It's happening. Ignoring reality, the Establishment hierarchies are taking a hard stance with employees pushing return to the office protocols, policies, and edicts.
For all of us providing office technology services, there is nothing more important than getting the workers back in the cubes, back to the office, computer, printer, desk phone, electricity, coffee machines, fax lines, and Wifi. Nothing is more important.
"We're going to get you in here three times a week, at first. You're going to love the new expresso machine and the monthly, themed lunches so much, you'll want your old desk back in no time."
This week Apple drew(another) line in the sand, demanding workers back to the fields, the week of Sept. 5. Some employees fear a ‘draconian’ return-to-office plan like Tesla’s, with an overcrowded office and tracked attendance, I'm sure there will be those relishing watercooler chats, Monday morning football game reviews and the like.
Taco Tuesday will be a big hit.
The #RTO v #WFA argument is charged with big business on one side and employees on the other. Some of us prefer the cube life. Their lives are full of doctor's trips, teacher conferences, fast food dinners, company Christmas parties, and corporate-sponsored baseball games. The 'family calendar', thumb-tacked in the kitchen, is filled through New Year's Eve, 2023.
Others, indeed the majority, love working out of the den or third bedroom. They can't imagine missing school events or working until 1:00 A.M. creating the greatest presentation of all time.
The four MINUTE commute. Enough said.
So with trepidation, traditional companies suggest 'getting back to the office' via 'the best of both worlds, a hybrid environment.
A universal definition of the hybrid office is distilling - it could mean being in the office four days or one day a week.
#Hybrid is pitched as a happy medium, between #WFH and #RTO. But don't be fooled it is incrementalism.
All things are political. Think I'm wrong? We just passed an "Anti-inflation Bill" that has more to do with Climate change than lowering the CPI. Connect those dots! Anyway, I've come up with the following metaphor, simile, comparison, or whatever you want to call it around the back-to-the-office edict.
Enjoy.
Hybrid is like Socialism
Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized power that often plans and controls...
Return to the Office is like Communism
Work From Home is Freedom
Having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered...
You get the point.
"Oh the Irony"
The irony of Apple stomping its large, status quo, establishment foot on the #WFH movement is crystalized when juxtaposed to the 1984 Superbowl commercial:
"We have seen the enemy and he is us."
Once upon a time, Apple was the insurgent. An outfit of 'crazy ones' and 'misfits' railing against the powers that be, AKA, Big Brother. Cutting across the grain, and zigging when everyone else was zagging providing technology nobody thought they needed.
That was Apple. That was then, this is now.
In one more ironic twist, consider the speech in the background of the above commercial:
"Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives.
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.
We shall prevail!"
Oh how the turntables have turned.
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