They’re calling you back. Amazon just mandated five days a week starting this month. AT&T, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase followed suit. Ontario public servants return full-time this month. Major Canadian banks want four days minimum. The message is clear: the remote work experiment is over.
Except here’s what nobody’s saying out loud — 99% of companies that implemented return-to-office mandates saw employee satisfaction drop. That’s from a University of Pittsburgh study analyzing millions of Glassdoor reviews. Not 90%. Not 95%. Ninety-nine percent.
And the productivity gains bosses promised? They didn’t materialize. The same research found no significant changes in financial performance or company value after mandates kicked in. So if it’s not about the bottom line and it’s making nearly everyone miserable, what’s actually happening here?
No Desks, No Equipment, Calls on the Floor
Walk into most offices today and you’ll find a chaotic game of musical chairs. The Globe and Mail reported that employees struggle to find desks, and when they do, basic equipment is missing — monitors, keyboards, mice. Bruce Daisley, who writes the workplace newsletter Make Work Better, described organizations where people take video calls sitting on the floor because conference rooms are overbooked.
Companies slashed office space over the past decade, packing workers tighter. Then they told everyone to come back at once. Downtown Toronto is running out of Class A office space while rents spike. Employers could save massively by maintaining remote flexibility, but that’s clearly not the priority.
25% of Executives Admitted the Real Strategy
Some executives admitted the actual strategy: they implemented return-to-office mandates hoping employees would quit. About 25% of executives and 18% of HR workers acknowledged using RTO as a “back channel layoff” to reduce headcount without paying severance.
It’s a risky gamble. Research from MIT Sloan Management Review found mandates drive away high performers and people with caregiving responsibilities. About 8 in 10 companies admitted losing talent due to RTO mandates.
The other justification is “company culture.” But pre-pandemic, employers complained about workers wearing headphones at their desks. Those headphones were necessary because open floor plans made focused work impossible. The culture being romanticized never existed.
Herman Miller Built Cubicles for Surveillance
The modern office cubicle emerged in the 1960s through Herman Miller’s Action Office. Designer Robert Propst created moveable walls and vertical storage that let workers customize their space. Progressive, right?
Scholar Kathryn Lofton traces the design back to Neo-Calvinist Dutch Reformed immigrants who founded Herman Miller in Zeeland, Michigan. The clean lines weren’t just modernist — they were rooted in Protestant asceticism. The office became a physical space designed to make you productive through constant surveillance.
Even the flashiest tech offices with breakfast bars and luxury gyms normalize something dystopian — arriving before breakfast and staying past dinner. The office doesn’t just organize work. By physically containing your body near others who are “at work,” it contains you psychologically. You work because you’re being watched.
10% More Hours Logged, 33% Less Likely to Quit
When the pandemic forced everyone home, something unexpected happened. Productivity didn’t collapse. A study of 60,000 Microsoft employees found people logged 10% more weekly hours. Research analyzing 27 countries showed remote workers saved seventy-two minutes commuting daily and worked thirty minutes longer.
Eventually, people realized something: they could take care of themselves. Walk the dog. Go to the gym midday. Cook real meals. Call centers in Turkey that went fully remote saw agents handle 10% more calls than pre-pandemic. A Chinese travel agency found staff working from home two days a week were 33% less likely to quit.
Yet 75% of workers now face regular office requirements, up from 63% in early 2023. About 47% of companies requiring five-day schedules plan to terminate or discipline employees who don’t comply.
Time Became a Commodity in the 1800s
Here’s what employers seem terrified of: if people aren’t locked in offices eight to ten hours daily, they might have time to reflect. They might ask whether their jobs bring happiness or contribute meaningfully to the world. They might discover ways to experience pleasure beyond retail therapy’s fleeting dopamine hits.
Anthropologist David Graeber noted that in premodern times, you could buy a potter’s work or enslave the potter, but you couldn’t buy their time. After standardized time was invented in the nineteenth century, time itself became a commodity. And if an employer bought your time, they wanted every cent’s worth — regardless of actual output.
The pandemic disrupted that psychological control. People internalized the office panopticon for decades, then discovered life outside it. Now mandates are trying to force that genie back in the bottle, even as 64% of employees say they’d prefer remote or hybrid roles.
Companies can force compliance. But they can’t force the mindset that made the office work before — the automatic assumption that this is just how things are. That assumption broke. And no amount of mandates about collaboration or culture will rebuild it. Because everyone now knows the real reason is simpler: control. those reasons are pretexts. The real reason is simpler, older, and more honest: control.