Work: Executives Visit then Removes Offsite Work Perk

Recently, executives have mandated that everyone work in the office. The reason for this change is because there were a group of executives who made a visit and saw how "empty" the office is. The conclusion they came up with is that the company is wasting money on a huge office that is not fully used.

Perhaps I am reading too much into such a generalized statement, but to me this seems like a financial decision. Because they made the decision because they were onsite. I assume before the visit, they could not tell whether the effectiveness of the workforce was impacted because some of us work offsite.

This sort of decision-making also seems to be consistent with other decisions made on the executive level where they take a single instance and rule on it without inquiring if perhaps their perception of the situation could off.

I have worked in the office for quite some time before taking advantage off the offsite perk, and I can attest that most people just stay in their room. Personally, I was in my office practically the entire 8 hours except for maybe 10 minutes to go out for lunch or go to the bathroom. Even in those 10 minutes, it feels like no one is around even though you'll see people in their offices if you peek really hard.

Financially, the decision does not make sense either. Their concern is wasting money. They turn on the lights to every other hallway (to conserve energy) so this makes it look even more barren. I work in one of the dark hallways. Yet, they want to save money by bringing the people who are using their own resources to come into the office and consume the office's resources?

For most people, this has bigger impacts because they had used the perk to reduce unavailability during work hours like going to the doctor, dentist, or other personal chores that they used to have to take time off to do (although I never understood why those professionals work during the hardest period of time for normal people).

I am probably more of the minority where I spend the majority of my time offsite. Although I think that I work just as effectively where ever I am, not all people are as effective at home as they are at the office. Sometimes it is just as annoying hearing background noise of their dogs, kids, etc. I admit that this has happened to me once where my mother knew I was working from home and just kept ringing the doorbell while I was hosting an important call.

All this just because they thought the office should feel more robust.

Rant

I bet they think their flying around from corporate office to office, plus car rentals, food and hotel rooms are free too since they don't have to pay out of pocket.

Am I disgruntled? I cannot even get a cheap-ass $250 PC to write some software to streamline our process even when I said that I'd work on my time... or even a virtual system which we host and provide which probably only cost the company a couple dollars at most. I'll probably be even help testing the stupid thing.

(Sorry, my language does become a bit vulgar as I my irritation level goes up. Sometimes I just want to 'argh' and 'ugh' to get me through an argument.)