#officeculture

There it is folks.. May the 4th be with you!!

Yep. turn ur camera on Folks!!

Is Houston completely unassigned seating now in both towers? If so, brutal to absorb that and RTO 4 days all at once. How is it going for everyone? Strong reactions?

The only thing he should’ve been impressed with was the enormous number of calories I managed to consume worth of free food along with the excessively large amount of chips and cookies and candy and bagels and muffins that I managed to smuggle out out of the office in my backpack.

(and yes, for all the trolls who will inevitably jump in here… this means I am a slacker who has never had a “real” job and definitely not just a normal hard-working employee trying to maintain their sense of humor amidst an admittedly shi**y situation.)

Peace out and congratulations to everyone who survived their first week back with their sanity intact.

Any current employee's here? How's the new plan going? What's the climate like in the office? Things seem very quiet. I see a few recent comments in the September post and it doesn't seem good.

Dallas has Whitacre tower……. What will the new shrine to ourselves be named? I gotta know!!! 1st place gets their own desk for at least a week.

Another morale booster at Woodcreek :)

Hard to believe how much things have changed. What used to be a busy, collaborative place now feels like a complete ghost town. Empty floors, no energy, barely anyone around. It honestly feels like The Walking Dead, people just showing up, wandering around, and ki-ling time.

There’s not much actual work happening here anymore. Teams are gone or spread out, roles eliminated, and a lot of the real work seems to have moved elsewhere or just disappeared. So what exactly is the point of RTO when you come in and there’s nothing to do?

Curious if others are seeing the same thing. Is this just a slow fade until the site eventually shuts down?

I’m really struggling to adjust to the no assigned seating. It’s really awful and a big downgrade to my quality of work life.

This + 4 days in office has me seeking new jobs away from Chevron.

But I guess that’s what the wanted

Considering moving from Wells to BOFA. Is there any talk of going from 3 days in-office to 4 or 5? Or is there a required # of hours per day you need to be in office? What else should I know?

And I am already cringing about going in the office tomorrow. Such a depressing place to work..

It's important to make a good impression. Everyone will be there! Some of you will even be sharing the same desk and chair!

The hybrid model was amazing. Assigned or unassigned offices the hybrid was still better. There is no logical reason to go more days than 3 per week. I find the change to be very disappointing. My days at home were days to get things done and I didn’t dread getting up before 5 am to go into the office. I could get up at 7 and go right into the office. Back to the dread on Sundays again. Ugggh!

Anyone have a leader who requires cameras to be on in every meeting? How is this even enforceable?

My calendar’s full, my work isn’t getting done, and half these meetings could’ve been emails. Who’s benefiting from this system, because it certainly isn’t any of us who actually have things to do?

Remote employees were once again showered with lavish gifts and people in Milwaukee got nothing. The only give TG the Grinch gave local employees was the gift of paying for more gas to commute, paying more for parking, and extra time in the restroom if you manage to find something to eat at the cafeteria. Bah humbug

What time did your managers let you out today?

I keep seeing people say “we are returning to working in the office because that’s how it always was”

Quick question - who had issues finding assigned seating, food, and stocked bathrooms with good toilet paper before covid?

Answer - nobody. Because RTO is not a return to how it was. It is way greedier and designed to be humiliating on purpose. Quit licking boots and be honest.

Canon's declining market share and toxic corporate culture isn't just in the US. China is no different! The Zhuhai and Zhongshan factories have closed. Canon China sales company is laying off employees every year. the CEO and the Japanese managers are very much into the a-s-kissing culture. This This Retired managers continue to be promoted, middle level cadres are laid off as much as possible, and younger employees are bullied. This is the worst company I have ever seen.

There are rumors that something is changing in current work model. For example that work from office will be more strict - not like now where no one is checking this. Do you have any other insights?

Did anyone watch it /attend? It seemed like 40 minutes of someone talking but not actually saying anything. Maybe I’m just d-mb and that’s why I didn’t get it.

Dear Uncle Billy,

I have decided that I do not wish to return to the office. Therefore, I won’t be doing so. This conclusion is final; and just to be clear, entirely beyond your power to control. You may find this frustrating, but rest assured, your ability to compel my presence in the office exists only in your imagination.

Sincerely,

Your #1 Teammate

Take all your sh1t back and forth, fight for space, zero personalization, spread everyone’s germs, sit on Teams calls with team members down the hall or across the world… and do it 4 days a week.

Enjoy your check and stfu cattle.

Three times a week.

In Tampa or NY it feels like entire teams are dominated by one group, and Indian managers/directors mainly hire and promote people from their own circle. It creates a closed-door environment where others don’t feel they have a fair chance. It’s frustrating and sometimes feels like the American dream is slipping away because opportunities aren’t even accessible to fellow Americans. This is the greatest exploitation in American history.

