We're a tiny ad agency and been asked to come back to work in the office 2 days a week to help with cohesion and all these other great words. Fair enough for a creative agency.
The problem is that they hired quite heavily during covid (they actually had their best year ever on 2020/2021..) and now, even with splitting ourselves across different days of the week, we are crammed all together.
And as our own clients haven't gone back to the office, I still spend about 70% of my days on Zoom calls… So now I have people talking loudly in the background because the office is so small we don't have meeting rooms, and I am crammed into the smallest desk ever surrounded by noises and people chatting about random shit all day long.
I have avoided coming in to the office on my assigned days with excuses every time, but was reprimanded and asked to come in more regularly as “they're not paying rent and investing in hotdesk solutions (we have all 2nd screens, mouse, keyboards both at home and at the office) for people to stay at home”.
So today I did.
But there's so many people in today that I didn't even have a desk available – and I'm at the back of someone else's desk, crouched on a corner.
Fuck dat. Until you can ensure I'll get decent office working conditions, adapted to this post-covid online meeting world, then I'll stay home.