Boy do I have a lot to say about this. I have been an engineer who has worked for 40 years at designing sophisticated electronic systems for aircraft in an office environment (with a good lab). Our office of mostly engineers and support staff produced many great products. Our arguments and discussions at the office were more productive in one day than a month of remote on line meetings. the networking that took place is not possible in a remote environment. During Covid I went into the office the whole time through 2021 and LOVED it (I decided about 3 weeks in that we had been lied to and this was all BS).
We were a small remote office and corporate shut us down and told us all to work remote. Some of what they did was favorable to the employee and some was horrible. Anyway I have been “working” remote for almost 2 years.
In the meantime , just prior to covid, our company (and I think other large companies) were turning the office environment from reasonable comfortable for engineers into a horrific setup where engineers are given 5 feet of desk and they are now lined up elbow to elbow. So now going back to the office is not like going back to what we had before covid, but into a rather degrading workspace environment compared to what was experienced for the last 40 years.
I am a subject matter expert and collect my paycheck. I work and travel (which I like to do) as required but no longer feel any personal investment in my company. I do not really care what happens. They have poisoned the office space and have destroyed the culture. The brain drain across several of our cooperating divisions is so severe that I doubt we will ever be able to design the innovative products that we have designed for the last 40 years.
I give my company a C- for how they handeld covid, but corporate culture is now so poisoned due to political correctness and making 100K+ employees work elbow to elbow that I am not sure there is a path forward.
And about micro-aggressions.I think that I lived in a culture where micro-aggressions occurred hourly because all that mattered was the excellence of what we did and not peoples feelings. Over time , everything got sorted out as to who did what thing best and when you could lead and when you could follow. Lots of very informal, but powerful structures were set up. This culture is all gone and I doubt that in 20 years we will be able to do much at all that requires 20 people working on a complicated engineering project
Bingo. Went started the same thing in 2018 and it was expanding just as everyone went remote for COVID-1984. It was ridiculous.
Protect sensitive information on the computers screens? No, that's not happening and don't tell me about the "privacy filters". They don't offer any privacy from someone behind you or who is sitting right next to you. Sitting near a main aisle? Well, now everyone gets to see it.
Protect sensitive information that's being discussed? No, that's not happening when eight people around you can hear every word of the conversation. People waiting in the aisle to get into a conference room can all hear it to.
You're bombarded with every phone and in-person conversation around you to the point you can't hear the person you're on the phone with and they can't make out what you're saying.
You can't move your chair without bumping the person behind you. You can't fit papers on your desk without them getting in the way of the mouse and keyboard> Use the computer or go through papers; you can't do both.
The conference rooms were booked for the entire day because quick meetings that could have occurred at people's desks now had to be done in a conference room.
Nearby coworkers would have to leave their desks if tech support had to work on one of the PCs since everyone couldn't fit. An entire group of people would have move if the technicians had to replace a PC or monitor.
Going to the bathroom could be an excursion. You'd regularly have to visit other floors to find one without a line.
People in these jammed desks were getting sick more frequently. You could watch an illness infect workers one by one in a matter of days. The illness regularly came in with one of the staff who had kids in daycare. We had hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray everywhere to little avail.
The corporate hacks were going forward with this despite studies that were already out that showed the crammed desks lowered productivity. We had quite a few folks leave before remote work due to COVID-1984. The remote work may have been the only thing that saved the company.