A week ago everyone in my office was moved to fully remote work due to an ongoing construction. This week HR sends an email saying that the main construction project was finalized but they would still be working on the east wing of the building (where the open-office space is), so people who worked in the finalized area were expected to come back to the office, which were mostly managers and people in leadership roles.
The people who worked on the open space area that was still being worked on now had the OPTION to stay at home or come back to the office if that’s what they preferred. Right away it became clear to us that the option to come back to the office were directed at people who didn’t have a good work station at home or have small children at home.
We had a team meeting in order to discuss our preferences to align exactly who would prefer to come back and who would be staying at home. As soon as everyone came into the meeting this coworker who I’ll call Alyssa, was already in the meeting with the team leaders.
The managers asked us to open our mics to voice our opinions and preferences based on the recent HR email, but they prefaced this by saying that Alyssa had already reached out to them to say that she would very much like to come back to the office because the team leaders would be coming back. She said she found it essential to work with the team in order to produce quality work.
Everyone that preferred remote work (almost everyone) was taken aback by this and were ashamed of saying so in fears of sounding lazy. This girl went on to explain that the team leaders presence were extremely important to complete the technical work we do etc.
Since I and three other people were the only ones who voiced our honest opinions out of the quiet bunch, management decided that Alyssa was right and everyone should come back.
Starting tomorrow around 14 people will have to scramble to find a corner of the office to work and most of us will probably have to work packed in the meeting room, hearing construction banging all day because Alyssa just had to kiss some manager a**.