workaday Wednesday
Aug. 13th, 2025 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marcicatBack when the company first announced (with great fanfare) that we'd all be getting called back to the office two days a week (starting September, so we've had plenty of time to be stressed out prepare), they boldly stated that the two days would be for prioritizing face to face collaboration. In other words, they wanted people to have all their meetings on the in-office days, and then do their solo work the rest of the week.
Even the most cursory understanding of 'how office buildings work' or 'how meetings work' would pretty immediately reveal some issues with this plan. And we've heard absolutely nothing about it since the initial announcement.
So, in my often-ill-advised willingness to poke the bear, I asked my boss about it yesterday. 'Hey, should we be planning to move our meetings around so they land more on the in-office days each week?'
Answer: no
Explanation: there's not enough meeting rooms (not surprising), and everyone's been placed in one big cavernous room with no walls between them so there are already a lot of complaints about noise (definitely not surprising), and also some employees are still going to be full-time remote (if they live outside the radius) so it's not like everyone's going to be face to face anyway, so why bother?
I think the only thing that surprises me about any of this is that after 11 years with this company, there was still part of me that expected better from them.
(And yet, foolish optimism is still optimism. I can't be too upset about still having a little seedling of that tucked away.)
Even the most cursory understanding of 'how office buildings work' or 'how meetings work' would pretty immediately reveal some issues with this plan. And we've heard absolutely nothing about it since the initial announcement.
So, in my often-ill-advised willingness to poke the bear, I asked my boss about it yesterday. 'Hey, should we be planning to move our meetings around so they land more on the in-office days each week?'
Answer: no
Explanation: there's not enough meeting rooms (not surprising), and everyone's been placed in one big cavernous room with no walls between them so there are already a lot of complaints about noise (definitely not surprising), and also some employees are still going to be full-time remote (if they live outside the radius) so it's not like everyone's going to be face to face anyway, so why bother?
I think the only thing that surprises me about any of this is that after 11 years with this company, there was still part of me that expected better from them.
(And yet, foolish optimism is still optimism. I can't be too upset about still having a little seedling of that tucked away.)
