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Comment by timewasted | Hacker News Reader

I'm in a similar situation, except with a worse reason for requiring everyone to come back to the office. We were told that the optics of us not coming back to the office as the city is reopening could destroy the company. I can assure you that NO ONE is going to say "well I was going to spend money with these people but they're not in the office, so I'll go elsewhere".

Further, we are being given less than 24 hours notice to come back into the office. It's just absurd, and it has eroded any trust that I once had in the company.

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Name it, shame it. Not necessarily here but make sure places like Glassdoor know.

Nothing like a good public shaming to change a company's direction

What if enough employees simply refused?

I would really love to find out the answer to this question, but I don't think I'll be able to.

This is honestly why I love working at smaller companies in addition to feeling like you actually make a difference as an individual, but that's another comment..

I just said no, not comfortable with that. That was the end of it. The in-office was replaced with a call (that was later replaced with a chat on Slack as it turned out)

> We were told that the optics of us not coming back to the office as the city is reopening could destroy the company.

Wherein "optics" means the millions that the top shareholders and decision makers may or may not make in the future. That's what's at stake, and that's why your families need to be put at risk.

their profits oh no

It's how the world works.

Now, it probably isn't as correlated to butts-in-seats as mid-management would like to pretend it is, and maybe those people don't deserve bonuses for being bad mid-managers, but after the US just blew $2T+ on speculative bailouts, I do think that the goose is required to lay a few golden eggs.

Much like 8-hour workdays, weekends, or parental leave, I'm excited for us to discuss reforming parts of how the world works to make things better for everyone.

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