Corporate Fuckery

We’ve all been there, the helpless cog in the giant machine of today’s working world. Whether in a retail, restaurant, or office environment, all my working worlds have held their similarities. We all have our horror stories, our tragedies, our lamentations, our shared work traumas. Today I’ll share my most recent encounter with the misguided ideals of corporate America. Buckle up, my friend. This one may take us down some random tangents while trying to provide adequate back story and capture my many thoughts on the topic.

I started working in the corporate world in 2008 when I finally found my first job with the college degree I am still paying off today. I believed the outdated ideals of my father about finding a good company to grow old with throughout my career, a world where the hard work one puts into the job yields comparable results and rewards. While that’s not been the reality of my working experience, it’s always been a hope in the back of my mind, that one day I could find the job to see me into retirement.

The reality is more like playing hopscotch, jumping from one job to the next as better opportunities and salaries presented themselves over the years. One job led to another, an endless cycle, always searching for a place to call home. I longed for a position where I could better balance work with the rest of my life, and the COVID pandemic brought my first glimpse of the working world I wanted: a fully remote position where I could work from the comfort of my own home.

While I worked from home throughout the pandemic like so many others, I didn’t accept my first fully remote position until 2022, leaving one hybrid corporate jungle for another, slightly more familiar forest. I thought I’d found my dream job: perfect for my skill set, engaging enough to keep me interested each day, and the main office just so happened to be in my city. Flexible schedule based on the Eastern time zone, growth opportunities, friendly coworkers; I almost wanted to work in the office. Except I had my own reasons for accepting a fully remote role.

First and foremost, it is much easier to manage my own mental health from the comfort of my home. No noisy colleagues, no anxiety-inducing commute, no walks to the bathroom only to find all the stalls full. No random visits from kitties to brighten my day. There are so many advantages to working from home, including the ability to have a private cry if my depression or anxiety is triggered. Second and just as important, my youngest daughter also struggles with her mental health and I need to be home to support her. When I say struggle I mean multiple suicide attempts and running away for weeks at a time. (As of the time of this post, she’s currently on day 29 of another escapade away from home, which I’m sure I’ll write about more in another post.)

Needless to say, it’s been a rough few years on the family front, but I’d finally found the perfect job. In the midst of all my personal challenges, I found my unicorn: a fully remote job primarily supporting teams on the east coast, perfect for my early bird tendencies. I worked mostly from home throughout 2023, occasionally coming into the office more to get to know people than to work on projects requiring a presence in the office. I started to worry when they published the revised hybrid policy that year, but my manager assured me I got hired for a remote position so I could continue making an appearance in the office when possible.

All that changed into mandatory Wednesdays in the office at the start of 2024. Somehow my residence in the same greater metropolitan area gave them the right to force me into the office when they hired me for a remote position. I tried to make the best of the situation, putting on my forced smile after getting up two hours earlier than usual to get ready and drive 30-40 minutes into the office. I really did love what I did though. I loved my boss, I loved my teams, I loved so many aspects of my job. I just hated going into the office, even for only one day a week.

The worst part of going into the office is that more often than not, I spent the day in meetings with people physically in other locations. Even on my Wednesdays without any virtual meetings scheduled, I rarely saw a person other than my boss during my hours in the office and I certainly wasn’t doing any collaboration outside my team. What’s the point of making people come into the office on a particular day if they rarely interact with other people in the building? That is beyond an awkward smile as I end up washing my hands next to someone I don’t know in the bathroom.

When I asked HR what they could do to support me, they couldn’t do anything to help except refer me to third parties, things like the employee assistance program for help setting up counseling sessions or the leave management company if I needed time off work or official ADA accommodations. My HR business partner listened kindly as I explained my circumstances, but ultimately did nothing to help the situation. HR supported leadership’s decision that I needed to work in the office every Wednesday.

I struggled with the weekly in-office day throughout 2024, doing my best to put on a happy face but dying a little inside each day I had to come into the office. I was not overtly vocal but I wasn’t silent about my dissatisfaction either, taking opportunities to comment upon how convenient it would be if we had a solution to issues like my boss and I trying to share an office and hold training sessions at the same time on Wednesdays, a solution like me working from another location instead of my boss scrambling to find a guest office whenever I had to work from the office.

While I thought there was an end in sight, that got ripped away from me too. Most employees at the company can come in once a quarter after two years of employment, a definite perk coming in four times a year instead of fifty-two. They waited until I hit my two year mark to tell me that as part of leadership they expected me to come in every Wednesday, despite the official policy stating otherwise. To say I got angry is a massive understatement.

Because I did not meekly submit to their mistreatment, they decided to penalize me further by forcing me into the office three days a week instead of just one, effectively forcing me to make a choice between my job and my mental health. They told me at the end of October, completely out of the blue. While the meeting started with appreciation for all the hard work I’ve done for the company over the years, their expectation was non-negotiable. I even had to ask for a two-week notice before changing my life around, something a decent company with integrity would have offered without question. But that kind of company would not be forcing an employee they hired for a remote position to physically come into the office.

It’s hard to admit, but I had a mini mental breakdown. How can they really expect someone who accepted a remote position to be ok with coming into the office for any number of days? Why am I not good enough to work from home like so many others in the company? It isn’t like everyone in the company has to come into the office, just the select few deemed to be part of leadership roles that require a physical presence in the office. And even that’s a hypocrisy since most of the senior leaders do not work from a physical office outside their home.

I hate the corporate fuckery leading management to make decisions without considering the impact. The people making these decisions also denied my relocation request, made in an effort to break my daughter’s suicide/runaway cycle by moving her to a new environment closer to family. They don’t care about their employees as human beings with their own complex needs and desires. All they care about is bodies in the office. I fucking hate it.

I’m not the only person negatively impacted by the policy change either. I keep hearing about other friends whose companies are pushing return to office mandates or rolling back hybrid policies, forcing people to make the hard choice between their job and their reasons for working remotely. Whether it’s being available for family members or to fit gym time into their day easier, it doesn’t really matter why people want to work from home. People want to work from home. Let’s say that louder for the people in the back. PEOPLE WANT TO WORK FROM HOME.

Let’s stop treating grown adults like children that need to be monitored every moment to ensure they’re on task. To be perfectly honest, I am WAY less productive in the office than I am at home, as can be seen by the amount of work completed in the two environments. Even without the distraction of noisy office spaces, I am mentally in a much darker place when I’m forced to work outside my home simply because of the extra work involved.

What happened to companies begging people to work from home to keep the world running at a distance thanks to COVID? Did everyone just forget about that? How we were forced to work from home when we couldn’t physically interact, turning our homes into offices so the world didn’t shut down? No one worried about productivity metrics then. They just wanted bodies working no matter where they were located. Now all they want are bodies in the office, no matter how much work they get done.

Only five years later and already the corporate fuckery begins again.