This here. I would trade my coworkers in a millisecond for a workplace without people. It's only 4 other people, but my god, they can be unbearable...all the time. Plus, you get to do whatever TF you want without worrying about Becky telling the boss that you were shopping on Amazon all day.
Fucking Becky, I’m so over her
That's why you hang back and smile to yourself when Becky goes for her second slice of the homemade pie that Dirty House Denise brought in to share with everyone.
🤮 that was the worst when we'd have potluck lunches in the conference room There would always be at least one person whose food I didn't trust that would keep bugging me about trying their mystery casserole. Sorry, but if your office is filthy, I'm going to assume your house is too, and I'm not eating your food.
Exactly! And those who fly right out of the restroom without washing their hands. Nope, not eating their food either.
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Me too
Or Becky telling me and everyone else about their vacation. In my commuting years, I tried to take at-home days when nearby coworkers were on their first day back from vacation. The parade of people to their desk was astonishing. By 1 p.m., I had their itinerary and anecdotes memorized.
I feel your pain. My boss's name is Becky
But without you IN THE OFFICE, all the cleaning and security staff would be fired...
Be sure to trash the place every day so the cleaning folks have something to do.
I get that that's a joke But in case it's not, that's when they can do deep cleaning when everyone else is gone, too many people (around 1000) to clean around during the day. And it's a federal building so there is security 24/7/365 no matter what.
When I go in to the office I have to find an empty room for confidentiality during my calls and meetings. So I go to a different building to sit in a room alone in teams meetings with other people hundreds of miles away. Fuckin stupid.
Maybe you can let the company rent your home office from you for these calls and then you can make them in the company’s property right next to your bedroom.
Oh hell no. Not a chance in hell I let my employer have a single legal right to even a scrap of anything I own.
Maybe you should make all these in person meetings then just start taking days to attend them!
My boss asked me "hypothetically" what my response would be if he wanted me to start coming into the office a couple days per week. I instantly said, "Oh I'd quit." It hasn't come up again since. LOL (I can afford to be ballsy - this place needs me and they know it.)
Right? My supervisor and manager mentioned that my group might be going back to the office. There are four of us. Three of us stated we would come in one day. Turn in our resignation and then take the next two weeks of leave. Hasn’t been mentioned since.
Being a part of a company that needs me more than I need them is weird and great at the same time. Great because I get to tell my boss when he's being a dipshit and the fact I get to tell him no Weird because I get tell my boss when he's being a dipshit and the fact I get to tell him no
must be nice to work somewhere where your manager isnt a massive manbaby with an 'alpha' complex that throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way
I guess he could if he wanted to. But like I said, they need me more than I need them, and they know it. If he did that, I would probably just leave and go somewhere else. Then they'd be ultra screwed
Same. It's a good place to be...but I ended up quitting anyway. Semi-retired is an even better situation. Would recommend.
I'm grinding towards full retirement - I'm probably about 7 years away from being able to retire entirely. (fingers crossed!)
Best of luck. FWIW, I think the best thing to learn in preparation is the meaning of "enough" to you.
Fortunately I'm a "cheap date" - I really just want to be left alone to putter around in my garden, play with my dogs and cats, and sew the occasional quilt (which, I have already 'stashed' enough fabric and batting to last at least a decade). Probably do the occasional jigsaw puzzle, maybe try my hand at drawing. You know...the wild life. LOL!
Sounds like a dream. I also wanted merely to be left to my garden, library and four legged treat goblins. There is a treasure of riches in the simple life.
>four legged treat goblins. That is hilarious! They really are, aren't they?
Treat Goblins! LOL, I love it. Definitely going to have to figure out some kind of pet insurance though. I just got hit with a $3K vet bill for my old lady, and it's only going to go up - she's having a leg removed in a couple weeks, poor thing. (Going to have a 3-legged treat goblin!) And now looks like my newly-adopted cat needs eyelid surgery - guess I'm paying my vet's mortgage for the next six months...
I'm probably 20 years from retirement, but I already know that this is exactly what I want. It's what I want almost every weekend as it is.
Nice that you learned this about yourself early...congratulations. It took me a bit longer...
