I'm going to keep the company I'm talking about anonymous because I still actively have to use them as references in my work field; so please don't ask for identifiable information
I worked at a very large, publicly traded, very well known company that is based in travel. We're going to call them Bob's Travel & Relaxation. This company over the course of 5 years had very public changes happen that had impacts to not just a lowly minions but the C-Suite team.
Before I go further for anyone who doesn't know just to clarify C-Suite team are those executives that have literally a sea-based title so you're talking CEO, CFO, CHRO, CTO…etc.
In time with one of those big changes the C-Suite team and made the decision that they were going to redo the layout of several floors of the building that the company occupied in addition to redesigning the executive's office, and making some new meeting rooms, and closing some other ones. Important to remember…this was before covid happened.
At first we didn't think that much of it we thought this was just going to be a regular office refurb. It was about halfway through that we realized this was very far from that they took one floor of the building and added in eight new conference rooms of various sizes.
Some could hold a meeting for four people some could hold a meeting for up to 20. They then took another floor and pulled out half of the cubicles on one side of the building and turned it all into an open space work floor.
Any “offices” where glass that was not frosted you could see right into the office some of them didn't have actual doors on them and the open space seating basically to those of us that looked at it was like sitting at a high school lunch table where the computer screens were all mounted to the actual table and people were just working on other side of it.
We were told that was going to be the test floor for what the potential future of seating would look like for the rest of this building…no one was excited for it. People from HR had confidentiality issues, people from legal had confidentiality issues, the call center team we're totally confused how this would work for them…nobody liked this.
But that was not the straw that broke the camel's back. A year after this refurb started we were told that it had finally finished which meant that all the Executive offices had been completed so you would start to see people going up to the top floor of the building cuz they wanted to see what the new office looks like.
Every single c-suite executive had an office that was now equivalent to the size of a studio apartment. Complete with a couch, two armchairs, coffee tables, a TV mounted on a wall. On the other side of the room was a desk, that was a standing desk if wanted, new high-end office chair, cabinets, credenzas, and other little optional items the executive may have requested.
For example one executive's office had not one not two but three large TVs on three of the four walls. Another had a home mini fridge mini bar situation put in their office that would be stocked with snacks and drinks of their choosing that the company would pay for.
To make these studio-sized offices they combined old offices together which then quite literally meant that some VP's or SR VP's were literally working in offices the size of a storage closet. There was one office that was so narrow to get around the desk you had to walk sideways.
The same year that all these refurbs were done these studio-sized Executive offices were completed we all walk into work one day and found out that 1,800 people had been let go to reduce company overhead and help cut costs to save money. We were also told that there would not be any merit or bonuses that year.
2 days after the layoffs happened there was a company Town Hall which is often the case and it was reconfirmed for us that the reason this happened was because the company needed to save money we needed to make sure that we could meet the projections we were providing to the investors and the stock market and help the EBITDA!
For town halls you were allowed to anonymously submit questions for the c-suite team to answer and while it's rare it actually was anonymous cuz it was a text-based web tool that you would submit the questions through and the number one question that came in was if we have to meet prices for investors and help save money then why were all the executives given studio size Executive offices?
You could have easily postponed the refurb house reduce cost probably not have to lay off as many people and probably still have been able to pay up merit to everybody.
The response the company was given was this money had already been pre-allocated and approved in the budget to which somebody responded but so are merits.
So we were never given a real answer publicly but behind the scenes we all understood….. we're not executives we're not the c-suite people so our wants and needs don't matter to the company.
Six months later… Covid shutdown happened.
Out of that main corporate office 85% of the staff that want to work there never returned to that building their positions either became permanently work from home or the people left…I left when I was told that out of a team of 32 people me and one other person were deemed as workplace essential and we're going to be the only two people for the team that had to work in the office.
I heard after I left the company that they stopped leasing the five out of the seven floors that they leased in this building that was a corporate headquarters.
One of the floors that they stopped leasing was the floor that held all the executive studio sized suites.
They spent all that money redoing the Executive offices probably used them for a max of four….four and a half months and then decided that they didn't need that floor anymore.
My experience with that company and this entire situation I'm talking about is the reason that I say the old regime needs to die.
It's those very people who turn their offices into studio size swings that wonder why people refuse to return to a method of working that is outdated and doesn't work.
People are done catering to the elite minority when the massive majority has been brushed aside, stepped on, overlooked,under acknowledged, under appreciated, underpaid, & undervalued for decades.
Eat the Rich.