Permanently Deleted
On this site I’ve seen people mention the sunk cost of all of these huge office spaces on long term leases. If the workers aren’t herded back into the cubicle farms then there is biiiig mistake that someone has to take credit for. And that person would be the highest executives who would have the authority to throw around 10s of millions on a lease.
Bullshit jobs talks at length about how capitalists enjoy having their legions of workers. Graeber likens it to feudal courts where nobles measured their worth and status by how many useless sods they could patronize. Any manager who personally identifies as a manager more than a worker, middle management being the grey area that it is, enjoys exercising their authority. Not being able to do it in person really takes the kick out of the stuff. Getting the workers back into their little castles gets their dicks hard.
There are a lot of industries where the direct communication aspect of being in person is super helpful. In an industry like video games where every little thing effects everyone’s work being in person is legitimately helpful. This late in the pandemic though most industries should have been able to transition by now.
I feel like you’d have an easier time turning pool cues from the break room you’re not allowed to use in to spears and forming an armed rabble if you were working in the office, though.
Biggest downside: the playbook for unionization is based on physical workplaces. Organizing a paperless WFH shop is still in experimental stages
My favourite thing about this site is, you come into the comment sections to make a point, and someone’s already made it for you.
Most of middle management is bullshit. We know it, the managers know it, and even the owners know it. The owners would love to remove the bullshit managers to cut costs, but they only have limited knowledge of which people and branches of their companies are bullshit, because figuring that out would be actual work, and owners don’t work.
Meanwhile, middle management is compensated based on how important they sound. How many layers of management there are under them, how many employees total, how big their budgets are. The manager with more under them than their peers gets promoted. So management is largely trying to maximize costs at all times.
But the owners know that middle management is bullshit, so some guy who’s obviously just maximizing costs will get fired. Every cost needs a justification related to profit, because that’s all the owners care about. And profit comes from exploiting maximizing the productivity of the workers, of course.
So renting office buildings is good for managers, because it makes their budgets bigger, but they need to justify the expense to the owners, so they need to claim that bringing you into the office is a vital part of how they exploit your labor your productivity.
Middle managers are scared shitless that people are gonna figure out they’re useless if they don’t have a bunch of in person meetings all the time.
God, I really want to read David Graeber’s takes on all of these :deeper-sadness:
I think an underrated part of this conversation is the amount of employee surveillance management is usually privy to. Map out your workplace. Identify the areas where employees congregate and then identify where the cameras are. I guarantee most of the cameras have a social area in view. And if you’re on company internet, they can see every site you access, at least the domain name, time, and packet size.
Some of these ghouls’ worst fears are that their employees are disrespecting them. And their idea of respect is very much tied up in a culture that no longer exists if there’s no physical office. My CEO can barely contain his contempt and rage when talking about WFH and regularly says shit like, “if we can’t follow this simple rule we’ll be making some changes. If I had my way we’d all be back in the office by now”. He knows a ton of us will walk immediately. We have him by the balls. Almost have our list of demands formalized too
Management:
Every second you’re “on the clock” I own every thing you do. If you aren’t constantly working at “approved” tasks, you are “stealing” from me/the company. I can’t make you do bullshit busywork tasks if I can’t see you. I, as a manager, can’t do my job of maximizing productivity if I can’t see you.
I know it’s obvious that this is objectively not true, but it’s worth stating why. If you are getting lunch, but are expected to answer calls and messages without waiting until your lunch is done, that’s a working lunch. If you’re hourly, you are entitled to be paid for that time. If you are salaried and doing time tracking anyway, that time should be logged as billable. Instead of “lunch”, I mark my time as “on call”.
Workers are paid for their time. If they don’t fulfill their duties, the employer can terminate their contract, but bosses absolutely do not have the right to make you do whatever they want.
Of course, this is all legal protections, which means the best case scenario is that you take your employer to court for violations, they lose after several years of proceedings, and then they have to maybe pay a fine and put up a sign that says, “we promise not to do this again” for 6 months.
Solidarity unions work, but if you can spout some legalese in the meantime to get your boss to back off it can be worth it (assuming you’re not blowing a unionization attempt in doing so)
Workers are paid for their time. If they don’t fulfill their duties, the employer can terminate their contract, but bosses absolutely do not have the right to make you do whatever they want.
The hamfisted point I was trying to make in a snark-tastic way is that a manager/supervisors job, the reason they are supposed to get paid more than their underlings, is because they need to “manage” their people. If you’re at home, with the ability to get all your daily tasks done on time and to standard without supervision, how does your boss justify to their boss their next raise or continued employment?
So I have absolutely no data to back this up, this is just a gut feeling:
Real estate has to be a factor right? Like if work from home becomes the new normal And suddenly the demand for office space shrinks so dramatically overnight like this…there’s got to be some people getting nervous about that concept.
At least in some cities, commercial real estate taxes are propping up the budget. I’m sure this has nothing to do with aggressive “returns to normal” facilitated by our faithful politicians. Additionally as revenues go down it’s just an excuse to cut schools and continue funding cops, so the fight never ends.