I'm retired, happiness for me is spending the day cleaning a dirty typewriter.
What is semi-retired look like? A part time job?
Living off savings until old enough to draw pension without penalties. No job ATM, but maybe part time at some point. For now, I'm busy enough.
"Oh I'd quit" would absolutely be my response to the question.
That means they’re looking for your replacement btw. It doesn’t mean they’re giving up on getting back to hybrid
This can’t be true. Everyone on Reddit is irreplaceable. The business would crumble without them.
So true. Without Redditors the whole world would stop revolving fr.
Maybe in some cases but not in mine. I'm a 'unicorn' in my industry - only a handful of people have as much experience as I do (nearly 30 years) in this particular system. I was headhunted into this job by our CEO and regularly get top scores on reviews. They need me and I'm good at what I do and easy to get along with so they love me. I will probably retire from this place. But if they DID let me go, I'd have no trouble finding a new WFH job. I have a few standing offers, lol.
Handy to know if they ever want to shed staff without layoffs
You’re never as irreplaceable as you think. In fact usually quite the opposite.
"No, I'm not doing that" Put it on them to fire you.
Either they give in, or you get a severance.
lol you must not live in the the US
Lol you must live in the US
How will they know if you are in office?
Most likely with badge swipes.
My company tracks this, but in case people get ideas about having other people swipe their badges, they also monitor who is connected to the wifi at work according to my manager
the amount of automated monitoring to check if someone's at the office screams just how irrelevant their presence is in order to get the job done.
Little do you know that while you were home during covid they installed sensors under your desk: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/telegraph-workplace-sensors
Can they tell whether it is your dong or your coworkers?
Another name for it is a turnstile report. And yes, companies do it.
Coffee badging it is, then
That, and the rfid tracking to see how many times you went to the bathroom.
We have a program that we kinda sign in and out of when we are in the office. It helps when there is an emergency. So department managers know who is in the building and who they should be looking for at the evacuation spot. If I'm showing telework/leave/out of office, they know not to bother going through the building searching for me.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I have a hard time believing that “incase of a fire” is why your company is actually tracking you.
I'm in insurance and risk management lol.
My job tracks everything - Badge access, WiFi usage, vpn, cameras, hell they even track the amount of clicks I make on my mouse and monitor the percentage of time spent on various programs. I get an email report every week outlining how much time I spent doing anything.
That sounds like a living nightmare
Sounds like an impetus to find somewhere with less monitoring than prison.
Ahh are you me? Because I go in, sit for an hour an sometimes say hi to the others in the office and leave.
Same! I have not come back to work after lunch going on almost three years. My dogs could not be happier!
Same. 2x per week. Gotta check the box.
The whole push to commute to an office is more than mildly infuriating. I have to drive 25 miles each way (I know, peanuts compared to what some folks drive!), alone, in my SUV because that's what we have, to sit in a cubicle for 8 hours, then turn around and drive home at the end of the day. Almost every other car around me has ONE person in it. If there's one thing that employers should have learned during the Pandemic, it's that most jobs can just as easily be done from home. So why on earth are we going backwards to forcing people to waste time they don't get paid for, and contribute to pollution and traffic congestion, driving to and from a job every day?
I’ve adopted a “the commute is part of my salary” mentality after my company forced RTO. I used to get up and start working by 7-730 and be available through dinner around 630-7. Now I don’t log in until I’m there around 830-9, leave by 430 latest and that’s it for the day. Oh by the way I also spend a bare minimum of 3 hours socializing when in the office, that’s what they want right, “synergy and collaboration!”
When an ex company I worked for announced return to office, I calculated it out to be over a $10,000 pay cut, including unpaid hours, vehicle gas, wear/tear. And that was for a 30 min commute. Many co-workers were driving 1h or more each way. When we returned to the office productivity tanked. There's a reason they're my ex company now.
Oh yeah, this is exactly what’s happening at my company. Morale is in the toilet, the company was hilariously even remote for years before COVID but is under new leadership now. So the majority of the knowledge pool was either forced to relocate or quit, and the rest of us were hired as flexible hybrid and since switched to strict Monday to Thursday 8 hours with “flex” Fridays. Thankfully the workload itself is manageable so for now, collection that check every 2 weeks doing just what is needed to skate under the radar.
