46% of employees think the survey results will be used against them to fire them later.
I work in tech and it’s surprising how many people want to work in an office. When I ask the rank and file why the reasons are usually dumb things like “I like the commute”, “I like the social interaction”, and “I like getting away from my kids”. Which like…wtf. If you like driving for 2 hours a day then just go do that on your own time? If you hate your kids why did you have them and why do you think your partner wants to be stuck with them? If you like social interaction try getting friends? The reasons are so dumb.
Management of course always has the reason of “it fosters better collaboration” which I do sort of agree with. Meetings are easier to have in person. That said if your day is more than half full of meetings you’re almost definitely not working efficiently, and so if people work better outside of meetings at home then it makes much more sense to let people do their work where they are comfortable doing the majority of the work.
So really the only legit reason is “I want to police my people” and “I want my co workers to be policed.” Only one person in my life has ever said this and I respect them for the absolute honesty. And then I tried to cut them out of everything I do at work because holy shit fuck people like that.
Offices suck there’s no reason to spend 5 days a week in one so you can sit silently on your computer and clack away
“I like the commute”
I’m just like “oh my god, how boring can you be?” when fucking WAITING IN LINE on a highway is their idea of a hobby.
Why can’t they just find a chair at home and just sit and stare at the wall? They’ll have just as much fun.
Driving over 30 minutes when I’m in a rush makes me so fucking angry. I’m so much more pleasant to my collegues when working from home. I don’t even road rage that hard, I just steam about having to waste almost two hours of my day for no fucking reason.
So really the only legit reason is “I want to police my people” and “I want my co workers to be policed.”
It’s also because of the sunk cost fallacy of their investments in the expensive office, which cannot be justified if people are not working there.
The other half of this is also that 46% of the employees probably already live within a reasonable distance of the workplace and don’t feel unreasonably put out by traveling in.
It’s the employees at less reasonable distances that get the most upset by these RTO policies. I would wager that you could heatmap agreement/disagreement with the policy based on distance from the workplace.
As someone who works in an office and isn’t in charge of anyone, I’ll say that I strongly disagree with the idea that there are no legitimate reasons to prefer being in office.
I get cabin fever pretty badly if I don’t have a reason to get out. Finding motivation to do that can be difficult when I don’t actually have somewhere to be. I also do enjoy chatting to my coworkers. As an adult fostering friendships outside of work and family is incredibly difficult, and I imagine you know that?
Regardless I’d still work from home if permitted, due to COVID, but the idea that wanting to have a second location that you regularly spend time in is “dumb” is wrong I think.
To reiterate, I absolutely prefer work from home at this point, even though it’s undeniably worse for my mental well-being, due to the threat in office work poses to my physical well-being, but it’s absolutely a tradeoff.
Also, I just want to say I hope RTO kills Paradox because I’m still bitter that they killed off the Chronicles of Darkness TTRPGs.
This is close to how I feel.
I like the social interaction, find meetings to be quicker irl, but absolutely loathe commuting and having my time wasted. I get enough social interaction from the gym and friends that I don’t need work to provide that, but I absolutely understand how people feel that way.
Yeah commuting does suck, I also miss having more free time at home because sometimes it’s slow at work and instead of just browsing hexbear I can do housework when I’m at home and then I don’t have to do that during personal hours.
Personally, even outside of work, the friends that I’m most likely to interact with, not counting family members, are people I met through work.
You don’t need to be in an office to work away from home. Coffee shops, parks, etc. are good spots to bring a laptop.
My work isn’t hard but I have to pay attention to way too many different programs to make taking my laptop on its own to a third location viable as an every day thing.
Plus coffee shops aren’t free and parks expose you to the weather. I’m not sure what etc even would be here.
And neither of those locations actually position you to socialize with peers.
Also I in my role, while I’m not dealing with anyone’s SSN or anything I frequently enough with people’s personal data that it would be inappropriate to let just whoever at the coffee shop view over my shoulder.
Home or the office are the only real options.
i’m not sure if any of the typically cited old anti office movies captured how banal they really are. “soul crushing” yes but not right away. The sinister part is how long it took to creep up on me. it’s not a way to live unless you really need/want the money
They need people in the office so they can force employees to play MP in paradox games
return to office policy as a means to git gud
F, at least the EU5 base game is a good foundation for modders
