I know this is going to sound like an overreaction to many of you and if I were in the right state of mind I would probably agree. But my work just made me cry out of anger so I’m not thinking clearly. My work made it clear that their intention was to bring people back to the office and they made this intention clear many months ago. I wasn’t thrilled because at that point we had been working from home for over a year with minimal issues so it seemed silly that we would have to go back to the office at all though I do think it was very optimistic of me to think that work from home would become permanent. The return to office date was set up and pushed back several times over the months but at the end of last year we were told definitively that no matter what we were coming back into the office at the end of the first quarter of 2022.
At first we were told that we would be expected to come into the office three days per week which was a compromise according to people in upper management. Initially, from what I heard at least, the CEO wanted everyone to return to the office full-time. But when he was informed that there would most likely be mass resignations he backed off of this, again, at least according to what I heard secondhand. So imagine my surprise when a couple of months ago we were told that my department would only have to come in two days per week. I thought, “Hey, two days isn’t so bad.” The rest of the staff were thrilled as well. We figured that this wouldn’t be such a big deal to put up with having to come into the office two days per week.
About an hour ago, I was informed that the two days per week will now be temporary and that by summer we will be expected to be in three days per week. I know we still won’t be back in the office full-time, but it feels like such a deceptive tactic. To me, it feels like they knew there was a lot of pushback about having to go into the office at all, so they placated us by offering us two days per week and now that we’re getting close to going back into the office they pulled the rug out from under us and have rescinded that two days. There are many people on my team who have small children and who have made childcare arrangements based on having to come into the office two days per week and now they’re going to have to change those arrangements to accommodate three days per week. And my employer wants to act like they’re the greatest because they’re being flexible by allowing us to come in the two days temporarily(basically giving us time to get used to it so that we’ll really miss it when they take it away) and not forcing us to come in three days right off the bat.
I’m so fucking livid right now. I could feel myself getting more and more upset as my manager went on explaining everything. I don’t blame my manager at all, she was just the messenger after all and this decision was made without her input. I don’t even blame her manager because her manager was told this by her manager as well. I know that this is probably coming from the CEO who of course never comes onto these calls to defend his choices but makes his minions do it for him. I’m so tired of hearing about how flexible my company is when really they’re not flexible at all I’m starting to realize. They are flexible on their terms not on our terms. We outnumber them yet we allow this to happen. I realize that I am part of the problem by not doing what I can to fight back. Unfortunately I need this job and I can’t afford to just up and quit nor can I afford to take a lower paying job at a different company. After I got out of the call with my manager when I found out that they were pulling the old switcheroo on us, just out of curiosity, I went on indeed.com and searched work from home positions and everything that came up was either severely underpaid or with some thing involving some type of engineering that I have no knowledge in so I wouldn’t be able to do. I just kind of feel hopeless right now and I don’t really know where I’m going with this or what the point of this whole post was, I just kind of needed to get this off my chest.
And to top it all off, they are also rescinding the vaccine mandate they had in place. So it really feels like they don’t give a shit as much as they would like us to believe.