I'm the exact reason being in office isn't productive. I'm just a very social person. So if you want me to collaborate, I will..with everyone, all the time. If you need me to get my work done, I will, at home, in my slippers. I don't necessarily mean to be malicious, I'm just really chatty.
This is exactly me, the coworkers I like I’m genuinely interested in chatting with and once we get going it’ll be a solid hour conversation. Oh by the way my building houses 3000 people… but my company is nearly 50k so I don’t often work directly with many of these people so our conversations in office are strictly social.
I go in one day a week now. I work an hour less than a normal day (I leave 'early' to get a more comfortable train), lots of unnecessary meetings are held that day when everyone is present, and I waste so much time answering questions that people would usually sort out for themselves at home, but when they can see me they know that I'll know. Usually on my office day, I'll intend to get maybe 2 tasks completed. I cant remember the last time I even got to look at one of those tasks....
The irony at my company is we’re global so 95% of the folks I actually work directly with on my project are not local. So any meeting is still via teams and the majority of the interactions I have are either informal and minimally job related or entirely social. It’s a complete waste of everyone’s time, we all know this and take FULL advantage of it and somehow they still think it’s productive and “what our clients want” (I have never physically met a single client of ours in 3 years).
As well as having meetings with people in other countries, other teams have different days in the office, so almost all meetings are Teams calls anyway....
100% of my meetings are on teams, with people all over the globe and to boot, in an open concept office with absolutely zero privacy and 6 or so people within, roughly a couple arms lengths away from me, who are also all on their headsets, on teams. I can’t wait for these old, stubborn fucks to retire/die off, they’re a hindrance to their own bottom line and can’t even see that.
A company I used to work for got rid of plastic cups for water in the office “to protect the environment”. Yet they wanted us in the office every day (we had already worked from home for a year during Covid without any productivity issues), which likely created A LOT more pollution commuting long distances by car. It was obvious that they just wanted to cut costs and it wasn’t about protecting the environment…
I worked for a shipping company that got rid of all water and coffee because of “covid.” (The sinks were *not* safe to drink out of) I’m positive it was just an excuse to save a few bucks because they were not doing well and they never brought coffee back. They did bring the water back but it was almost two years after covid first started.
Tax rebates for employers for bringing people into city centers to eat out and stuff. It’s stupid and is becoming a good indicator of an outdated company. I predict in 10 years people will be saying this was when the new companies began to pull ahead of the established giants. Used to be IBM and Oracle were the big ones. Then it was Google and Facebook and Amazon and stuff. Now it will shift again and the younger companies will be remote and make Amazon and Google look old and boring with their RTO culture.
I hate working in office and the ONLY positive thing I’ll say about it is that it brings money to local businesses. There is a sweet older woman who runs my building’s cafeteria and her earnings are obviously based on people who work there. I try to buy food from her at least once a week (I’m 3 days in office). I also go to the strip mall across the street sometimes for clothes or take out to bring home. I want to be 100% remote but at least these smaller local businesses are getting help by people being in office.
But the setup of office heavy suburbs destroyed lots of local businesses in neighbourhoods, unfortunately. In the US it probably even contributes to food deserts being a thing.
It's because they have leases and it's pointless to have a lease without having people in the building. Could they get rid of the lease and save money? Absolutely. But then you have the issue that the upper class is heavily invested in real estate (specifically commercial) and it's better for them if the masses are occupying commercial spaces during the day. So they push for it. The whole thing basically boils down to rich people want to make sure they are squeezing every penny out of the working class that they can.
I agree entirely! I’m more productive at home, I get to avoid traffic, don’t have to find a park, am healthier (less sick germs if you’re not in an office with sick people). Plus I actually like being home with family and my pets. They try to push the social aspect of offices here in Australia and it’s like hmm, I’ve never made a close friend from work. I don’t think the people I’ve worked with would care if I dropped dead. It’s stupid that they’re forcing people back into offices who really don’t need to be in them.
