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.
In effect, lose the most competent employees who can find another job
I think you mean the least desperate
Not the point of the scene
The point is she doesn’t know what a banana costs. I doubt these CEOs know what a gallon of gas costs and thus don’t care that people complain about it. The fact that reality is meeting up with the suppose to be exaggerated dollar amount is just depressing.
Inverted meme-ing
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.
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.
But they will still defend them with all their might!
When did they start bothering to defend it?
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.
“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.
That’s a really interesting insight, thanks. We just get so used to the norm that we know.
I’ve considered this many times. But I just can’t see a fair way to do this.
You either compensate with money or with time. I would gladly pay 3x my commute monetary cost to just teleport there, so at least in my case time compensation would be much better. So how to do it?
Option 1: Clock in when leaving the house, but that is incredibly easy to cheat.
Option 2: Calculate once per employee the time it should take them to get there based on their transportation method. They can just claim to commute in a time-inefficient method (such as walking or cycling) when they go in car instead. What happens to people that don’t always use the same method?
Option 3: Reduce the work hours for everyone by the same amount. This is amazing, but you can do this without claiming it’s for commute compensation. If you only do this reduction when not WFH, then you are basically punishing those who WFH and would have a short commute time. The ones on the top would just WFH 99% of the time from very far away and get massive commute compensations otherwise. Even then, the times they go to the office would be massively beneficial.
For money, it’s basically the same.
I just don’t think it can be done fairly.
In the US 1099 employees can write gas (or miles) off on their taxes (but that’s because they are classified as an independent contractor). I’ve also worked contract jobs (again in the US) where travel was compensated at X amount per mile (no where near the actual cost of gas was but it helped cover travel). But I’ve never been compensated for travel working a standard 9-5 job unless I went to a work event and was offered per diem.
My work will cover public transit costs for commutes but not gas.
About 75% of us are in the US so… No public transit to cover. Coincidence?
They actually may only cover that cost for US employees… I need to ask my EU colleagues. That’d be a real “fuck you” if so.
I’m Estonian, travel compensation for your personal vehicle is tax-free if you use it FOR work. But compensation for going to work? Regular income and social taxes, so basically no employers do it.
And why would you, anyway? I know if I had an in person job with a commute compensation it’d incentivize me to move further away. Why live in the city if your company would pay you to commute an hour each way from the countryside and you don’t see your neighbours from your windows.
Some companies will pay for your bus pass though. That makes more sense as an employer than paying someone more to commute from further away lol
Yes this was my thinking. And in fact the salary reflects where in our country the role is so you could argue that the cost of commuting is baked in. Certainly in London it’s called “London weighting” where extra money is added to your salary.
Still, the original Op seems to in Belgium/NL so good result for him/her
Now it even makes less sense why Americans like to commute so long
I prioritize living near work. While I understand that there are other factors when it comes to housing, I feel like commute is given way too low of a priority by most people. It not only represents actual cost (e.g. fuel and vehicle expenses) but is a huge tax on one’s leisure time. After work, sleep, and various other tasks you might only have a few hours to yourself each day. Commute time comes straight out of that.
Fat Bike FTW
They let that particular box open and they aren’t going to be able to close it.
They were already pretty hard to defend.
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
Previous company not only did rto but also did the whole open concept garbage. I lucked into one of the best jobs of my career around that time and have not looked back (full remote, some on site for physical hardware but nothing at any sort of cadence)
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
Out of curiosity as a foreigner, when you say “in the city” in London, does that mean London, or the City of London, or is it an “it depends” kinda situation?
And I’m sure that you, being from the UK, know the difference already, but I’m leaving this explanation here in case someone else reading this ends up one of today’s lucky 10,000
Yes sorry, I meant City of London I. E. the finance/banking area. But even then it’s not strictly correct as alot of that industry are ou at Canary Wharf.
It is yes another silly situation the UK has got itself into!!!
