the big flex

Oh, my god it’s happened. It’s happening. I have to go back to the office on September 7.

As the great-great-great-great grandniece of Karl Marx, it is only appropriate that I put my spy workplace comedy novel, the outline of my “Princess Diaries” meets “Kick-Ass” YA novel and the 1,235 projects currently assigned to me on my company’s Basecamp on hold to write a pinnacle piece absolutely blasting corporate America into smithereens and shitting on the capitalist system as a whole.

This is not that.

I do not have time to manifesto right now because, like I said, I have 1,235 things to do to make sure I get paid and I’m busy later because my Sims are *so* close to being promoted and I haven’t watched the first episode of “Loki” yet don’t talk to me.

This is instead too many words from a whiny Millennial brat who’s feeling fully duped because for 16-ish months she was told that the office (lowercase) as we knew it was DEAD and that, absolutely, yes, there would be a “flexible” “work” “environment” in the future.

Well, the future is now and I know it’s been two millennia or something since the Executive Boomers were in school, but here’s a refresher on what “flexible” means (from Merriam-Webster because I’m a receipts bitch):

1. capable of being flexed

This one is pretty self-explanatory.

2. yielding to influence 

COUGHCOUGH kind of like when your employees tell you over the course of 13 anonymous surveys that they love working from home and if they had the choice they would work from home even if it meant never having a Guacamole Day guac off again because they’d really rather be home.

3. characterized by a ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements

Oh, so, like … when things changed dramatically and you and your entire workforce were required to work remotely for a year and a half because you had to adapt to a new, different global pandemic and you kept saying we had to be flexible but when we proved how capable we were of adapting and it was your turn to be flexible you just gave us a new seating chart.

Extreme Jim Halpert face.

But, like, I’m not crazy, right? Our managers, their managers, their boss’ bosses and many New Yorker essays have been telling us for months that a shift was coming, and that we’d be more chillaxed post-COVID. Because, you know, they understood that this was causing everyone extreme mental and emotional stress, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, take care of yourself, here’s a webinar but wait no you can’t miss that meeting to watch it, also we will be flexible when you want to come back and then …

BOOM. Like four people get their second dose of Pfizer and it’s “come back in July” this and “we want you to feel safe but also we want everyone back in the office this fall even though the airborne disease might not be GONE” that.

What?

Whattttt.

A con! It’s a con. And listen, the Millennial workforce is obsessed with this fakery shit, we created “Catfish,” we love true crime, we know a PUNK’D when we see one. We have watched “The Big Short” because Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling were in it and we know we’ve been conned.

(Editor’s note: I haven’t actually SEEN “The Big Short” but I am hoping this reference works on some level? Whatever.)

And, the thing is, Elders of the exec panel … I get it. I totally do. After all, if I was born a few decades earlier… okay, I would be Peggy Olson. But a few decades earlier than that, and I would be… I guess at home not even allowed to get a job. BUT OKAY if I was born decades ago and also a man who had worked his way up the corporate ladder and was suddenly told the office (lowercase) as we knew it was DEAD, then I, too, would be confused and a little bummed and ready to do some power trippin’ and force all the whiny Millennial brats back to their lumbar-crippling seats.

This whiny Millennial brat is an ISTJ, I thrive under rules and clear expectations and outlined goals and this pandemic blew all of that up re: corporate America. I get it. I do. And, I mean, I would be pissed, too. The rules of corporate America were clear and now they are not. So annoying! It’s kind of like when my last job gave me all these rules to follow so I could get promoted and then never promoted me like they said they would when I mastered the rules. So, YEAH. Like, what IS this remote working and why does it think it can come in here and CHANGE the way we THINK about human productivity I DON’T KNOW are the worker bees REBELLING OR WHAT. IT’S “THE HAPPENING.”

(Editor’s note: Or was that the trees, I only watched “The Happening” once as anyone ever should.)

And I understand that the mere prospect of allowing your worker bees to work from home, or from the beach in Florida, or from their favorite coffee shop — is daunting. It’s totally daunting, even though they just spent almost two years proving to you that they could do it, and do it well, and kept making money for your corporation and it didn’t matter where their butts were.

Everybody in the break room, it’s story time.

I used to work at a pretty hip place, by which I mean the epitome of old school corp trying to stay relevant — imagine Steve Buscemi’s “How do you do, fellow kids?” but in a pocket tee with a moose icon on it.

They preyed upon uh I mean hired many youths, who were bright-eyed and smart and possibly fooled into thinking that the caf food was free when in actuality it was going to put them in debt faster than their liberal arts education. But no matter how many youths they trapped, at its core, this place was run by the Old Guard.

Sure, they tried to hide behind “fireside” meetings and so? much? steel and wood? decor? and it was pretty if you liked woods and bugs and not being able to drive anywhere for lunch. Every so often a middle-aged girlboss or two would do the rounds to check in on us peasant folk and tell us good jobs as our lumbar support faded away. And also one time our rich WW leader said “We’re a 180-year-old company but we’re YOUNG. AS. FUCK” into a microphone while we all stared at her, mortified and sweating because it was 110 degrees but nothing short of a San Andreas earthquake could stop the firesides.

