There are a lot of people in the working world who have been dreading one thing for a while now: the eventual return to the office buildings they were forced to “abandon” 2 years ago at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. And now that that fear has come into fruition, workers are anxious with the countdown to face-to-face work.
In one Canadian office building, employees were greeted back to work with insensitive posters and below-the-belt signage that seemed to make fun of them not working from home anymore. These photos were shared by Audra Williams on Twitter last March 7, 2022 and quickly became viral. As of writing, the tweet now has 14.6k retweets, 5,883 quote tweets, 150.6k likes.
Twitter users were quick to criticize Oxford Properties—the Canada-based company in question, for their “unkind” signage and distasteful humor in a time when both telework and face-to-face work could be done.
Seriously, I would turn on my heel and go home.
I won't return to the office. They cannot compensate me enough. My productivity has improved, I get 3h back each day (priceless) and I don't have to share the air on public transit, or in my poorly ventilated office space. No thanks— Sandy Segeren 🌻🇺🇦 🇨🇦🇿🇦🇳🇱🏴 (@ssinca95) March 7, 2022
These genuinely read like actively hateful messages holy shit what is the intention here 😂
— Seb Jones (@big_cheddars) March 7, 2022
Our management hosted a virtual town hall where they thanked us all for coming back to the office because that's *so* important… but we can clearly see most of them are hosting the meeting from their own homes.
— Rawwwbb (@Rawwwb1) March 7, 2022
OH. MY. GOD.
Who on earth thought this was a good idea?!?! "Bet your dog misses you"??? That's full-out taunting. What a fail of a project holy smokes.— Jessica 💉💉💉🇨🇦🇮🇹🏳️🌈 (@jessica_pomps) March 7, 2022
The worst part is that these posters aren't from any employers in the office building, but from the property managers. It's like one big capitalism flex. "Just remember it's Capitalists that own you."
— Nigel Kirk is Vaccinated 2/2! 💉💉 (@nkirk4homeless) March 7, 2022
Oxford Properties later issued a statement through blogTO, acknowledging their mistake and explaining that they have taken down the signage.
“Unfortunately, in an attempt to be lighthearted, the signage came off as uncaring, which was never our intention. The signage clearly missed the mark and was removed last week as a result. The campaign should have not made it into production, and we sincerely apologize to any customers, colleagues and members of the public that were offended.”
In the Philippines, more and more businesses have started to normalize operations and implement back to face-to-face work due to the lowering of COVID-19 restrictions and the current low cases of COVID-19 recorded in the country. There are companies and individuals that have been clamoring for the continuation of remote work, due to safety issues and the rising fuel prices caused by *another* global phenomenon. However, as of press time the government has disallowed the continuation of WFH arrangement for BPO firms, saying that the WFH arrangement had been “only a time-bound temporary measure” due to a surge of COVID-19 cases.
If Philippine companies welcomed back their employees the same way Oxford Properties did, how do you think Filipinos would react to it? With anger? With memes? Or with the “meh” kind of attitude? Well, telework and WFH could be done together anyway IMO.
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