You can't put the Genie back in the bottle

I don’t see how a future of RTO is sustainable in the new paradigm we find ourselves. Before the WFH era that was ushered in by the COVID lockdowns, and has sustained itself for years, going to the office to work was on a continuum stretching back to the industrial era. The office was a means to an end, and as such, was taken for granted in the same way that traveling to a video rental store was not something anyone thought about as part of the process of renting a movie. Likewise, if we were told that we need to make a physical trip to a store to reserve a movie that we would later watch on Netflix, that actual trip to the store is what would become visible as a separate goal in and of itself. It would no longer be the means by which the ends (watching a movie) would justify, it would be the end itself. Going to the store is the end. When you consider that the trip to the video rental store was never the end, even during the video rental peak of the early 1990’s, the journey was never the end, it was invisible– it reveals the grotesque problem we are faced with in our current era.

With RTO, we find ourselves in this same inversion of ends and means. Since “work” has been uncoupled from “the office” the two are no longer part of the same continuum. Where the journey to the office, and the office itself were both invisible as they were the means that justified the ends, this is no longer the case. By forcing a RTO, the journey to the office, and the office itself have become the ends in and of themselves. Work is just an abstract concept in this paradigm, something that is inconsequential, where the actual goal is the office. This is a twisted psychological game that is being played and we would never stand for it in any other context. It would be as if car owners were forced to purchase horseshoes and hay twice a week because that’s what it was like in the horse and buggy days. Or if Twice a week you had to visit a brick and mortar bank to have your transaction booklet stamped. All the while we would know that there is no reason for it, that it’s a waste of time, and it defies logic, being forced to continue the charade would be a form of psychological torture. Putting kids in daycare, packing lunch, sitting in traffic, going from your home computer to an office computer where you will continue to respond to virtual tasks, surrounded by distractions and needless interactions is exactly as ridiculous as being forced to go to the post office and mail letters instead of using your email. Once the invisible becomes visible, once the means become the end itself, it is time to move on. We need to end the psychological gaslighting of forced RTO. Just think about it for a minute, how could the future of virtual work be MORE office and not less? The only way this could be true is if it is true in other domains. Can anyone honestly say that the future of watching entertainment contains a return to going to video rental stores? Are we going to start building brick and mortar videos rentals stores in the near future? Will there be a RTO for department store workers who have been laid off because people are purchasing virtually now? What about a RTO for blacksmiths?