Bosses mean it this time: Return to the office or get a new job! — As office occupancy rates stagnate, employers are giving up on perks and turning to threats::undefined
At this point businesses have two options:
- Bite the bullet, terminate lease agreements and pay the fines associated, then advertise yourself as a full remote company and attract global talent.
- Be penny wise and pound foolish, stomp your feet, slowly hemmorage the best employees until you’re left with people whose only talent is playing office politics.
We’ll see how this plays out in the long run, it wouldn’t be out of character for the owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency even more to put those pesky workers in their place.
There is another option:
- Downsize the office to better fit with the number of people who do actually want to be in the office, either full or part time, and don’t cause a huge ruckus about people who prefer to work remotely.
At my job, most people are in the office 2-3 days a week, but there are a few who are there nearly every day. We also have some people who are remote/WFH, including a few who are remote even though they live very near by.
owner class to start needling their pet politicians to devalue currency
Literally no capital investment firm would ever do that. This severely weakens their positions for growth via M&A and limits their ability to globalize trade.
Says a person that doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”. Not very persuasive.
I see no counter-arguments in your reply.
Says a person that doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”. Not very persuasive.
My brother in Christ, there is a way to correct someone’s syntax. This is not the way.
ever heard of…typos ?
Np.
Yes.
cool
Not very persuasive.
Your sentence fragment invalidates your entire argument.
The first sentence is also a sentence fragment and the period should be placed before the ending quotation marks.
Does the period in quotation mark rule applies to quotes? I don’t think it does, but this stuff always confuses me.
It actually might be correct they way they did it since they were quoting a word rather than a complete sentence. It is indeed confusing. I figured if I were wrong, someone might correct me and I’d learn something.
“not very persuasive” is not a sentence fragment. Sentences need a subject, verb, and a complete thought.
“Don’t do that” has an implied subject of (you). “Not very persuasive” shares the same type implied subject and is a complete sentence.
Bonus fun fact, the shortest complete sentence in the English language is “I am” but not “I’m” because contractions are inherently dependent.
“Don’t do that” is a correct imperative sentence, which as your link says does not have a subject. “Not very persuasive” is not imperative and is indeed a sentence fragment.
My partner’s employer recently tried this. He works for a mental health agency. That mental health agency has issues with compensation, recruiting, and retention. Yet the CEO insisted that everyone come back, despite the fact that productivity has improved with remote work. In fact, a lot of their patients prefer telehealth.
“Take a title demotion, come back into the office, or quit. Pick one.”
The mass exodus has been astounding. There’s no chance they’ll be able to fill in the gaps left by senior clinicians. Demand for psychologists is sky high right now, and just about every other employer pays more and allows telework.
The patients will be the real victims of this attempt at a “power play.”
“Take a title demotion, come back into the office, or quit. Pick one.”
“No, I think I’ll keep working from home until you fire me despite you dramatically altering my working requirements.”
They just disabled my VPN access and demanded I come back to the office. I had to quit at that point. I suppose they could’ve fired me for job abandonment eventually, though.
I had to quit at that point. I suppose they could’ve fired me for job abandonment eventually, though.
No, you were constructively dismissed at that point. Their choice, not yours. File for unemployment.
That was a year ago, and I got a full time wfh job with better pay in the same industry. Much happier. Should’ve left years before.
The best you can fight for is severance. It’s really bad.
Please keep us updated on this situation
For such “genius” “business leaders” they sure can’t understand the concept of supply and demand
They just want to make people they view as lesser than them suffer.
Suffer on the way to work, suffer finding a parking spot, suffer getting into the building, suffer working, suffer getting out of the building, suffer getting back to the car, suffer on the way home
Over and over your asshole bosses are getting off on your suffering
Well yeah, but also I think it’s just that the same people who own these businesses that people work for, and the friends and family of those people, also own lots of property much of which is office space which they don’t want to lose money. That and all of the businesses (e.g. Starbucks) and the property they’re in that partially make money from people on their way to work. And if you want to go even deeper, if people are WFM then they may not have to eat out as often, might not need to pay for a lot of things as often if they have more time.
So much money can be lost and rich people all know each other and have class consciousness, I think that’s why we’re seeing so much anti-WFM propaganda
This is the key, and it cuts in different ways and needs planning strategy.
If we don’t go into town, then the businesses associated with going to work in town are in trouble, so coffee, lunch, snack, may as well get a book, after work drinks and then late food. All have less customers. Some of whom are themselves!
So a spiral of decline, less retail jobs in town, less secondary and tertiary employment “in town”.
Theoretically we can now spend some of that money locally IF the local has the supply and this is where political strategy is needed to replan where we sleep as always where we spend our casual cash. And in many cases these dormitories are not well planned for that.
So unfortunately we need to wait out this next phase of resistance in order to build political consensus for zoning and planning for more sustainable local hubs.
What’s WFM? I usually see WFH.
