https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon for those curious about the lower part of the image.
I recently switched jobs from a company with a “soft” hybrid work requirement to a fully-remote position with a company that doesn’t enforce any office attendance policy. As a neurodivergent introvert, remote work is a comfortable thing for me, and I’ve got a good setup for it.
I took a trip across the state to be in-office for a couple days of meetings recently, and I was honestly kinda surprised to find that the lack of an office attendance policy had kinda killed the company culture. Even on peak attendance days, the office is maybe 1/4 full, silent as a tomb, and basically without value for collaborative work because the people you need to talk to probably aren’t there. I went home from my trip feeling quite a bit worse about my new job, which was kinda the opposite of what was intended.
I didn’t like being in-office at my old job, exactly, but I did really like my team, and enjoyed the conversations and banter we had. I’m fortunate to be working for a good employer that doesn’t see the need to enforce an in-person work policy, but it’s a little sad to realize that not having that policy means that the office as a place to work together with people is functionally dead.
Honestly why else keep wages low and people occupied with busy work? It’s a social control structure. We’re not improving anything substantial.
You think corporations keep people on doing busywork just for social control? They can and will fire every single one of them the second that job is automatable. They want control over their workers, but they’d rather pay for a robot to do it instead if they can. Robots don’t cost them payroll tax.
Or that’s their excuse while they’re simply making life difficult for their opposition.
I started a new job at this manufacturing plant. New supervisor is threatening everyone at the morning meeting that if you look at your phone for ANY reason he will write you up. See him walk by on his phone smiling not 10 minutes later. 🙄 The little shit walks around like a damn prison guard trying to catch people like they’re in highschool cheating on a test. Then if you’re idle for more than a minute he’ll try to find some bullshit for you to do. He also micromanages things to the point that it hurts production because he has no idea what he’s talking about he just wants people to look like they’re busy.
The engineers that designed the production line are a bunch of dickheads too. They didn’t put enough of a buffer zone between areas and the later part of the line runs slower than the first half. Their solution is to make the workers take widgets off the line by hand and then put them on again if the backend goes down.
