However, our research found that returning to an office often is a major disruption to one’s routine, foundational work, and overall life experience.
Damn work. Disrupting their routine and life experience.
What? It’s a return to the office, not work. It’s not the 8 hours; it’s the additional hour (if you’re lucky) getting there and back which, for some jobs, brings no discernable benefit.
Well, the office is obviously the place where the work takes place. It was probably relatively okay for you when you started the job, then the pandemic hit and now you think it should be different. But it’s not up to you to decide whether it makes sense to go to the office, that’s for your employer to decide - you know, the guys who pay your salary.
Joke’s on you – I started work during the pandemic. And, more to the point, my company was doing flexitime and WFH long before I joined, because their employees like it and because they’re the kind of employer that values the input of their workforce.
Also, I could flip your last argument. It’s the workers that turn up and generate value for the business. Salaries aren’t paid out of the goodness of the employer’s heart. It’s a transaction, selling labour, and as with any transaction there has to be good will on both sides for the relationship to function.
Yep, but it’s up to me to decide to fuck those execs and leave. And guess what? Almost all of my coworkers who were the same age left too. Within 2 years, my cohort was largely gone.
I took a mild pay cut to live closer to home and work remotely in a field that I feel more passionately about. My only regret is that I miss the people I work with, but half of them are gone or reassigned anyway.
But hey, the people who paid my salary are more than welcome for investing in my early career training. All in all, they spent more money on me than I earned for them.
My heartfelt condolences to all those affected. Having to drive to work is certainly very cruel and completely unexpected. Life is one of the hardest.
