I love these comics! (Also literaly my bosses)
It is manly because manager and CEOs beed the empowering feeling of watching people working for them.
Our company “upgraded” our office, which is located in the same building as our parent company. We need to go there every 2 weeks. There are not even enough places to sit for all of us, let alone screens. And then we end up having meetings most of the days which could be done virtually as well.
My office spent 3 years during the pandemic telling us that the future of work was here and we’d probably never work in an office again.
We got rid of our office leases, sold off property, and then the CEO received some stern letters from business associations and bam! Just like that, all mention of the future of work and telework were deleted off our sites and everyone was forced to show up in office “2-3 times per week”.
Anyone who was given permission to move across the country were ordered to move back home (within 30 days) or face immediate termination.
Those that weren’t fired and didn’t quit are now crammed into random offices around the country to take MS Teams calls with their teammates. The whole org is falling apart.
I genuinely think this is one of the biggest reasons that there’s a push for people to return to office. A lot of CEOs and similar positions either feel embarrassed by how an empty office looks, or outright fear for their job. They think a bustling office simply looks better for their company, especially to outsiders.
Honestly, it probably does, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost. An utterly insane amount of time is wasted commuting. All that commuting also has environmental impact and basically means you’re paid less. How many skilled employees will those businesses lose to competitors that will allow working from home?
