Having to go back to the office is not employer abuse, and certain entitled people should stop whining as such

IIRC the problem with Apple is they universally made it so all come in, with no consideration to needs of the employee and with respect to the needs of the company. It was the one size fits all that caused the backlash.

But to your other points, your cushy office position. Some jobs require one to be there as part of the job itself (bagging groceries you mentioned), carpentry, ski instructors, etc. But not all.

I will use my son’s school as example as it seem very much related to work in this context.

Background: Our school went fully remote for Q1 (first quarter) this year, then for Q2 and Q3 had the option of either fully remote or 2 days a week in person, 3 days remote (called hybrid). For the last quarter there is an option of full time, hybrid or fully remote.

On a parents group there was a very vocal group pushing for full time attendance for all since Q1. It seems like their little extrovert crumb cruncher was having such a hard time not only with remote for themselves but also wanted to require other students be in so their extrovert kid can have people to interact with. So when I see the OP’s opinion I tend to place it in that category.

Our son has just returned to 2 days a week hybrid. He not only liked remote, but excelled at it, making much higher grades than in person (his grades slipped a bit this last quarter as he became hybrid - but he has to transition back next year to full time it seems). He also likes that remote cuts out all the non-essential (BS) time that is usually spend when coming into school and gives him real down time during the class day which really helps him. His day is also about 1h45m-2h30m shorter per day due to bussing and his last period is sometimes optional study hall/extra help which is skippable. This makes him feel better about school and his grades and makes him perform better so I can understand some workers concerns who like to excel and what they do and want the option to do it the best way they can.

Protip: You can get better leverage for dragging the other crab back down into the bucket if you can grab one of the middle legs rather than a rear one.

My gf continue s to work from home, and her advertising agency has adapted beautifully. If she wants to go into the office (maybe twice a month) she alerts someone who sets her up with a desk. Roughly 20% of the agency is in the office at any given time, so they’ve cut back on office space.

Is there a text version of those filters for turning modern photos into old-timey sepia images, to translate this rant into complaints about women expecting equal pay for equal work, radicals demanding an eight-hour day, serfs whining about not having enough to eat, etc?

Not only did I not miss a single penny in wages during the many weeks I worked from home, I actually profited from COVID-19 because I received the stimulus checks on top of my regular wages. So, I certainly wasn’t going to complain about coming back to work.

Just for the record, I could have done about 2/3 of the tasks I had yesterday from home, but the other 1/3 I could not have done from home.

My company is growing right now, but our offices are maxed out and not expandable. We’ve been in the same location for 35 years, so that several colleagues have bought houses 3 blocks away, etc. In late 2019, the bosses were starting to hunt for a different office space, before we all went home in March 2020. As far as I can tell, the work-from-home thing hasn’t affected productivity much, apart from meetings being weirder. We’ve still been hiring, though. So I worry we’ll end up in the same location, but with a 2-days-on-site-per-week arrangement with rotating cubicles.

We will never get better until we all recognize that the problem isn’t the other crabs, it is whomever put them in a bucket in the first place.

Speaking of whiners…

My wife’s company had their corporate HQ in leased space for 10-15 years. North side of town, most people bought homes to minimize commuting.

Then they got a bug up their ass and decided to build a new HQ. It is way west and somewhat south of the old building (the result of two states, three counties, and a bunch of cities throwing incentives at them). Really annoyed a significant chuck of the employee base.

As a bonus, they’ve been in the building 3 years now and have completely filled it, to the point where now that people are being forced back to the office at least 2 days a week, those who aren’t full time in the office have lost their permanent desks and are “hoteling”.

Why are you replying to Reddit posts here in the SD – different demographics. And that’s important. Reddit users tend to be much younger, and much more comfortable making demands of their employers.

But this boomer agrees with the kids on this one – modern technology makes the traditional 8-hours-a-day-in-office work model obsolete. These jobs have been completed successfully from home for over a year, so it’s clearly doable. Work-from-home rewards the skilled, self-motivated, competent employees management claims they want – if I can do the job in half the time I get to spend the rest of the day on my interests instead of picking up the work of lazy Susan who’s sole qualification is friend of the manager. ( I suspect the new model is much harder on the slacker, unqualified, ass-kissers who so excel in traditional office environments). Why would anyone want to give that up for a return to petty management oversight, office politics, forced socialization, & ‘team-building’. None of which is necessary to get the job done.

Well, you just nailed Reddit right there.

A huge chunk of Redditors seem to be students of some stripe, or VERY early career professionals without a wide-ranging education. Everything on there is ALWAYS the fault of “the corporations”, it’s always racism, and so on. Occam’s Razor is unheard of there, and whatever the most convoluted liberal/leftist explanation of something that is just this side of a conspiracy theory, is the accepted one. They all seem to be the children of late baby-boomer/early Gen-X helicopter parents and are the stereotypical special snowflakes. The concept of “Suck it up and get on with things” has never been made to apply to them until now.

