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There is a growing consensus amongst people whose work is entirely performative that workers should start to return to the office.
“The problem with working at home is that it makes it much harder for me to stand near the boss’s desk and have a loud conversation about how I stayed in the office until eight the previous night pulling together a PowerPoint presentation,” said Simon Williams, who’s a consultant or manager or some such bullshit.
“I mean, it’s a PowerPoint presentation. It serves no real purpose, no one’s going to notice or care if there is or isn’t a PowerPoint presentation, the only way I can demonstrate that my job has any value is by the boss knowing I’ve done a PowerPoint presentation – and that I stayed late to do it.
“I tried calling him on Zoom to casually mention it, but he didn’t know who I was.”
A project manager who is probably called something like Preston agreed.
He explained,c “Sometimes I need to pull in a tech guy to collaborate on a system design, and it’s so much easier to just drop by their desk. When I try to call them on Teams they just ignore me.”
On the other hand, people whose job is to do actual work would prefer to continue with a largely home-based arrangement.
“Oh god, yes,” said Eleanor Gay, a computer programmer who is, as ever, working to a tight deadline.
“It may be a little lonely, but at least I’m not losing three hours a day commuting just to be constantly interrupted by these braying dickheads shouting about PowerPoint presentations and asking me to fix their childlike system ‘designs’.”
