A colleague points out another potential problem with return-to-office mandates.

During the plague they've had babies, which they didn't have before. And are happy with how they are navigating child care, school, and WFH. And cannot imagine how they could navigate child care, school, and spending all day every day commuting to an office.

I might have been OK with going back to the office if they hadn't destroyed the office in that time.

My department used to have a whole section of one floor. You'd pop around the corner to ask someone a question (and it'd be obvious from the group crowding around them if you needed to come back later lol), we'd be shouting over the tops of the cubicles, and while we still did a decent number of conference calls you'd be hearing the same call echoing from across the room -- headphones were not necessary, we were all on that call. If you went out for lunch or just needed to get up for a bit people would come to your desk, see you not there, and try again later. If you needed to train someone new, they'd come sit with you and watch you work.

But during COVID they remodeled. "Modernized" by designers who had no comprehension of functionality, only surface level appearances. No cubicle walls, just small clusters of desks all facing each other with a monitor and no other equipment. Big glass phone booths with standing desks if you wanted "privacy". "Conference rooms" that were literally just a desk shoved into a corner somewhere. They switched to a "hotel" system where you'd go in and have to reserve your desk every morning. We did eventually get *some* reserved seating for my team, but we were scattered across multiple different buildings -- and half the team had been hired out of state and were never going to RTO. At first the return was optional, then it became a mandate. I tried for a few weeks but just couldn't do it. Too many distractions, lacking the services we used to have (I went from a building with a full staff to cook you lunch to one with nothing but a fridge and a microwave) and the "collaboration" they kept insisting was behind the mandate had been made utterly impossible. I threatened to quit and they gave me an exemption, so I'm still there as I haven't found anything better yet...but I ain't going back. I still see the benefits of the office we used to have but I think those days are gone for good.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new normal -- I don't waste as much time literally staring at the cube wall all day because I have nothing to do. It's a lot harder to get roped into overtime when I can just sign off and mute my notifications. I'm not being coerced into attending work parties anymore (other than that one virtual party where they insisted I join on Teams, at which point I muted myself, muted them, and went back to what I was doing lmao.) Cannot wait until offices become just another strange relic of a forgotten era...

A lot of my friends who are still WFH are finding that the offices that they could go back to have switched to a very bizarre scheme: nobody actually has an assigned desk.

So every time anybody comes in to the office to work, they have to have all their stuff with them, pick a desk somewhere, and start working there.

It seems like a hellscape situation. One office is all creative, and how the heck do you make creatives nomads?

@Sascha 😈 ⁂ (Fediverse) Ich folge einer NodeBB-Kategorie, in der die sich die Entwickler der einzelnen Threadiverse-Projekte sich absprechen, um die weitere Entwicklung zu koordinieren.

Ist schon ziemlich interessant das quasi als Zaungast zu beobachten.

“Don't forget who started this bullshit..”

Yeah. That Zelenskyy. Why did he invade Russia?
Meanwhile, back in reality…