Okay so my team works Wednesdays and Thursdays in office and the rest remote. Recently we’ve had an influx of work volumes but nothing that we can’t handle from home.
Last week my manager (and another employee above my manager) wants us to come into office to work (Monday to Friday) but we’ve proved to them that we are very much capable of doing the work from home (which we’ve been doing since forever) and that it would be a waste of time to come in today and never mind the fact that they asked our team on such late notice that people didn’t budget for fuel like that. Some people in my team live 30-50 mins away from work (that’s just distance, not taking traffic into account). My manager then said on Friday that she “doesn’t want to take food out of people’s mouths” and made coming into the office optional (only if you’re financially able to). She sends a message at 9:11pm last night saying that the call centre is having issues with their volumes and queries and need help and that means we need to come in office to help. Keep in mind my team works in money management and not the call centre. Apparently my managers boss requested this yesterday and you can see he said this other person in his team will be helping the call centre as well, but everyone knows she went on leave last Thursday. Also, my managers boss wasn’t even working yesterday because it was his mother in laws funeral so surely that message did not come from him.
In the message on WhatsApp she even tells us that it’s not relating to the fact that she wanted us to come in all week for the previous reason.
Our team has our usual priority work and we’re working with the technical team and data analysts to solve other bigger issues so we are already stretched thin. Our department has 113 people, why does our team specifically have to come in? It seems like my manager doesn’t know how to say no and our team ends up having to do everything. We have about 3-4 meetings a day because of this. Sometimes we are only able to work properly after lunch because of the amount of meetings we have in the mornings.
I’m deciding not to go in tomorrow as I do not work in a call centre. I work for a large company with multiple call centre departments. There are so many people to ask for assistance before you ask my department.