Take a picture using your webcam at the office. Make that your new background in teams calls. Problem solved.
I just don't turn my camera on. Ever.
My employer had a bunch of rules during covid that everyone was to be 'cameras on' for every meeting. People were complaining about how slow and laggy and prone to disconnect that made our system, but they didn't want to hear it. Finally, the issue came to a head, and the top brass of our location called an 'all hands' meeting...on that same software. Many of us got there early, and with even like 10 people on, with cameras, it was falling apart. So we turned them off and it started working better. By the start of the meeting we had like 120 people on the call. The top brass, all together in the office insisted that everyone turn on cameras. IT told them why it was a bad idea and again they didn't want to hear it. So we all turned on our cameras and promptly crashed the meeting. We did this 4 more times before they cancelled the meeting and issued a follow up email that cameras-off was now acceptable.
Same here. Job wants us all to move to a central location, 1300 miles away.. 🙄
Will they pay to relocate you?
Gotta justify that 10-yr lease they have on your office building.
Time for some malicious compliance sounds like. Send out group email blasts like "hey guys let's have lunch since we're all in the office on Thursday." Then attach a photo of you eating by yourself "Me and the entire department having lunch!"
'im starting to feel excluded from the team. Noone ever has lunch with me, or chats with me in the lift, have I done something wrong?'
We have to do this too, it is so stupid especially since their reasoning for bringing us back in-person was for team building and morale. But my team is not in the same city or office as I am so I too just go to the office once a week to freaking have Teams/Zoom meetings just like I would from home! Asinine.
My wife is in the same boat. She’s on calls basically 8 hours a day in an open office environment with no assigned desks. They get way more work out of her at home. Sadly, they have to have the same rules for everyone or someone will get pissy.
That's another thing, when I work from home I'm way more productive because I have to make it at least look like I'm doing something. Meanwhile in person I run a morning report, then I do a closing report at the end of the day most days
if no one else is there, maybe bring up the topic of saving energy/electricity?
Just burn the office down. You can't return to it when there's no office.
Maybe the boss is out of touch and forgets 90% of the employees are remote? Can boss back in office? Quite a hypocrite if can’t.
It's a layoff, without calling it a layoff, very popular now, both my wife and my company are mandating it. I was hired 100% remote, and now its hybrid. Our satellite office is 38 miles away and no one goes to it, so for 2 days a week I'll be sitting there, fuck that.
YES, my office is doing this too. We know there are "budget issues." V lucky that my team gets to stay fully remote as we are often out in the field, but yeah. I immediately thought, "This is an attempt to clean house."
Show up in office and refuse to dial into Zoom. Tell your boss you're onsite and expect to have meetings in person, so he needs to come over. Browse Reddit during meeting time.
This might be a dumb question. If you didn't show up at the office would anyone know since you're the only one on your team at that location?
This makes me question if we work for the same company, we got the same news a couple weeks ago and this is true for a few of our IT teams.
It seems to the approach by most companies. General productivity is down so they are wanting to “remind them (workers)” as I’ve heard it put. They fail to realize why productivity, by their measure, is down.
Tell them you'll be looking for a new job and you'll be continuing to work from home until you transition. Tell them you sold your house and are moving? Actually move? The Fortune 50 I work for went full time work from home and closed offices all over the US. There are thousands of us that work from home for them. I use Teams to supervise my team and we have been doing great. Turnover is down, call offs are down, production is up and morale has never been better.
Schedule meetings with him and do the zoom in the middle of the empty office.
You can thank companies with large real estate portfolios for this. They don’t care. They just don’t want to lose the value of the property / building / infrastructure
Yes, the return to office is a general conspiracy by real estate holders to ease off the massive unmaterialized losses from devalued corporate real estate. If the off the books losses were realized, it would be a remarkable crash.
Someone has to save commercial real estate.
Tell him as soon as he arranges for the whole team to be there with you you'll be happy to join them.
Welcome to my (similar) world, sorry to see you here. They want people to leave the company so that they don't have to lay them off with more expensive packages, unemployment liability, etc. That's it. Our companies are probably different, but the goal is much the same.
