My wife works for a company that subcontracts her, and 3 other people, out to another company, it’s a partial work from home. 2 days in the office one week, 3 the next. Her office is about 30 minutes from the house. Her company is phasing out her department so the company that she contracts out to is going to bring them in-house. She is going to be doing the exact same job, not a thing is going to change. They are even staying at the same office building, just renting out the space.
So one of the partners, a man in his early 60s, at the firm she is moving to decided he wanted to interview everyone before finalizing the position. My wife was the last one to interview so she asked the other people what pay they were offering. They told her it was confidential and that if they talked about their salary they would get fired.
My wife gets to the interview and one of the first things that this partner asks her is how much she made at her old job. She refused to tell him, saying it was confidential. This set him him off. He said the confidentially didn’t apply now, but she didn’t back down. When they got around to talking about salary he said he needed to know what she made so her could give her a salary that matched her old one, he said he didn’t want to pay to little. She told him a low range so he finally just made her an offer, which was a good raise.
Then he starts saying he wants her to come to the main office, 1.5 hours from our house. So she pushes back asking why she needed to be there. After some back and forth he says that it’s important for company moral and team building” He thinks she needs to “lay eyes” on the other people she works with. Remote working is bad because he doesn’t know if everyone is working to their “full potential” By the end of the interview she is pissed. She tells him she will think about it.
After the interview she has lunch with her supervisor who sees she is pissed right away without my wife saying a word. The supervisor said she would get it sorted and get it down to once a month. Her supervisor goes to talk to the partner and tells her my wife is upset. He was completely taken aback, he thought the interview went great and my wife was happy.
They got it worked out, going to the main office once a month, but it still just is wild that this guy wanted her to drive all the way down there once a week. It would be a completely wasted day, she wouldn’t get any work done. It’s not like she can drag all her paperwork down there each week. Plus all her coworkers work remote as well and they get to choose what day they go to the office so the chances of all of them being in the office at the same time is almost nil. It just shows how these old school bosses don’t get workers these days.