Woman Slams Boss for Making Her Return to Office "Just to Take Zoom Calls", Sparks Debate

There are plenty of studies that show employees who work from home are more productive than when they're working in an office setting. Plenty of businesses have seen that for their specific industries that it works in their benefit to allow employees to work from home.

Facebook, Nationwide, Twitter, Square, Coinbase, Shopify, Box, Hitachi, Upwork, Slack, Quora, Siemens, Fujitsu, and a slew of other corporations have either transitioned to full or partial remote job options for its employees.

However, there are still many businesses that, despite maintaining remote-employee operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, have lobbied for their workforce to return to the office, and there are a lot of folks who aren't exactly thrilled at this prospect.

While there are undeniably businesses that thrive on face-to-face, in-person operations, there are some workers who are back in the office and wondering just why in the world they were asked to perform their work duties from a different physical location when they were perfectly able to fulfill their duties from the comfort of their own homes.

Like Ellie, a TikToker who posts under the handle @1corporatemillennial.

The woman posted a now-viral TikTok of her staring at a computer screen, clearly peeved that she's being asked to sit down in front of her computer and taking zoom meetings and calls, which she could've very easily done at home. Except now she's expected to wake up earlier to get herself ready and commute to a different location, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that she could complete these tasks remotely.

In the clip, she stares at a screen in front of her with a text overlay that reads: "What plays in my head when leadership talks about the importance of being in the office for the culture."

The song that's playing in the TikTok? "Welcome to Duloc" from Shrek.

Throngs of commenters on her video apparently felt the same way. Some said that the individuals who are the most adamant about getting back into the "office swing of things" are those who spend their days chatting it up with co-workers instead of actually fulfilling their job duties.

And then there were those who think that it's ridiculous to be asked to travel to another location entirely just to log into their corporate accounts "to take virtual calls and have Susan coughing all day in front of me" or trying to get their jobs done while other people make phone calls around them.

"Literally. We all sit in our own cubicles and have Microsoft teams meetings. I can go an entire week without a single person speaking to me," one TikToker said.

"got told how important it is to build your ‘brand’ and being in office is only the way," one TikToker said, a comment which was capped off by an eye-roll emoji.

Others believed that the reason why there's such a big push for folks to return back to the office is that "corporate-owned real estate is losing money."

This sentiment echoed fiscal incentives listed by other TikTok users.

"It’s their tax policy and write-offs that make 'the culture'"

"Nah it’s because they already paid for the space lol"

Tesla CEO Elon Musk came under fire for unequivocally stating that all employees at the company must report to corporate offices. "Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers," according to Electrek.

The billionaire went on to say that he would personally take a look at employees who wish to be exempt from the new policy. "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned."

Musk doubled down in a Twitter response to one user who asked, "Hey Elon...any additional comment to people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept?"

The SpaceX founder wrote: "They should pretend to work somewhere else."