Huh, yeah I meant WFH lmao. No idea why my brain decided the acronym should be WFM instead haha.
Work from homme
Work From Mansion
Give me a good reason and I’ll come back to the office. None of this “it’s more productive” bullshit. We know that one is a lie. I’m also not wasting my time commuting to an office just to support the local McDonald’s, gas stations, etc.
Gasp!
Now what will head management do when they want to give random people tours of their company! Think of all the empty desk spaces potential investors might see! (That’s one thing I’ll be happy to see hopefully end eventually. The people giving the tours where I work barely know anything about any of the processes or procedures. )
On a serious note, even from the capitalism mindset, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if they already paid out a lease for their building, they would still be saving on regular maintenance costs, and they would have a good reason to downsize their physical location when possible. (Saving money, long term). Fewer employees being at work may also mean fewer workplace injuries. (Saving money, long term).
It’s not a capitalist mindset, it’s a feudalistic mindset.
Same difference, tbh.
I work from home and don’t want to go back into the office. But there are a few people on my team who are MAJOR sandbaggers who are going to ruin it for the rest of us. Pisses me off.
Because we know that when you’re working from home you’re just playing TikTok and eating cheese puffs for half the day. When you’re in the office the manager can help you stay focused and get more work done. Plus, you don’t have the same kind of camaraderie and team spirit over a zoom call. I used to go into the office at my business several times a month just to tell my employees how much I appreciate them with a hearty pat on the back. Now that they aren’t there, how can I even do that? Send a back-patting emoji to them on zoom?
You can tell your employees you appreciate them with words, and show them with actions. You don’t need to touch someone to communicate you appreciate them, and frankly it’s best not to go around touching people in the workplace.
That’s too impersonal. Nothing can truly replace a good slap on the back to let my employees know that I appreciate them.
Nothing can truly replace a good slap on the back to let my employees know that I appreciate them.
How about a raise?
How about you get back to work
L for you, I’m already at work.
return to office or get a new job
I’ve chosen the latter twice and have been thrilled with the results every time
You mean you switched to a job you thought would remain remote and they too were like, “Okay, play times over. Back to the office.”?
Yep. Also turned out they owned the parking garage next to the office and were counting on us as a revenue stream
Things like this should be outright illegal.
That’s what unions are for, so that when the bosses figure out a way to turn you into a revenue stream you can say “Get fucked, suit, we’ve got a contract!”
Is anyone actually living this out there or is this all just bullshit?
My old boss started pushing RTO heavy. He was already a stereotypical failure of a manager, doling out useless kudos when we want.fucking.training.budget.keith, and chasing that sales-dick limelight all the time.
He’s not my boss anymore. On a day off I came in, dropped off my shit, lobbed a note into my file in HR, and peaced out.
My new company gave me one extra week of holiday but my pay cut was 3% for the first year. 100% WFH and it’s in the union agreement. Can’t work from outside the country in case it’s secret-squirrel (data sovereignty).
Near V5H postal.
The letter defense company I work for is forcing everyone back into the office at the end of the month.
:raises hand:
One of the offices doesn’t even have room for all the employees. They have people working in conference rooms.
My work has us on a stupid hybrid schedule, but if WFH is ever ended completely, I’m gone.
You guys have been working from home?
Absolutely living this out. I just quit my job at Amazon because they wanted me to be back in the office or be fired, in a different city than the one I live in and started at the company at, eleven years ago. I chose to quit so that I’m still rehirable if I need to go back.
Other people have it worse than me, especially if they are on H1B visas where the option is RTO or GTFO of the country if you can’t find employment soon enough.
I haven’t seen it, personally (Toronto)
Haven’t dealt with it personally, but know of people who have. The one constant is that the places I’ve heard of that have a RTO mandate are short-staffed and brain-drained.
And they’ll win, eventually. They’ll take the L, replace employees over time and suffer for it but in the end they will win and we’ll all be back in office
Especially if the pay higher wages to get fresh blood.
If they pay me more to go back into office, then I’ll take the trade if the money is high enough. Everything has a price, as they say. But it better be worth all the extra shit you have to deal with, least of all being the sick people at the office. I haven’t gotten sick since COVID started basically
Yes, we can still go in but now we have measured the difference and can judge what it would take to make it worthwhile.
“The pendulum has shifted from employees having all the power,” wow how could that have possibly happened
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Same. The only reason I took the role I’m in is for fully remote. If that’s gone I’m out. That being said I still go in once in a while just to get out of the house. I’ll try and go in more in the summer to save on turning on the aircon at home. If companies are reasonable so will employees.
Do that and I’ll find another one just to spite you.
I am one of those folks that simply doesn’t have the personal discipline to work from home. There are literally dozens of us. While office life is lonely now, there’s no way that people who don’t need to be in the office to be productive should be made to come in. That said, my GF has a coworker who is WFH for a company that is based in the South but they chose to live in NYC (they didn’t live there at first) and are getting paid NYC wages, which somehow doesn’t seem fair.