ANYWAY, this is all relevant because this is where I was working as we were all being fed The Big Flex (the lies (!!!)) about the “flexible” “work” “future” — and this place definitely jumped on the bandwagon of “yeah we’ll be soooooo flexible, fellow kids” when we all realized we were doing this For Real and For a Long Time and we were actually Getting Good at It.

They even made the mistake of saying something like, “A few roles on the marketing team could possibly become fully, permanently remote” to a virtual room of Millennials and Gen Z-ers who were perfecting the art of whipping through JIRA tickets while taking 10 to walk to get some cold brew to go and who had grown up figuring out how to both succeed in college and become Tumblr famous.

HA HA HA. HAHAHAHA. That was your biggest mistake, comrades. You told us you would be flexible and then you uttered the magical words “permanently remote.” You should have never done that. You should have stuck with the vaguest meaning of “flexible” (see above dictionary reference) and played up the fact that you haven’t been to school in a while so maybe you forgot. You should have leaned into “hybrid,” which does not say “flexible” but clearly tells you that working means at least two things: office and home. You should have leaned into the “pandemic is making planning generally tough at this point we’ll keep you updated” and we would have believed it.

Hell, at that point, we were still down to ignore the fact that a few Higher Ups were working fully remote from fully different states and company favorites were allowed to move to California or wherever, while the rest of us were going to be expected to drive into the middle of nowhere 30 mins outside Columbus, Ohio to do a job we’d proven we could do from our house while we binge-rewatched the first half of “The Office.”

But it wasn’t just my ex-employer. It was everywhere! Everywhere was saying this was a revolution, this was the future, soon we could all just roll out of bed and log into work with our hoodies and our fuck you flip-flops and BTW, I think it only took two weeks for most of Silicon Valley to GET IT while others kept paying rent on forests in New Albany.

I know the Boomers and the Execs are flabbergasted. How can people survive without bumping into each other in gross bathrooms or without wearing blazers ever or with shifting ideas of what productivity and work-life balance mean? They were like, we told them it would be two weeks and it was almost two years but they always knew they’d have to come back, right? WE HAVE TO GO BAAAACK.

But the thing about Millennials is …. we are adaptable. Give us a shitty economy? We will side hustle ourselves to death. Give us a terrible housing market? We will rent, and we will sing the song “Rent” from the musical “Rent” while we do it. Give us outdated, patriarchal views on society and gender and things? We will think piece you into oblivion. Give us uncharted territory into the hybrid office-home work environment? We will blur our boundaries like never before and check our emails at 10 p.m. and we will make your business money.

I think I’d be less annoyed about this push to go back to offices everywhere if, like, we hadn’t been successful doing this shit from home. And, sure, companies are never going to tell you the whole truth about their financial $ituation$. All we heard last year at my former employer was how well it was going, but in reality, we had temporarily closed all of our stores and they didn’t give us merit raises in 2020 and avoided the topic for like seven months. Then recently they pretty much dissolved my entire old team, backtracking to where they were six years ago, so, I don’t know, maybe not doing that well?

Extreme Jim Halpert face.

Anyway, if Teams meetings had been a disaster and the WiFi was anything like it was growing up in my podunk town or we were all idiots who had not grown up at least halfway on the internet, then I would be dying to get back into an open-plan office space.

And when you’re, like, 50 or something and all you’ve ever known is the office culture and not liking “The Office” as a personality, and it’s how you got where you are but now it means nothing and you have the power to make it continue to mean something even if you look like a huge hypocrite, then … shoot! Go for it. You don’t have to worry about if you are feared or loved!

And, ugh, obviously, a fully remote business is difficult. It would require everyone to adapt even more, and possibly constantly, and the company would have to, I don’t know, invest in technology and stuff. I don’t know how they would pay for that, because ending the lease on an office no one wants to go back to wouldn’t pay for it. Maybe if they didn’t promote any good employees when they said they would? Just a thought.

And it would require companies to be, what’s that word? Flexible.

It’s a bold step for companies to make, and as someone who grew up coding layouts into her MySpace, I think it’s telling that the companies who have chosen to go fully remote are the ones that are already paving the way for the workplace future.

Because… my guys. My CEO guys. It’s not like, some big secret that happy employees don’t murder people, I mean, do their best work. And happy employees have real flexibility. The owners of Google and Twitter and Nationwide and [insert start up here] were quick to cut ties with the traditional office mentality, and — I am only assuming, but — they’re also probably still socializing with other humans just fine. They are actually probably still meeting up to do “The Office” trivia together, it’s fine.

So like, why are you so bent on ignoring what your employees are very loudly telling you would make them happy? Because you can’t get off mute? Because you’re worried that squirrels will take over “campus” if you don’t pay people to cut the grass and no one gives a shit about the grass if they’re not there to walk on it? Because you mad, bro???

Okay, intermission.

I am sure by now you think I want to work from home forever. And I would not be mad about that, but I would not be mad about this “flexible” “work” “environment” that was promised to us, if companies would just not half-ass their promise.

