I just remembered this story from when I worked in tech support a couple of years ago. We provided support for leasing software and dealt with a ton of unique and challenging issues. We all had to be fast learners and cool under pressure. A lot of times our days were super busy due to every team being understaffed, but sometimes we’d have a few minutes of down time where we’d read or do something on our personal phones. It was never a problem and actually was a nice refresher in between calls and tickets. We were regularly recognized for our great productivity and service, everyone worked hard and wasn’t too burnt out because we had just that little bit of personal freedom.
One day we have our monthly meeting, and rumors had been circulating for a while that it wasn’t going to make us happy. Of course, we get in there and the management team is all standing at the front and decides to go off on how we shouldn’t ever have down time and need to find something productive to do at all times. Keep in mind, managers never took calls, they weren’t even trained on how to. They were no help at all, and if a caller ever asked for a supervisor we were just supposed to pass them off to another member of our team, not the actual supervisor. Idk what they did with their days. Anyways, we were all floored by this announcement, and some employees who’d been there the longest even spoke out against it, noting how management had JUST said that our metrics were incredible, and now it felt like we were being punished rather than rewarded. I don’t remember exactly what they said to that, but I do remember they insisted it wasn’t a punishment and it was just to encourage us to be even better.
We all left that meeting fuming. Some employees insisted they did not care about the new rule and they would ignore it, knowing fully well that the company couldn’t do anything about it since they couldn’t afford to lose anyone.
Guess when this meeting happened? February of 2020. Yep, just before the world shut down and we all had to pack our things and work from home. While a pandemic was definitely jarring, the timing was too good. We all got to go home and be on our gaming systems, phones, basically do whatever we wanted, and our micromanaging supervisors couldn’t do a thing about it because our stats stayed just as good as ever. As things started to cool down, they tried to bribe some people to come back and work in the office with good ol’ pizza parties, but we were all smart enough to know we’d gotten a way better deal being able to be at home, away from our micromanaging bosses.