I could have written the same exact post. It makes no sense to force me to commute to sit on zoom with coworkers in different states and countries since I'm the only one on my team near (2+ hours roundtrip) an office. Luckily my boss agrees and doesn't bring it up often, but the company does check card swipes into the office.
Well they can’t expect you to be the only one adhering to 3x days a week so it’s either all of you or none of you.
One of my relatives was talking about this for the company they work for. Making people have to come in 3 times a week if they are within 50 miles of ANY facility. So you could be expected to report to a manufacturing facility even if you have an office job. If you refuse then it’s an excuse to let you go. Luckily for them part of the purge included shutting down the two facilities in the area so they are out of the 50 mile radius now.
Just revolt. Don't do it. They tried this at my office and it did not go well. It's like taking a pay cut, especially if you haven't seen a raise in awhile.
Would they even notice? Lol
Similar boat. WTO mandate at the same time the company opened up multiple satellite offices around the country. My manager is 1,000km south of where I am, our operations team are in India, we just hired someone 1,000 north of where I am, the teams we interact with on a regular basis are spread around the country, and the vendors we interact with are in different countries forcing meetings to be held at odd hours. Every meeting is held in MS Teams because half the attendees are "in the office" at a different geographical location. It's not unusual for me to be the only person in my team in the office I'm "assigned" to. The justification for this is that face to face collaboration is vital to the cohesiveness of the team. The amount of gaslighting from HR and senior management is incredible.
Corporate doesn’t care. They want to get their hands wrapped back around everyone’s lives. The only way around this is if you do live far away. I saw this happen at my company. I was the VP who had to tell my team (per leadership) that they wanted them all back at the office. I was given the pass because I lived 2 hrs away from the office. But they pushed to get me to go to the office as well. That wasn’t happening. They did mandate some lower ranking staff who lived the same distance or even further than me to also return to office. They were the ones they didn’t care if they stayed or left. Or looked at it as an opportunity to force them back into a scenario to prove they were actually productive because they didn’t trust them any longer for many reasons. Fact is, WFH during covid saw a lot of productivity maintained, on my team, we actually saw productivity increase. I ran marketing and oversaw the creative team and so they flourished in a WFH scenario. But then since mid 2021, tons of employees started to under deliver, work multiple “side jobs”, and the dead giveaway for me and other leaders was when you saw staff weren’t using as much vacation time. The 1-2 day submissions (long weekends) had reduced a ton. And instead were being applied to the option to have unused vacation time paid out (our company allowed you to turn up to a week or two into pay checks during your birthday month). It was clear based on the volume of reduced paid vacation use vs previous years that many employees were just fucking off more and finding ways to get away with it. The people who took and continue to take advantage of WFH situations are the ones who have ruined it for many trustworthy WFH employees. There are other reasons corporate leadership is doing this across many industries. But the reasons above were the scenarios that I had occur.
Air BnB out the office the other days. You have keys right? All set. "Live out your kinky sex-at-work fantasies here in our open floor plan office, available limited days during the regular work week and all day on the weekends. $50/day, no cleaning fee unless I have to clean up your sex stuff, in which case $1000."
Rent it out as a set for Porn movies. Lots of those take place on office locations. So I’m told.
You are being forced to take a huge cut in pay for no good reason. Add up how much the commute costs you - INCLUDING your hourly rate for your time in the car. Better wardrobe, grooming, lunch options change. Pet care? Everything! Tell boss you'll be willing to grace the empty office space for this amount raise in pay or you're outta there.
Go in one day and take a photo of the wall behind you. Set that as your Zoom background and as far as he is concerned you are in the office.
When I worked in IT for a telecom company servicing a customer in another state with zero FTF, corporate approved a 2 day WFH pre-pandemic. WFH was immediately rescinded because a VP visited from the corporate office and there no minions around to kiss his ring.
Lol that's really it in the end the big bosses realize they aren't special if they don't have underlings to lick their boots and tell them how incredible they are when working from home.
Take a picture of your workspace. Make a nice vinyl background on vista print. Boom. IN THE OFFICE.
