askchapo

things were alright mostly, but the figure head of the relatively large org i work for decided arbitrarily that we're all returning to office in 90 days. some insane number of us were hired as full remote after 2020 (imagine +75%), because there was a lot of turnover and allowing full remote was seen as a way to save money, attract talent to fill vacancies, and distribute jobs more equitably around the state. they had developed and rolled out a pretty comprehensive telework infrastructure allowing people to work pretty far away from the office building. we would still have periodic in-person gatherings, and they were fun because it was novel to see everybody. the office building, which is ancient and always fucked up, has never been able support the number of employees so it had unassigned work stations in these lame open floor/distracting office setups. my personal situation only rises to the level of "extremely annoying" because i live very close, but of course i was all set up remotely with my own permanent workspace, comfortable chair, and protected from the distractions of an old, substandard building pretending to be a modern office.

a whole shitload of my organizational colleagues are absolutely fucked by this decree, because they accepted the 5+ years of "we have no intention of returning to office" that had been issued by leadership, because it was a win for everyone. many moved over an hour away to be closer to family or sidestep the cost of living of the home office city, some live several hours away. i work with a lot of cool people who use their heads and their hearts to find creative ways to help people, and they are now all getting the screws put to them.

no employee i have heard from wants this, the union is sounding the fight-back alarm and we're having multiple meetings organizing ways to fight it collectively and legally, but we get these shitty emails from leadership pretending to receive feedback implying "many" are excited by this return. fucking NOBODY wants this. like people 2-3 tiers above me in management are all shell-shocked at suddenly having to be a pain-sponge/buffer for a new policy they aren't allowed to openly shit on, but they all hate it and, according to rumor, are actively looking for the door. i mean, just operationalizing a solution to the lack of space for people is a logistical nightmare, and it wouldn't surprise me if some people left just because that problem was dumped on them. even if you paid me a million dollars to come up with a solution and i wanted to come up with the solution, i really don't see how they're going to do it. there just isn't enough room, even if they gutted the building, added floors, and put us all in tiny cubicles, the math just doesn't work. it's going to be a catastrophe, a massive loss of institutional knowledge, which is a bummer because if you can't tell, this is public sector helping people type of work, so the end result is a significant degrading of public services, especially for the underserved. so, when it has this inevitably crash-and-burn result, it plays into the hands of the worst people.

its making me anxious because this job and the culture was pretty solid. it took a significant amount of disrupting my situation to get, but this move reads like a surprisingly cynical layoff play to sidestep the bargaining contract and broader morale is in the absolute shitter now. all kinds of cool colleagues are looking for the door, everyone is tense and anxious as hell because this shit is totally out of left field. and for many people, it's just not going to be feasible and they're going to leave. i keep having to spend my free time attending union meetings, which i appreciate exist and if we have any shot of killing this, the union is it... but still, like my workday is already enough. having to fight extra hard just to keep what we've had sucks, and i can't imagine the vibe of in-person gatherings is going to be a positive thing anymore. it's gonna be some mando-fun circle jerk of people sitting in chairs being like, "i'm just here because they told me to."

it just blows. the difference in the vibe of the place has altered drastically since early august. nobody has the spare bandwidth or executive function to find cool ways to help people right now, because it's like they flipped a switch that tripled everybody's burnout rate.

again, my personal situation is relatively fine, as i got lucky as hell geographically. it's that so many great and caring people are suddenly getting the screws put to them. it's infuriating. and we're fighting it, but it's tiring.