The return-to-office Catch 22

If you haven’t read Joseph Heller’s masterpiece, Catch-22, I highly recommend you do. The Catch-22 in the novel is this: “A combat pilot was crazy by definition (he would have to be crazy to fly combat missions) and since army regulations stipulated that insanity was justification for grounding, a pilot could avoid flight duty by simply asking, but if he asked, he was demonstrating his sanity (anyone who wanted to get out of combat must be sane) and had to keep flying.” 

In modern business, it goes like this: Companies or government agencies insist workers return to the office, but since they have no offices to return to, they must work from home. But since working from home is forbidden, they have to return to the office. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Stupid, right? Yes, but that doesn’t stop increasingly obtuse managers from being obsessed with forcing workers to work in an office even when there’s no power, internet access, or sometimes even space, for them to do so. 

I’m not making this up. 

Millions of federal workers have been ordered to return to offices across the US, only for many of them to find that those workplaces aren’t ready. Issues have included a lack of desks, Wi-Fi, electricity, and hazardous conditions such as exposed wires and malfunctioning lighting. And, then, of course, there are the plugged sinks and dirty bathrooms — because no one hired janitors to clean up newly opened government offices. (As far as we know, employees haven’t had to bring in their own toilet paper… yet.)

This change came about because US President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order soon after re-taking office demanding the government “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.” 

Why? It’s so he can “drain the swamp” and  “usher a Golden Age for America by reforming and improving the government bureaucracy to work for the American people.” Trump’s orders further suggested remote work was a hindrance to effective management and oversight, with the belief that in-person work would improve supervision and control over employees.

I’ve said before that the real motivation for many of these efforts to get people back into cubicles is incompetent micromanagers demanding literal oversight of workers. Trump and company are perfect examples. 

Trump, for example, pulled a number out of a hat by lying that “only 6% of employees currently work in person.” Even the lick-spittle, Republican-dominated House of Representatives Oversight Committee was closer to reality: it had just reported five days before that “43% of the workforce were still teleworking as of September 2023.”

Of course, since then Trump’s regime has announced, via Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), that it would terminate the leases of a quarter of the government’s real estate. That’s in addition to the “non-core” government buildings the government might sell off, including federal courthouses, the headquarters of the Justice Department in Washington DC and the American Red Cross.

So, where will the remaining workers work? Good question. Like so many things DOGE is doing, there are no real answers. There are just unfounded, unproven claims that it will save money. In the meantime, government employee morale continues to circle the drain. 

Some businesses, though, are also forcing employees back to non-existent offices, and they do want productive workers. Take Amazon, for example, which has been trying to shove employees back into the office five days a week for months. There’s one little fly in the soup: Amazon doesn’t have enough office space for them. Oops.

The company has had to delay its return-to-office mandate for some locations, meaning employees in cities like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, New York, and Phoenix might not return until as late as May 2025. (I’ll be surprised if they can all fit in by then.)

This lack of operational planning has gotten so bad that Amazon is overpaying for additional office space, with such deals as leasing serious square footage via WeWork in Manhattan to accommodate employees.

AT&T is running into similar problems with its phased return to a five-day-a-week plan. According to a Business Insider report, some employees have been told they’ll only have 70% to 80% of the workstations they need. Boy, I’m sure that the crew will be able to work better now that they’re back in the office!

Before AT&T implemented its back-to-the-workplace demands, CEO John Stankey said in May 2023 that if employees “want to be a part of building a great culture and environment, they’ll come along on these adjustments.” If this is a great culture, I’d hate to think what he believes is a lousy one.

If you’ve been reading my stories for any time, you know I’m a big believer in working from home. But, come on, people, if you feel that everyone working in the office is the right way, don’t you think you should do a better job of at least providing the spaces and resources your people need to be successful? 

I mean, this is management 101. It’s also that rarest of qualities: common sense.