“It’s Me Not You” As More Workers Refuse Old Normal

The WSJ story says workers are returning to bars, eateries & stadiums but not so much the office because, spoiled home bodies, they just don’t feel like it. Employers are calling back their staffs & bending over backwards with perks, even fewer work days, but…

“’You’re not going to get me on the train for two hours for free bagels,’ said Jason Alvarez Schorr, a 36-yr-old software engineer who quit his job in New York in January, when his former employer signaled an office return was imminent. It isn’t that Mr. Schorr disliked his old boss or workplace. The father of two young children says he simply found something better – a remote job that allowed him to move his family to Puerto Rico, where they plan to live for at least two years. Call it the professional version of ‘It’s not you; it’s me.’”

The article notes how “that can be a tough message to accept … What stings [said one employer expecting his team to get back to normal but they aren’t] is that his company trained a lot of those workers and retained them when the economy was at its worst in 2020. Yet the investment in his people didn’t seem to matter when it was time to reopen the office. “The amount of effort and energy that was put into ensuring nobody lost their job – that we made the proper adjustments to weather the storm – people just don’t remember those things,” he said. “You have that lack of loyalty.”

Davd Soul