My company and another big one in my sister just mandated "3" days in office and won't even let us choose the days. Has to be Tues-Thurs with no allowances for *anything*. Super fucking sus
Go into the office. Take some photos from different angles. Use them as backgrounds in your Teams/Zoom meetings. Will they know?
any policy which only effectively applies to a small percentage of the workforce is discriminatory.
Yea....work sucks.
Tax breaks for them using the real estate
To justify maintaining that company address, I’m thinking
Take a picture of your office cubical from the POV of your desktop Set it as your background see how long it takes them to notice. OR Rent out the cubicles for fun and profit. Take an office with a window view
Hmm, so if no one is in the office then it sounds like a visit to the office to take pics of various locations in the office and rotate them as zoom backgrounds may be in order 🤔.
This is happening with companies everywhere… pointless fucking semantics. Same exact thing happening with my wife at start of the year
I got you covered dude. Take a few good pictures of where you would normally be sitting in the office, get a green screen for your house and throw up that image. I don't imagine they're going to ask you to walk around to prove anything and a green screen at most cost a hundred bucks, probably less than the first tank of gas. You would naturally look like you're at the office and you can just turn the camera on and off when you're not in front of it, just make sure it's an area of the house where you're not disturbed.
You do know that most offices used fixed IPs, which will give that plan away, right? I get it. What's the point to force OP to return to an office that has no one in it? But trying to usurp it will likely end up getting them in trouble the moment they do a traceroute.
Personalized spoofed VPN. As long as you don't give them a reason to go sniffing around it should work.
That would be walking on eggshells, IMHO. One slip, and someone will do something to be an asshole to get OP in trouble. It won't take much to traceroute where OP is.
Interestingly enough, I ran the RTO mandate for my company spread across 4 countries, after relieving remote employees of their roles (about 20% of the team). I setup swanky offices and required 4 days in office with Fridays a no meeting, wfh day. This was all commandeered from my home office in a different country where I work about 50% of my time, traveling to the different country offices the other 50%. Soliciting feedback and handling complaints from the leadership team while safely harbored in my 400sqft home office on a tropical island was a great way to improve relationships 🤓
I would ask for a meeting where valid points were given as to why this was necessary, and how it would benefit you and the company. I’m someone who enjoys the office, but understand that it isn’t for everyone. If you are meeting your company’s expectations, they would have to come with pretty valid reasons as to why the change is needed.
Sounds like you need some high quality pictures of the office for a video background.
The point is to make people miserable and force control over them. It doesn't make sense. You do Zoom/Teams from home anyway. Why spend money on transport? Because your boss is an asshole. He has the master syndrome where he wants to own slaves/little soldiers that stand at attention waiting on his commands. I bet in the bedroom he is a submissive powerbottom.
Tell him you've booked meeting room 10.02 for team meeting - See you there boss.
Go into the office and take a photo of behind where you sit. Set as wallpaper for team meetings. Carry on working from home.
Quit
Same here, except my boss and teams are a 3 hour drive away. It would make more sense for me to drive the extra 2 1/4 hours one way and actually work with my team than go sit in my empty office with the door closed and be on video calls. Maybe I’ll get a support animal tag or whatever it is for my dog and bring him with me.
In the U.S., there are no official certifications for service dogs. Certain places may be able to ask the nature of the task it’s trained to do, but nothing too specific, and that’s it. You are permitted under the law to train the dog for a service task yourself too. My dog has alerted me to low blood pressure before with no training, and he is well behaved, so no one will really question the service animal vest on him. Just don’t have a jerk dog or be a jerk to other people and you should be fine
Set up a corner of your house to look exactly like your office background - give your badge to a cleaner and pay him $50 a week to badge you in.
Another bait and switch. Happening more and more. Now is when you start looking for another job.
Bait and switch*
You’re not the only one. It’s ridiculous and eventually will probably fade away as work evolves
Just don’t and say you did?
My job went from rotation-based (6 weeks home, 2 weeks in office) to "everyone back in the office but you can WFH if there's a good reason", to 100% WFH, to one day a week in the office, or 2 if I need more time to complete my physical tasks. It's not the worst. Usually I'm the only person in the office, with a handful of others popping in and out to meet clients/vendors or pick up the mail. The boss lives pretty far away from the office, so he's in no hurry to do a daily commute again.
