To whom it concerns.. You know who you are.
Please stop making this about remote work. It really makes me want to swear when I hear some little smug punk say "ten toes down" as if to imply that people who have concerns over the new RTO mandate are simply unmotivated or, dare I say, LAZY. It is such an insult to people who aren't career employees, who aren't interested in being in the club, or who aren't in our vendor's pockets.
Remember that famous, yet misquoted statement from Marie Antoinette? "Let them eat cake".. Now, she didn't actually say that but the spirit is there. If you don't have any water, stop complaining and just drink wine. If you want to work at AT&T, stop complaining and come into the office 5x9. So, some people complained about RTO. Instead of asking why, leadership has made resistance a terminatable offense. But, do you ask why we are resisting? While you sit on the executive floors, many have to fight for spaces. We have to fight for parking. We have to endure inane conversations, i mean 'collaboration' about how bad Dallas is playing or how terrible/great presence tracking and RTO are. What have you done to make RTO something we can get behind?
We are a company drowning in debt. We are in negative growth. Our employees hate the company. Our culture is dead, and, oh yeah, we have to come into an office in an environment where we are forced to fend for ourselves like a bunch of lemurs looking for a little patch of grass only so we can pop up our collective heads every time someone new enters the jungle. You call that progress and you label these jungles, "collaboration zones". They are not. You are the bosses living in the penthouse, completely blind to the struggles of the people in steerage. Did it ever occur to you that this is the part of RTO that makes us uneasy? Give me a cube with a docking station, a couple monitors, my own keyboard and mouse, a phone, maybe pictures of my family and some cute little desk tchotchkes that make me feel like I'm a person with freedom and the respect of my leaders instead of being in a prison cafeteria. You think you get it but you don't. I don't mind driving an hour to get to work but it would sure be nice to know that my company gave a darn about my experience once I get there.
If you're still reading, here's a thought. There's this huge building with AT&T plastered all over the place. Its got a ton of space that's mostly used on weekends so it probably sits empty m-f. I think there may be people who work their but I think its fairly well understood that they are pretty terrible at their jobs. Clearly RTO doesn't equate to job performance. Anyway, maybe y'all can think about selling that eyesore to someone else and maybe we can use that money to, oh, I don't know, improve the working conditions for your people who are actually trying to be successful?
Just something to think about..