Working From Home vs Office

[Master Raiden]

Something that happened

I have a 9-5 office job and today, I had a meeting with my manager and the head of HR (scary, I know!)
The meeting was called because my team was asked by the CEO to work in the office 4 days a week (up from 1-2 days) and I was only in the office 3 days a week. Doesn't seem like a big deal. All I had to do was explain why and I could get back to work!

But I couldn't have been more mistaken.

After giving my reasons and briefly mentioning how I didn't agree with being forced to work in the office that often, the HR person went on the offensive! They labeled my disagreement as having a "bad attitude" and began lecturing me about how I shouldn't have such a bad attitude at my relatively young age. Then came the scolding. They told me it was a "serious offence" to disobey a directive from the CEO and that I could potentially get fired for my heinous crime. At one point, they asked me if I even wanted to work there, and that if I was unhappy with the arrangement, I should find another employer who suits me better.
Brilliant. I have heard something similar on Hotel Hell before, and this clip is how I would have loved to respond.



What an over-the-top reaction to what is basically a non-issue. All I did was work an extra day from home and they are acting like I lost the company millions of dollars. They even noted it down on my employee record. One strike down, two or three more and I will get fired for the crime of doing my work at a different location.

This got me pretty upset because I had genuine reasons to do what I did, but I didn't bother telling them because it seems like any more disagreements would make them even angrier. When I'm just a regular employee facing off against the head of HR who has decades of experience at making people follow orders, they can shut me down with their superior authority and power, so I'm quite helpless.
And that's precisely the reason why I am writing this, because I feel like I'm walking on eggshells at work now and I would probably get into a lot of trouble if I said the things I'm saying here.


Working from Home vs Office

Now the working from home vs working in the office debate is nothing new. People have been talking about it ever since Covid, and I'm surprised at how many people are still on the "working in the office" side. Honestly, I thought my current employer, who has been pretty pleasant to work for up until now, would be a bit smarter about this.

Call me crazy, but results are far more important than where I sit when I deliver them.
And that is because:
1. The area of the company I work in solely exists to make money
2. I was hired to make money
3. My KPIs measure how much money I make for the company

So the fact that they are taking working from home so seriously makes no sense.

What do you think? Would you fire an outstanding employee because they did their work from home?
Is office attendance more important than bringing value to the company?

My takeaways from this

• The power dynamic is strong. People above you in the corporate ladder can boss you around and you can't do anything about it.
  
• Blind obedience is mandatory, even if it is not reasonable or beneficial.
  Disagreements = Bad Attitude.
  
• Office attendance first, productivity and results second.
  Note that I have voluntarily worked weekends/nights to get urgent work done (sometimes without compensation) and have exceeded my KPIs every year, yet here they are spitting in my face like they don't value any of that.
  
• The meeting took 30 minutes and achieved little. Will there be another meeting to address this blatant waste of time?
  
• Gordon Ramsay thinks my head of HR is disrespectful and disgusting.
  

This is a massive shame, but it's better to find out now than never.
Also, sorry for the negativity. I just needed to rant