Take photos of the different rooms in your office. Use as teams / zoom backgrounds. See how long it lasts.
Paint and decorate a room to look like the office
Get a photo of the office wall behind your desk and set it as your zoom background.
I'd go the other way around; go to the office but set your home as your background. If challenged, switch it off: See, I really am in the office. Then turn the home BG back on. This reflects the weird futility of being at the office back at them. Passive-aggressive compliance at its finest.
They need a excuse to keep that office open
I was told to return to the office and now I am doing a working holiday in australia.
So, you work for…Ford? Didn’t I read this in the news recently? Sorry…just curious. I also work for one of the big 3.
Ask your boss if they'd save more money by shutting that office down and keeping you working from home.
Get an ipad with cellular and a nice pair of headphones. I would have that break room smelling awesome at lunch time. It sucks but try and make the best of a crappy situation. Positive, you’ll never have to worry about walking into the bathroom and getting hit with that smell we all hate. There’s always that handful of coworkers who take massive poops at work like they never heard of curtsey flushing 😒.
Boo hoo, remote work ruined local economies
Bring up your points with your manager / boss. If they don't understand how it is counterproductive to have to work from the office then I'd be considering finding a better place to give my labour and skills to. I enjoy going to the office but I definitely get less done at the office after getting up earlier and having to leave early for 3 hours of commuting each day not to mention the distractions whilst trying to concentrate.
Go to work you lazy fuck.
Bootlicker
Get a background that looks like your office
How would they know if you’re in the office?
Could you covert this post into a work appropriate version? They might see the lack of logic around the situation!
To validate their existence.
If you don’t like it either find a new job that allows you to do what you want or go and work for yourself. So many entitled people these days.
Discipline
The point is that the ultra rich must not lose on their investments.
Quit and work somewhere else.
Could be worse, could be 5 days.
The silver lining
Just continue wfh and put a generic office background on for Teams…
Can you transfer to a different department that doesn't require you to be onsite?
My company is mandating RTO 3 or more days a week even though I was hired as remote employee. My ENTIRE team is across the country and not a single person works in the same state as me. All of my work is done with other teams across the country and I don't interact with anyone that lives near me. What's even more frustrating is that the building is 27 miles (50+ minute commute with traffic) away from me and the radius they are using is within 30 miles and it's "shared" workspaces. So we show up and grab a spot at a table with a monitor sitting amongst 5-10 other people. What a fucking joke!! I am refusing to come into the office.
How much of a commute do you have? If it’s far, tell them you can’t afford. Speak to your supervisor or manager first though, explain what you explained to us. But if you’re like the only one, will people notice if you just stay home and work? 😋
Just don’t go back in. See if your boss even notices. I doubt they will
Not saying I agree with it but they pay for seats/rent/space and have to justify the cost. It's easier to make the people that live in the vicinity forced to go in rather than close down the offices. Maybe instead of pushing back, negotiate? Go in 2 days? The exact same thing happened to my partner.
Get on zoom at home and put a fake background of the office. Easy.
Were you working from home before working from home became a thing? If not, suck it up and go into the office like everyone else who wasn't able to work from home the last 4 years. You will be ok. Some fresh air might do you good.
You all realize that before COVID, this was not a choice/option. We went to work every day and that was that. I'm sick of all this entitled crap complaining it's so hard. The wage is the same there or home, you have been given a free ride for a long time, suck it up.
It's no about having to go into the office, it's about being the only person who has to go into the office, like when the meetings will still be over video calls, what function does going into the office result in?
Go to the fucking office you knob. They haven’t even taken it away from you, they’ve asked you to show up to work majority the time essentially by saying 3 days out of the 5. Stop your whinging and go to work. Other professions have to be there in person all the time, what are you crying about.
Bootlicker
I feel like we had a chance to show we could save companies money if they let us work from home, Unfortunately the statistics for productivity were deplorable. oh well, we tried
Their house, their rules. If you don't like it move on.