For now, they are asking nicely. Except for Elon Musk. Across the West, and even in India, top management is requesting employees to return to the physical office at least three days a week. They say, the era of ‘remote work’ is over. In asking employees to go back, the boss is also explaining to them the concept of the office, mainly the good bits. Apple’s Tim Cook wanted employees to return to work at least three days a week to restore “personal collaboration.” Even US President Joe Biden requested federal employees to return to their workplaces. In the past few weeks, in a respectful tone, Indian tech companies advised employees to return. Elon Musk was not so good about it. In June, he issued a memo stating that remote working was no longer acceptable. “Anyone who wants to work remotely must be in the office at least (and I mean minimum) 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. That’s less than our factory workers.” He also tweeted that those who think “come to work is an old concept… should pretend to work elsewhere.”
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Yet today there is a widespread belief that the office is obsolete. This is not only the hope of many young executives, but also the fear of experienced owners.
But I believe the office will survive. It is also possible that the office will last for many years.
Bosses love offices. From there, affection for the position progressively decreases in the hierarchy. But, historically, bosses win, especially when they have a fair point. At the most they have to throw money at the rebellion. Usually, freedom seekers do not get freedom; Instead they make slavery more attractive.
Why does the boss like the office so much? In this case, there are things they can say in public and things they cannot say. Their respected reasons are known. For example, the ethical idea of ’productivity’. They like the office because physical human meetings are hi-res and most efficient. In addition, people who spend hours in an office tend to form stronger bonds with their colleagues. Everyone who has been to work knows this to be true, even in Indian offices where people waste a lot of time drinking tea and talking. But, even the bosses who want to say but can’t say that most of the people don’t like their job, they do it only because they have become addicted to monthly salary and if they are in home environment they are very will not be productive. There is something else the boss is not saying.
Owners love the office because it reaffirms the fact that they are the boss. What is a king if he can’t see his kingdom? Free from oppressors, bosses really enjoy working in offices, and remote workers are an inconvenience that doesn’t improve the boss-hood lives of the bosses in any way. So, the owners have good reasons to save the office.
Furthermore, the popularity of remote work may be exaggerated by journalists and the kind of creative techies drawn to the idea of freedom. It is possible that many people choose to go to an office every day for various reasons that have nothing to do with work. For example, in Mumbai, people have so many awesome little houses that they would choose to work against many odds, a phenomenon that has often been misunderstood by some intellectuals as “the soul of Mumbai”. Spouses, parents, in-laws and children. And, people enjoy meeting their co-workers and even pleasing their bosses.
Most people can’t handle loneliness for days on end, and remote working is exactly that. This is what writers and other types of artists endure because there is no other efficient way to create, and even they cannot afford it. Some writers have tried to free themselves from the loneliness of writing by coming up with schemes such as ‘writing lunches’, during which they claim to have lunch with friends and still write. It’s not writing, it’s having lunch. But the thing is, it becomes difficult even for artists to work for days without meeting other people; Like people who are less tired of lovers and family, or just coworkers.
The obsolescence of the office from a purely technical point of view is not new. Over the past two decades, the reasons people are physically present in an office every working day have lost their rigidity. The idea of remote work in itself is not new. The office is, in fact, a triumph of the post-obsolescence. Like representative democracy, which emerged from an ancient time when people in an area had to elect a human to represent them and were heard in the capital. Today, we no longer need human representation; Our voice can take you anywhere in the world. But obsolete things survive because modernity is just the name of one era, and people live in different eras.
Since the rise of the Internet, the death of the office has been enforced every now and then. Nearly 16 years ago, thousands of people were stranded on roads and vehicles for hours following heavy rains in Mumbai, sparking murmurs across the city over the antiquity of the office. It seemed that some companies had already taken the idea seriously. An IBM India spokesperson told me that hundreds of their executives were encouraged to work from home, and were given financial incentives to do so. But even so, the owners thought remote working was a euphemism for lethargy. Still, some wanted freedom from the workplace and others said they liked going to the office. Since that time, the office not only survived, but also thrived.
Manu Joseph is a journalist, novelist and producer of the Netflix series ‘Decauld’.
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