That probably accounts for 65% of Redditors. Another 25% are just obnoxious right-wing types, but not inarticulate rural ones. About 10% are actually reasonable people like you predominantly find around here.

So you get nonsense like this whole “making me go back to the office is a violation of my human rights!” type nonsense. (hyperbole, but not by much I’m sure).

I work at a federal library. Starting next week I go in to the office on Thursdays, and telework every other day, to start. Eventually they plan on having everyone in for at least 2 days a week, but it also seems that telework will continue to be a part of our regular schedules, where before that was just not an option for anyone. I would certainly prefer to just work from home, but I don’t mind going in once or twice a week.

We have a service desk that must be manned from 0800-1600, and that responsibility is shared by everyone, but that’s really the only reason anyone ever needs to actually be there. If ever we went 100% digital (I’ve been there since 2009 and since then the physical collection has been at least 80% eliminated and digitally replaced) we wouldn’t even need that, we could just have a chat window on the website, and the base could reclaim and repurpose our humongous building.

The fact that telework is obviously advantageous to the employer in various ways is one of the factors driving the negative reaction to being corralled back into the cubicle hive. To revisit my earlier examples, women no doubt didn’t like being paid seventy cents for every dollar men got, and workers generally didn’t like being kept on the job for twelve hours a day, but at least they understood that the bosses had rational motivations to keep things that way. Now, it seems to be not only an imposition, but an arbitrarily* imposed imposition.

*Particularly when the employee’s personal experience confirms that most face-to-face contact at the office consists of useless meetings and pointless distractions rather than anything that could legitimately be called “team building” or “collaboration”.

How about you hire me for a couple days: I will explain to you the black magic of cell phones. My rates are quite reasonable for a tech wizard from the far far future (I am from 2021: isn’t that cool?)

I have replied to them on Reddit too, although arbitrary circlejerks there are commonplace so often times it just isn’t worth it. Reddit I’ve noticed in particular excels at finding things to complain about and grossly exaggerated them that if there’s anyone that validates Boomers’ perception of excessive entitlement and spoiling of the future generations (which I don’t de facto agree with), it’s got to be that site.

It’s funny - I am 23 and have just recently started my white collar career (although I’ve been working in an office job before for a few years) and the opposite - I side with the Boomers on this one. As I said, I have no issue at all making demands of employers especially where reasonable and to try to get the best compensation package where possible.

But I wouldn’t blindly side against employers just because. And that’s what it seems like in this case, especially to call it abuse or unfairness.

I also think that there are many advantages to face-to-face, but they may not be as tangible so it’s being discounted too easily. A lot of innovation is derived from such interactions. Additionally, many don’t have great working environments especially if single and alone in a small apartment room, and it should not be dismissed that social interaction in the work place is an important bedrock for advancing one’s career due to networking opportunities and recognition. In many white collar careers, interacting with people and leadership is a big part of the job to be effective, and I reject the assumption some are quick to make that “these roles are unnecessary”. Their value is simply not being seen anymore to the full potential.

And from a non-work perspective, many have found that it is often a great hub for developing new personal relationships. “Forced socialization” is such an odd complaint, especially when paired with the idea that the alternative suggested is to just meet people in bars and meetup groups when typically that’s not nearly as effective. And mainly because, what does one think school, college, etc is? They were all forced socialization too by that definition, and are regarded as important environments for opportunities to develop those relationships. And even if you’re “forced” to be around others, those relationships still have to be mutually chosen to be established by both parties.

I think it’s a far too cynical way to look at things that going back to the office merely invites “forced socialization, office politics, slackers, and micromanagement”, and nothing else, and these negatives seem way overhyped. Like seriously, it’s not that bad.

If it’s advantageous to the employer to remain fully remote, then why would they ask for employees to come back? Was it not the case, as always complained about, that employers only care about themselves and the maximization of their productivity? Why the very common assertion that the meetings are useless? They simply occur remotely now anyway (which suggests they aren’t useless to begin with).

Or does it suggest that the employers see benefits to at least partially coming back to the office that some employees are too ignorant to recognize? Especially, what is the issue with compromise and coming into the office 2-3 days per week? Which is what most employers are advocating for that allows people to enjoy advantages to both working from home (and I agree that there are quite a few) and in the office.

By this “reasoning”, the fact that millions of people refuse to take the COVID vaccine proves that it isn’t really beneficial, because if it were they’d take it.

We are administrated by the military and they dictate that someone has to be there from 0800-1600 M-F. We have no discretion. Our civilian director doesn’t really have any real authority.

More work from home would actually be good for the environment. Commuting is a real contributor to Global Climate Change. It also generally sucks. Less people on the road can only help those that need to get to work.

There’s also the problem that Apple declaring that they can’t function on a telework basis is kind of like Xerox declaring that employees should use carbon paper because copying machines are unreliable.