“not enough of you quit when we tried to get you to with this RTO bullshit, so half of you have to stand”
The quiet part out loud is that this is nothing but a severance-free layoff.
This is what I hate about my company’s hybrid RTO policy. There aren’t enough seats for everyone and it’s not full RTO so we have to schedule our desks ahead of time. Aside from the typical back to office complaints, here are all the reasons I’ve found that hot seats suck:
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You have to bring all your shit and pack it all up again before you leave including keyboard, mouse, my foot rest because I’m short, etc.
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You have to readjust the desk, chair, and monitor every time you come in.
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Because of the previous, the monitor is loaded with grubby fingerprints.
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Not all desks are the same. Some are in better locations, some have 1 monitor and some have 2, some are longer, some are more adjustable, etc, etc and people fight for the best desks.
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There aren’t enough meeting rooms and call booths for everyone and people will often just take a room for extended lengths of time or just take a room you signed up for.
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They make the argument that we need to make connections in person, but my team is in another part of the country and every time I come in, I’m sitting by new people which prevents me from making relationships with people I would otherwise sit nearby on a regular basis thus defeating the purpose.
I feel this in my soul. I’m officed Mondays and Tuesdays. I’m 5 foot 6, and the guy on Wednesday and Thursdays is really, really tall.
I sure do love adjusting my desk and chair every Monday after Manute Bol’s been sitting there, and I’m sure that every Wednesday he’s wondering how my trip carrying the ring to Mordor is going that I started after work the previous day.
This is where you plan the number of monitors. I’m one of the few desks that don’t have two, so no one else wants it and I never need to readjust
My company is the same. I love when we all come together in person once a week to sit at our desks and put on our headphones and spend half the day on Zoom calls with our colleagues because they work at an office in a different city.
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Is this not constructive dismissal? “You must be in the office, and also there’s nowhere in the office for you to work.”
Sounds like they don’t want me to work that day if they don’t have a spot for me.
Better yet, I have a spot to work. My home.
“I tried to book a seat but they were all taken.”
Repeat adnausem even if more space is made available.
By coming together in person, we can strengthen our connections, foster a vibrant culture, and achieve our shared goals.
strengthen our connections
That’s a cruel irony coming from a telecom that refuses to sell connections to millions of Americans who already have an AT&T cable connected to their house.
vibrant culture
If by “vibrant” they mean “lumbering dinosaur that is the textbook definition of ‘engineered incompetence’” then ok because good corporate culture is definitely not what AT&T is known for.
It’s also ironic given how anti-union these corporations are, as they literally just described a union.
By coming together in person, we can strengthen our connections, foster a vibrant culture, and achieve our shared goals.
Literally a call for unionization.
If it were me I’d set up a makeshift work station in obnoxious locations. Make it really obvious I wasn’t given a proper place to work and make it seen by all the higher ups and visitors. Do it every day. Change locations so it’s always new spots. Always in locations where people bottle neck so they can’t avoid you.
If I have to take it to the next level then I start working on the floor. Get my charging cable out so it stretches across the floor. Set out a bunch of papers all across the floor to make it look like I’m working on something big. Make people have to walk around your papers to avoid interrupting your work.
No doubt people start taking and asking questions. Then you start throwing around how much work you have to do but have no proper place to do it so you’re doing everything in your power to get by and get the job done. Then be sure to loudly excuse yourself from the conversation and make sure they know you have a big dead line and don’t have time for chit chat.
Your new desk:
When they insist that you come into the office, but also don’t have a place for you to actually work when you’re there, you’d damned well better only do exactly what you’re told.
Yup, go in. Sit in the break room. Stare at the wall for 8 hours, leave. Explain that you were in the office but “in a communal space waiting for an available workstation.”
I think there may be a law in California for this…
