Affairs, ego and housework

I’ve sat in the meetings. I've read the internal memos. I’ve watched the corporate executives deliver the official gospel on the Return to Office (RTO). The public message is always the same: "culture," "collaboration," and the vague urgency of "spontaneous innovation."

From my vantage point, the stated reasons for this aggressive mandate are a thin veneer over a few, deeply personal needs rooted in the very sickness of power that defines Corporate America. RTO is an ego mandate that willingly sacrifices the financial stability of the middle class and the health of the environment to satisfy the psychological comfort of the ruling class.

The remote environment was a profound threat to the executive ego because it stripped away the traditional means of control. It forced a transition from management by sight to management by result. For leaders whose authority has long rested on physical presence, this was intolerable.

RTO is an attempt to reclaim what was lost.

Power, in the traditional corporate structure, is maintained through visible, physical presence. This allows for Coercive Power (the latent threat of reprimand) and Legitimate Power (authority derived from title) to be instantly applied. Remote work forced managers to trust the outcome because they could not control the process. The RTO mandate is a regression demanding compliance in the form of presence because physical surveillance is easier than results-based leadership.

The office also serves as the executive's stage. During WFH, executives lose the constant, reaffirming stream of employees seeking their counsel or attention. They are no longer constantly in demand.

When an executive speaks in-person, the room goes quiet. People laugh at their jokes. These exchanges are often a substitute for actual, substantive work; they validate the executive's importance. When the professional identity shrinks down to a laptop screen, the executive ego isn't nurtured. RTO is required to feed this narcissistic need for immediate, visible affirmation.

When executives champion the cause of "culture," they are employing Referent Power. The power derived from being admired and seen as a role model. "Culture" becomes a euphemism for the executive’s personal sphere of influence. They need people physically present to generate unearned social capital. The spontaneous gatherings fuel immediate loyalty that comes from proximity. By mandating RTO under this banner, they ensure employees comply out of fear of being branded as disloyal or not a "team player."

The mandate forces participation in the executive's preferred social ritual. It tells employees: your value is not just in your work, but in your visible participation in the shared physical ritual. This active suppression of employee autonomy is a powerful demonstration of the core belief that the executive's personal comfort is an organisational necessity and takes priority.

The RTO drive has another practical dimension: The office is a sanctuary from the domestic responsibility.

Before the pandemic, the act of "going to the office" provided an unimpeachable, geographically defined exemption from sharing the burden of household responsibilities, childcare, cleaning, and emotional labour. When remote work brought the professional and personal into the same space, the executive was suddenly expected to put a load in the washer and get the kids from school. Moreover, they were being asked to do so by an equal.

The RTO mandate creates a geographical firewall. The commute, the long hours, the spontaneous dinners become legitimate, socially acceptable justifications for total absence from domestic duty. The commute to the office is, for some, a daily escape route, and the mandate forces thousands of others onto the roads to preserve this vital convenience for the person at the top.

Overall, the RTO mandate preserves the status quo. Those in power refuse to accept a beneficial change that improved the lives and autonomy of the less powerful. The individual, ego-driven needs of a few hundred executives translate directly into massive, hidden costs for the masses and the planet.

The RTO mandate pushes everyone back into a destructive system. The mandate forces millions of vehicles back onto congested roads every day. The environmental damage and push for the status quo mindset, one that accepts the damage in pursuit of personal resource accumulation, is a direct result of the executive’s desire to see a full parking lot and manage by sight.

The damage doesn't end with the commute. High-volume corporate headquarters require immense energy. Forcing employees back means shifting energy use from decentralised, often reduced consumption at home to centralised, energy-intensive consumption in commercial buildings. The RTO decision actively chooses to increase the carbon footprint by the same companies that were setting "net zero by 20xx" mandates at the height of the pandemic. (We knew it was bullshit then, but now we have proof.)

The RTO mandate is, in practical terms, a tax on the middle class, immediately clawing back the only financial relief many have seen in years. The RTO mandate imposes a hidden cost of hundreds of dollars per month on the average employee for fuel, fares, parking, and daily expenses. This is an involuntary salary reduction that impacts the middle class while financing the executive's comfort.

By removing flexibility, the RTO instantly restores the need for full-time, expensive childcare. This actively pushes mothers and caregivers out of the workforce or sinks middle-class families further into precarity, undermining gender equity gains achieved during the pandemic.

RTO also closes the escape hatch of geographical freedom, forcing the middle class back into the expensive housing markets surrounding corporate centres. This props up the commercial real estate values that enrich the 1% while simultaneously creating unsustainable burdens for the 99%.

The simple, cold truth is that the RTO mandate is a policy of power. It is a perfect distillation of the corporate pathology where the personal, psychological needs of the ruling class override objective data, environmental stewardship, and the financial well-being of the workforce.

The decision to pollute our air and drain the savings of the middle class is made in service of the executive's desire to hear people laugh at their jokes, to avoid stacking their own dishwasher, and to have their status affirmed by the sight of compliant, physically present bodies.

We are reminded, yet again, that the systems we inhabit are always engineered to prioritise the comfort, control, and ego of the powerful. The masses live at the whim of the few, and in this case, that whim costs us money, health, and a habitable planet.

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Thanks, Sarah.