This is so beyond unacceptably inappropriate that I'm floored. The lack of professionalism and basic respect is embarrassing.
Our CEO is in town briefly, bouncing between one of their many properties, and decided to make everyone come in to “have fun” before they leave.
It's Wednesday, during major holiday crams and end of season/quarter projects, and this maniac wants everyone to drop their lives and come in for a full week of pointless meetings and “activities” in 3 days.
Personally, this creates chaos for people who have been working hybrid schedules (some fully remote) with no issues for 3 years. Forget childcare and other personal obligations.
Professionally, this causes utter chaos across multiple teams that now have to drop everything they were doing and cram in a week of pointless meetings, just to satisfy the boredom and ego of a moron.
The one person who spoke up about this being insanely short notice mentioned these two things, and the CEO quickly tried to gaslight and blame “managers” and claim everyone knew about this “for weeks” and it was being planned “for months.” (Spoiler: we did not know about this, and we literally found out yesterday at 5pm when he posted a big 'We'Re aLl fRieNDS' announcement–seen this morning, for those working normal hours). They tried more guilt by claiming we have a super flexible work schedule, which is true…but that's also literally why people tolerate bullshit and low pay–not to have it used as a veiled threat.
The “schedule” for this week of meetings/activities is a laugh-out-loud Google Sheets that looks like someone literally just started brainstorming on it 10 minutes ago. This is apparently the culmination of “months” of planning that everyone knew about. Uh huh. Right.
I'm considering just not going in any of the days, or legitimately making a case to officially strike on one of them, as both poor and stagnant wages has been a hot topic at our company for a long time. Seems like a good time to make a statement.
Anyway, just needed to vent. This isn't the end of the world, but my god, this is so unprofessional.