They were already pretty hard to defend.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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Which makes it impressive that it's somehow even harder to defend
two of our offices have 5 day return to office policies. we’ve been told that those coworkers will have less availability and productivity by management. they also are clearly stressed by taking calls in traffic and commuting generally. and not just gas, but vehicle repair, maintenance, and, as a coworker experienced recently, regular replacement means RTO is a pay decrease. i mean, i’m privileged to ride a bike, but i still need to do maintenance and would have to do more if i was in the office every day.
and when i say “two of our offices”, i mean across time zones, so their day as well as mine involves most meetings being over a video call, for which they are more often late or have to be accounted for.
anyone who thinks this is about productivity gains or employee wellbeing has the kind of job where they’re not really expected to produce anything.
I would love to have a real take from one of these managers/bosses what their brain-wiring is to make them double down on the single worst idea out there.
It's fascinating (ofc soul crushing too), what kind of humans need that. Why? It's crazy. Maybe they don't have the faintest idea of what is supposed to happen in a team, what productivity really is, what even work really is, and they are scared to death that they can be called out, and thus doubles down on any power they can grab.
Or those kind of positions attract soulless people without empathy.
I'm really curious about how bad it is (I lived through it) and how it is able to stay in place.
Real estate prices and sunk cost fallacy
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5 day is brutal, my friend in the city (London's finance sector) has this and it's therefore more restrictive than it ever was before covid.
He has something like a day a month where he can elect in advance to WFH for specific reasons.
It creates scenarios where a friend in the US drives 40 minutes just to swipe his card/ go have breakfast and then heads home again
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I still get a giggle at the idea of a bunch of wealthy CEOs gathering in a boardroom and one of them going ‘the staff are happier and healthier by working from home, and the company is doing better as a result… how do we stop it?!’
That’s not how the conversation goes though.
Right now the conversation is mostly like “we need to cut costs to hit increased shareholder returns so I (the CEO) get my full bonus (which yours is similarly tied to), what are our options to not pay out severance?” Which the CHRO comes back with “RTO policies are great at cutting XX% and we will only have to hire back X% of roles and pay less for those roles and pay less for severance. We can also announce this is due to AI efficiencies and not poor revenue growth and get a bump to the shares we’ve already gotten from past compensation and make the board happy instead of seeing the typical drop in valuation associated with layoffs.”
It’s that simple.
Then there’s a handful of cases like my boss where they are enraged by WFH policies because he is incompetent (has been fired from past middle manager role for being inflexible and ineffective) and highly conservative. His measurement of performance is if your ass is in a chair or not, which doesn’t do much for a team’s performance which is why he has a job. He has been crusading to end remote work policies for all other fully remote departments to limited effect but has succeeded in getting a 1 day per week from his boss’ other teams.
also "we are spending 50k/month on this building downtown, we could downsize and spend 50k to move all the equipment to a building that meets our needs better for in office staff, but that might make us look weak because we don't have a big impressive building. better bring everyone back to the office instead."
Im sure that all happens, but this part is securities fraud
announce this is due to AI efficiencies and not poor revenue growth and get a bump to the shares
Also if that RTO reasoning was ever found out in discovery, thats constructive dismissal.
The C suite are rarely stupid enough to put that sort of thing in writing. It's a conversation, no record.
Although the irony is with wfh that might be a vid conv that could get an AI auto transcript if they forget to turn it off
Although the irony is with wfh that might be a vid conv that could get an AI auto transcript if they forget to turn it off
Oh boy, I cant wait for this to happen in some big case one day.
Even if it’s put in writing, you’d need to sue them and go to discovery and then you’re relying on an IT team to “find xyz” from a request made by legal for discovery.
The odds of anyone ever pulling this off is nearly impossible, especially when the ones laid off all have to sign an indemnity clause against the company for that severance paycheck which says you won’t sue and will defend them in lawsuits in perpetuity. It would have to be one of the c-suite members in the meeting with written evidence, and the second you sue over that you’re blacklisted from ever getting an executive level role again.
Employment law differs outside the US.
Being forced to sign an indemnity clause of that type is illegal and/or unenforceable in most western countries, and discovery of IT records is quite sophisticated.
Having said that, your general thrust of "it is highly unlikely" is certainly true. Someone has to have some basis for starting a suit, fishing expeditions are rarely allowed.
