The “return to work” brawls and chasm come from one main place

The short answer is that work is about control, especially to mid- to high-ranking managers, and that’s why there’s been a push back into offices of late. The air cover is “collaboration” or “needing impromptu ideas to pop up,” and while those have some validity, I can also tell you I’ve worked in offices for a chunk of 20+ years now, and I’ve seen true collaboration happen maybe six times, and an impromptu idea happen maybe once across decades. Those are not normative things. A lot of people barely want to speak to their co-workers, no lie.

So the big reason more people are coming back in is control. But there’s another reason tied to fundamental understanding of what work even “is.”

To executives and decision-makers, there’s the control aspect of course — being able to essentially grab a warm body passing you in a hallway and say “Hey, you don’t look busy. Hop on this for me.” That’s a big deal in office cultures, and executives love to flex it. And they can — because if you question them, you get fired. And since most of white-collar work is “hurry up and wait” anyway, no one really questions this stuff that much.

The other thing, though, is that most mid-level and up managers have their entire calendars blocked with meetings by Monday at 8:55am. Most of these meetings (60%?) are…