I feel like I'm slipping into a depressive episode after everything today, so I thought I should vent my feelings.
I work in B2B customer service, and my whole team has been working from home since the start of the pandemic. There was a meager effort to RTO last spring, but then delta happened and it was quietly shuttered. We were all kind of hopeful about staying WFH long term, but then out of nowhere (not even our manager had been given a heads-up) we get a memo that all US offices for our company would start going back in a hybrid model as soon as the transmission risk dipped to moderate or low in the area where the office is located.
We were all blindsided, and after a big back-and-forth email between the team, we drafted a letter (I affectionately called it our manifesto) to our manager and HR rep stating our desire to remain WFH, and our reasons behind it. We set up a meeting, everyone said their peace, we got no concrete answers other than “The expectation is to work from the office at least part of the week.” Our HR rep offered to request a meeting between us, the head of HR, and the VP of Operations. We all agreed, and thought “hey, this is getting sent up the chain, they must take us seriously.”
Fucking NOPE.
Two of the more senior members of our team went into the office to represent us in person (which I thought kind of defeated the purpose, but they thought it would help put a face to the cause) and the rest of us joined virtually. The senior two also put together a list of questions they wanted answered (including gems like “What specific tasks do you expect us to perform at the office that we cannot do at home?” and “What expectations do you have for face-to-face collaboration?”) and sent it the day before for review. One of the first things they told us at the start of the meeting was that they didn't have answers for most of our questions. Auspicious start.
Basically the VP of Ops (who has been in her role for all of 2 months) spent the whole time talking about “pushing the business” and “room for improvement” and “getting together at a table to solve problems” and “perception.” At this point I realize that upper management lives in a world full of vague ideas and is basically incapable of giving us concrete details. At this point I begin to wonder if this meeting was doomed to fail. At this point there is a moment of accidental honesty: “it's not about what you want, it's about what's good for the business.”
It all seemed to boil down to “if a conversation isn't happening face to face, it's not happening at all.” So we rebut – what about the coworkers we have at other locations, people we send dozens of emails a day? Y'all, she literally said “if you have an issue, file an expense report and drive 4 hours to talk to them in person!” Bitch who's gonna do my work while I'm fucking off on a road trip to go waste someone else's time? Are you gonna cover my desk?
The highlight was when the HR head said something along the lines of “See, these are the kinds of conversations we want to happen, which is why we want to return to the office.” I piped up and said “I'd like to point out that this conversation is happening while most of us are still at home.” And then she smiled in a way that looked like she just bit into a lemon.
A little over an hour in, they basically say “Look, we're going back to the office, at this point it's just a question of how.” I think that pissed us all off – if they had opened the meeting with that, we could have maybe pivoted into a discussion of what we wanted from the hybrid model. But no, they thought they could do a song and dance about all the ways they've “listened to our concerns” during the remodel of the office, and how we're gonna have a closed off area with white noise machines (???) so we can focus on our work without distractions (except when someone needs to pull us away to collaborate and solve problems I guess), and we would be so impressed that we'd jump at the chance to put asses in seats.
This has gotten long, idk if I really have a point here. Writing this has been therapeutic though, I feel like I can make a plan going forward. I know a lot of you out there are in the same boat, I hope all of you stay safe out there.
Peace and Love