In a perfect promise-fulfilled world, flexible doesn’t mean mandatory office days. It doesn’t mean you have to live in a certain city to work at a certain place. It also doesn’t mean you have to bulldoze your office space so another arcade bar or whatever the fuck can go in. It means you should just be FLEXIBLEEEEE and give your employees the FLEXIBILITYYYYY to work how they WAAAANT.

My current company is better at understanding this. Though they still have a hard grip on the “flexibility” they are allowing us, and are shamelessly conservatively minded when it comes to office life. They are also not nearly as Millennial/Gen Z populated, so that checks out. But you know what? They were honest about why they chose the “hybrid” approach they did, and I respect that. I respect that a company tells their employees, “We are never going fully remote, because we weren’t intended to and also we don’t want to, but we know some of you like this ‘working from home’ thing, so we’re gonna try to be hybrid.”

The transparency! The clear expectation! The “if you don’t want even a little bit of office obligation, we’re letting you know now, don’t freaking work here then” vibes!

They gave us a four-month heads up about returning and the green light for two flex days a week, so all the Millennials who want to work at home can do so and all the moms who want to get away from their kids can still come in. They’re not the best days of the week, but I’ll take two midweek flex days to complement a limitless PTO plan and a boss who’s cool with me rolling out early on Fridays because no one is doing shit at 3 p.m. on Friday unless they have to and I will enjoy it.

Even though I was a little disappointed in their ultimate plan, the fact that they acknowledged their true intentions was … so refreshing after years and years at a place that so painfully wanted we Millennials to love them and secretly would never be as hip as their fellow kids.

And, yes, it was also not hard to see my current company’s ultimate plan coming after one slide dedicated to how some youngins and introverts liked the independence of working from home and then like eight consecutive slides about how everyone misses the in-person pizza parties and giving hugs or whatever.

But at least they didn’t see the results of 13 anonymous surveys and many weekly anonymous questions of “Why do we have to go back again?” and “Why is my co-worker allowed to work from another country but I am expected to move to Ohio in three months?” and “Why?” and go: “Well we’re still thinking that maybe one day possibly in the future where there is an apocalypse and no actual office jobs you could potentially work from home permanently.”

One last extreme Jim Halpert face.

YIKES. YIIIIKES. Just tell them that you are not actually young as fuck, you’re actually into the old mentality as fuck and you’d rather they just come to the office a few days a week and shut the hell up about it, damn, you already let them wear booty shorts to creative reviews and you have oat milk in the caf — WHAT MORE DO THEY WANT.

No no no, I would much rather work for a place that is honest about its WFH POV even if its not exactly the peak of Cool and Forward-Thinking and The Social Network. Their honesty about their WFH feelings as a corporation gives me the power as an employee to decide if I want to keep working there with the big-ass new monitor they sent me, a team I enjoy, a role where I’m making a difference online and IRL and happy hours in close proximity in every direction — or not.

The “hybrid” future waiting for me is going to be weird, but I am glad they are willing to try it. Have you ever been in a hybrid meeting? Oh my god, just shoot me. Have you ever been in a virtual on-boarding with a person you have never met and won’t meet in real life for like two months? GAH. Why are my cats never around when I am talking about how many I have, now I look like a psychopath?!

My personal ideal situation would be: flex days every day, with the expectation that you’re a good employee with a good relationship with your manager and good communication skills and can come to a good medium place where you decide when its appropriate to be in the office ie: big team meetings, meeting the big Higher Ups, a brainstorm sesh that would be just way less painful in person with whiteboards. But not every meeting, every day. You might go to the office three days in a row, you might not need to go for three weeks.You might need two monitors for your two desks, but whatever.

The office is there for you if you want to get away, like if your duplex neighbors are shitty and have all their shitty friends over and your room turned into a puff of weed smoke at 10:32 a.m. Or if you need it, like for printing Madewell’s return slips or something. The office is there to have birthday parties or team bonding days where everyone collabs but can maybe go home before the traffic hits.

I do like my coworkers. It’s cool if they need to hop on a call or if they want to go to happy hour(s). It’s crazy, but, like, you can create working relationships with people both ways? Wow. I do like my job. It’s cool if I spend the day logged onto meetings and cranking out projects, or if I need to drive up to the office for an editing session. Again, crazy, but you can be a productive, even positive person both ways. YOU CAN DO IT.

People adapt. People are FLEXIBLE. People eventually learn how to share their screens on Zoom. People would be totally fine if the whole planet went to remote working, is all I’m saying.

Even though we have all been conned, my Millennial brats in arms, I have hope. Sort of. But my hope is that once we actually live through this almost-back-to-the-office purgatory, that the Powers that Be (Probably Born in the 70s) see that we can be trusted with the holy grail of flex days — Mondays and Fridays but please dear god in this Chili’s tonight at least Fridays – or let us, you know, stay home from November until January because the last thing I want to do is drive to a mall every day during the holiday season.

Maybe by then, they’ll have confidence that the people who want to come in and be the party planning committee or whatever, and the people who do their best work at home with cats on their laps / plugged into podcasts / procrastinating by writing personal blog posts might be two different kinds of people, but when you’re flexible for them, it works.

I promise it really fucking works.