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That's why these conversations happen in person on a golf course and not online in slack or email
Which is hilarious for the ppl who productivity went up thanks to working from home. Guess back to norma 8 hours
Little bit after COVID the company I was working at sent out this survey to gauge if we wanted to come back in, how many days, and for how long. To see the consensus of what their rto would look like. They had to send out five surveys. Five. Because each time they couldn't get the results they wanted. They eventually just forced everyone back in.
People mandating return to office are climate criminals, all. They should be sentenced to picking up litter and other community service for the rest of their lives.
Harder to defend is assuming the company you work for is interested in defending it instead of using it as a form of punishment.
Or constructive dismissal.
"We'll make all those expensive whiners quit, and then they won't get unemployment benefits. Don't worry, we'll replace their positions with AI. It'll totally work. Honk honk."
When the lockdown happened and we got our first taste of WFH ever it was interesting. Then they tried bringing us back a few years ago with the start of 2 days and wanted to go to 3. By this point people were pissed to be there. What didnt help was we got so used to just doing teams meetings from our desks that even though we were now all in the same building we still just did those meetings at our desk. We screamed to ourselves why are we even here! Thankfully our company downsized and let a building go and consolidated and realized there wasnt enough room for everyone so a lot of the non essential on site departments like mine got sent back home and now I have only been to work like twice in over a year.
it dint last long they started to demand it in 2022. and by 2023, when AI scam was just ratcheting up, they immediately laid people off.
My wife and I both work from home, and we have a PHEV. Of course gas prices will trickle down into transportation costs which raises the cost of non-local goods, and that affects us, but it's nice not to feel the first-order effects of Trump's imbecility.
I got a HEV back in 2024. So far, I go about 3 weeks without filling up on gas on average.
Now that I'm out of a job, I haven't had to worry about driving to an office.
CONGRATU...... lations. Sorry about the job, mate. I hope that turns around for you.
HEV?
Hybrid Electric Vehicle
his lack of forethought when he thought the iran was enough of a distraction from the epstein files will end up hurting him and his COHORTS even more, of course kushners obsession is involved too.
They don't give a fuck.
RTO is designed to "fire" only the least desperate employees.
No. Any frustration like this only serves to push all employees a bit.
And the Dead Sea Effect reminds us that the people who leave first will be those who get jobs elsewhere first. These are the most employable, and thus the most capable, and thus probably your best employees.
RTO and other stupid patterns won't push out the most desperate; they'll push out the most valuable. And then the most valuable of what's left. And so on.
Managers who choose pride over effectiveness need to be unemployed.
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They are completely indefensible!
The Canadian government announced that there was no logical reason for RTO, and instead it is due to a philosophical belief. They don't care. People don't care.
When did they start bothering to defend it?
But they will still defend them with all their might!
Cyclists are gonna be minted.
The motorcycle business is booming too. I'm trying to get a minor repair done and the shop is beyond slammed.
Its also about to be (or just started) riding season, so im sure people are getting things ready that they were putting off.
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I have 3 family members that got to start the work from home thing around COVID. Every one of them lost their job within 3 years. 2 of them are having a hard time finding employment again, one being unemployed for nearing a year now. I think a little part people might not be accounting for is that if WFH really makes people more efficient, then guess what? You don't need as many staff. So hilariously enough WFH means you can downsize, then mandating a return to office means you can shit can people that don't wanna RTO. Matter of time before that sort of crap catches up to a company and they find out all their good staff is gone. But what do I know I'm just speculating. My job could never be WFH as I am a mechanic, and "lucky" me mechanics are so in demand I can't throw a rock without hitting another employer begging to hire me.
Good.
"Defend"?
Haha. That's a cute word for it.
But what about the collaboration, the cross-pollination and the culture? Why is nobody thinking about the culture?
So.. Do US employees not get compensation for travel expenses? Such freedom..
They do, if the travel is for work, but not for their home-work commute. Some companies do still offer some compensation for that otherwise, but that's pretty uncommon.
So they don't.... During the job is just part of the job, that's not compensation. Now it even makes less sense why Americans like to commute so long
Which country are you in where you get to expense the commute to your designated office?
I'm in the UK and have never heard of this. Sure, if you're a home worker but that's not who RTO is targeted at. Or if you're asked to travel to a non-designate site, client site etc
I've worked in the Netherlands and Belgium, both gave me compensation for travelling to work. In the Netherlands they paid my gas. In Belgium it was a fixed stipulation depending on distance and mode of travel. Honestly I can't see how anything else is not just a rip off.
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