I’ve got a weird and kind of opposite experience to your GF’s coworker: I started my current job as a remote employee this year. I think the median wage in my area is like 50k, but I’m making more than twice that because of my role’s market rate in areas like Silicon Valley and NYC. So I’m living relatively large considering my area. But I’m also not actually living large right now; we went for a 15 year mortgage term to minimize interest and allow us to actually live it large when we own our home at a relatively young age. It’s definitely weird to know I’m making baller wages compared to a lot of folks around me, but living within similar constraints as them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The new pushes for in-person work mark a major shift as executives directly acknowledge the challenges with the model — in some cases saying productivity has declined, and citing fewer opportunities for spontaneous collaboration, mentorship and connection-building.
President Biden recently called on Cabinet officials to urge their employees to return to offices this fall, as downtown D.C. struggles to regain its pre-pandemic crush of commuters.
The goal, Patel said, is to “get people excited” to come into the office to connect with their colleagues without overburdening them or limiting their ability to do focused work — something that’s been a struggle in the age of ballooning Zoom meetings.
Free food, great tools and attractive workspaces are a big draw, but HqO’s data shows that “the number one thing people want out of a workplace is concentration space,” Garbarino said.
With President Biden calling for federal workers to return to offices this fall, she may soon have to brave a two-hour commute through Chicago rush hour and rework her child-care plan — or consider a more drastic change.
The company now funnels energy and resources that used to go to stocking offices with coffee and snacks and determining operating hours toward creating intentional (and less frequent) opportunities for employees to connect in-person.
The original article contains 1,552 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Employees need to bite the bullet and come back to work. You had enough time sitting around in your underwear and skating off.
If that was an attempt at a joke, it failed.
If it wasn’t, now is the time to elaborate on it.
I told my employees to come back to work right away as soon as COVID disappeared. There are important things that they need to do around the office that they can’t do sitting around in their underwear at home, that’s not what I pay them for
Between your username and comment, I’m assuming this is sarcasm. Don’t forget to add the “/s”!
Care to share a few generic examples of such important things?
Unless you have a production plant, where machines have to be handled, maintained and supervised, you’re spouting nonsense.
In the typical company you don’t need an at site presence. You don’t even need “a site”. People are not randomly walking in the premises, thus requiring assistance.
Even a maintenance service provider, with teams on the road, doesn’t need a fully staffed office. These will require depots, wharehouses, tool shops and locations for physical storage, where people really need to be, but not offices. At best, the boss - you - can be there, if the company is small or have a rotating staffer to receive paper work, if the infrastructure is still resisting to leave paper behind.
Where the work is essentially flow of information and data, there are secure channels to provide workflow and communication, be it internal, inbound or outbound.
I worked at a medical engineering company in the early 2000s and back then we were doing like that, using email, skype and fax machines. Nowadays it is even simpler.
There are far too many things to even list. Too many good reasons for people to be in the office. It improves morale and professionalism and builds an exciting company culture. Whenever I visit the office, I tell hilarious jokes for my employees to laugh at for example. Every Thursday is a themed Thursday like NFL day or patriotic day where you have to wear red white and blue, and whoever has the best outfit for the themed Thursday wins a prize. Plus we take pictures of everyone who dressed up for the themed Thursday and put it in the newsletter.
Contrast that with what employees are doing at home, probably. Not dressing up for themed Thursday, not probably even putting on pants. Not laughing at my jokes, in fact probably saying mean things about me because I’m not around. Eating cheese puffs and taking extra long bathroom breaks. Not being productive. Quiet quitting because they’re depressed about being stuck in their house all day. Not being a team player or taking pride in the company. It’s outrageous and it’s time we stop with these shenanigans and get back to work.
I asked for generic examples; no need to go into detail.
Oh, and if you are trying to pursue a career in comedy, work on it harder. Doesn’t parse very well over text. And if the text is not good, no acting can compensate for it.
Come back to work at the office and say that to my face
Sure! Remind me the address again. And I’ll make sure to take a cream pie with me.
The ol’ plzza party to make the office “fun”
If work gets done, why do you care what I have on, where I work, what I’m doing during my day? Sure, SOME people can’t be trusted, call them out with some metrics, say they’re doing less work at home, ASK them if something the problem! “You good Jane? I notice your work isn’t getting done, something going on at home? Your wellbeing is important to us at $GetYourAssInTheOffice and we’d like to help if we can” and if they still can’t be trusted, fire them. We All have our problems, we all make mistakes and need help some time.
Nah “fuck you, we have pizza, this is fun. Ruin your mental health further sitting in traffic and getting your picture taken unwillingly. You know you need money to live, you want to be homeless?”
Yeah, you’re an asshole.
No, I’m a fun and cool boss, everybody says that.
You don’t need to simp this hard, an Indian shill does it for far less than you do already. And does it remote!
