Even before the emergence of the pandemic, it wasn’t uncommon to hear that many employees not only preferred to work from home, but were more productive while doing so.
And once that became a widespread strategy to blunt the spread of COVID-19, we’re seeing that more workers feel even stronger about this than before. Indeed, it seems that over a third of them would sooner quit than go back to the office.
But while so many businesses have shown they can operate just as effectively with remote work as they could the old-fashioned way, it’s still a framework that some owners and managers are resisting .
But of course, most of them know which way the wind is blowing and realize that if they want to attract employees, they’ll probably have to say they’ll let them work from home.
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However, one former employee’s story does a lot to illustrate that knowing they have to say that is a whole different ball game from actually being willing to do it.
When the person we’re about to hear from applied for their job, they were given the explicit understanding that they could work from home regularly and would only have to come in “as needed.”
But as they explained in a Reddit post , it turned out that “as needed” meant they would be expected to come into the office from 9am-5pm Monday through Friday.
So it seems their management had an interesting definition of “regularly” working from home.
Although the worker mentioned this disparity on multiple occasions and managed to negotiate a deal that let them work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they described this as being like pulling teeth.
So when they needed to work remotely for one morning outside of that schedule, they chose that moment to put their foot down.
Although the manager they spoke to was also working from home that day, this person started asking the employee why they were doing the same.
And when the employee reminded the manager they would only have to be in the office “as needed,” the manager simply countered with the baited-and-switched expectations.
As we can see, this led to an argument that saw the employee call out the manager and the company’s HR department for the false sense of security their job description provided.
The manager ignored this and just told the employee to go to the office, at which point they made good on their threat and quit.
Strangely, the manager said they needed to provide two weeks notice before doing that (as if it’s the law and not just a common courtesy) and said they should discuss issues with them before making a rash decision.
And in response, the worker laid down a final kiss-off that so many others wish they could tell their bosses:
I’ll drop off my keys and ID at my desk today.
Ah, that’s the stuff.
h/t: Reddit | meghanerd