It feels like some groups and communities tend to form close circles and mainly support people from their own background, and this sometimes extends into workplace dynamics as well. When this happens, it creates an impression of favoritism and makes the environment feel less neutral or inclusiveness. Even from projects to consultants to promoting some one to a director. The biggest exploitation of our dreams.

So rumor has it King Kobi will grace us with his presence next week. And of course we have to look our best, appear professional. Why? He literally zooms through the office in his entourage of sycophants, without a glance, smile, or nod to the ACTUAL workers. Why do we have to "dress appropriately" for someone who has zero interest in looking at us? He really doesn't see us at all.

So let me get this straight…

We don’t have any assigned desks but…

1. You can book a desk online
2. If full, join another IDT neighbourhood
3. You aren’t allowed to use other available areas in the building on a regular basis (LOL)
4. In high demand days you will be told which days to work from site
5. Attendance owners are tracking you

This is all absolutely ludicrous and ambiguous on purpose so they can say you weren’t “following the rules” and give you a lower rating at the end of the year.
And they get to determine what it means.

I’m very curious to see how many people worldwide will actually abide by this. I suspect it will not have the effect Wael is hoping it will. After all, you can only inflict this type of pain only if people let you.

After the backlash from trying to take away the purchased vacation, I hope there is a backlash here too. These rules aren’t for the betterment of the company as a whole, it’s Wael’s way to inflict attrition for people to leave on their own accord or to justify laying off.

These “rules” aren’t taking us to better long-term investments, it’s not taking us to better acquisitions.

The same disastrous decisions of burning cash through stock buybacks are being done by Wael all while telling us we can’t sit at the cafeteria if we want to.

“Only then use other available areas”
Only then when? Once? Every time? For a week? The wording is intentional.

It seems to me, Wael doesn’t need any workers at all, he seems to believe he can run the company all on his own. Maybe we should all listen and let him do it.

I know our field folks will say that office workers are a bunch of cry babies, but I am really struggling with the new open seating environment that we went to post-reorg. Employee experience is an important way to keep people motivated, and Chevron not being willing to give me a permanent desk where I can keep a few things have some pictures of my kids says so much about how they care about employees. I have never felt more like a number.

I'm not naïve enough to think they ever really valued us but I don't think it's too much to ask for office workers to have a small bit of space for continuity for ergonomic safety, and so we don't have to lug our stuff home every night or jam it into a locker.

Let's save a bit of money by cramming more onto a floor, meanwhile c-suite bonuses continue be astronomical.

Want to invest so little in me? Don't expect extraordinary effort. Because you have demonstrated over and over that we are all expendable. And when other companies come knocking, I will think long and hard on if Chevron deserves my loyalty.

Mostly because of special circumstances, which I know the vast majority don’t enjoy. I get that it would be a blow to most people. In my case, I’m close enough to the base that commuting isn’t an issue. One perk of coming back to the d-mb office? I fully intend to never, absolutely never, be available outside office hours. People forget WFH flexibility cuts both ways. That is, of course, assuming my job isn’t merrily eliminated before I even get to enjoy the fresh air and tranquil office environment.

Is this everywhere?

In Tampa, It is wild how managers suddenly disappear right before review time. They ghost you for weeks, then magically reappear with some cooked-up rating. This place doesn’t have a performance problem — it has a leadership problem. Especially with Indian managers who support people who speak their own native language. If an outsider comes to your team they are done unless the manager has a foreign degree, there is no respect. Some people sit in the same office space for years simply because they’re scared, comfortable, and stuck — no ambition, no growth, no risk-taking, just repeating the same tasks every day until they become part of the furniture.

So it begins.. more and more groups moving back to more days in the office. 4 days for all next…

I have no problem with 4 days back in the office starting 3/30/28 but can we please have our frigging desks back??? I don’t want a HS locker with a combo lock I need to contact building maintenance to open up for me every 2 weeks. If the powers that be want a return to normality, how about starting with our own desks around our own teams!!!!

What events are planned for your office? Sendoffs for the latest alumni class? Holiday lunches? Secret Santa gift exchanges?

So no Christmas tree, no Menorah, no Kwanzaa decorations. Just a random reindeer and sticks with lights and poinsettias.
I guess we don’t want to offend anyone.

I said it. Great people leader, passionate about product and people but ultimately the Berm isn’t the right environment.

ABU was among the first business units to move toward modernization and, in the process, implemented unassigned seating. The experiment failed spectacularly, creating widespread frustration and ultimately forcing a reversal back to assigned seating.

It’s hard not to ask why we continue to repeat initiatives that have already demonstrated clear and predictable failure, rather than learning from past experience.

With a sad grey D as our logo