Spent the last 2 years doing my job remote. 3 60 + year old colleagues resisted and stayed onsite throughout the pandemic. Within the past year, the older management has retired and been replaced with 30 somethings who are all about WFH. (Thank God!). I do most of my work at home and work onsite if needed for appointments and supplies (I work in community health). Our company also rolled out new software which has ultimately killed all need for physical paperwork and records.
We all received a 2 week crash course on the software and 99% of us hit the ground running and are easily navigating and using the tech. Today, I watched one 60+ worker lose her shit…totally lose her shit because no one is physically there to support her. She wants a supervisor on site 5 days a week (not gonna happen…she works 4 10 hour shifts like me)and she wants someone to physically fucking sit next to her all god-damned day while she works to make sure she is doing everything right. I have no problem saying no and told our supervisor that I'm not the one to sit there because then the team loses the productivity of two workers for 1-2 hours. My responses have been, you can reach anyone by email, work cell, there are 3 supervisors who rotate onsite (“but it's not OUR supervisor) to my all time favorite….”I'm working” every time she stops by my office with my closed door to share every epiphany/new idea/current event that pops into her head. I told her that NO ONE is coming back to the office 100% and she just stared blankly.
At a certain point if you can't figure shit out and identify what tools you need to get there..you get left behind. It's objectively interesting watching someone trapped in a 1996 work environment get left behind because they refuse to roll with the new.