'Our productivity plummeted': Employee shares how 'return to office' policy ruined their company

The human brain has a tendency to cherry-pick relevant details and information that support decisions we've already made and opinions that we've already formed. 

Confirmation bias is a real and relevant thing, especially in the world of ubiquitous information. No longer do we have to be a specialist in a topic in order to access the information that was once only readily available to us. But do we have the skills, experience, and training to interpret that information, or are we merely overstating our own cognitive abilities and actually drawing incorrect conclusions from coincidental correlations? Correlation is not always causation, but if I told you that there were more squirrels in areas with more trees, you might conclude that squirrels are born from acorns. 

Similarly, the new CEO of your company might decide that their workers should return to the office, ignoring all relevant figures of success and productivity that are staring them in the face and focusing only on the ones that support the decision they had already made: That everyone should return to the office to "improve" productivity that is already fine, share "ideas" in meetings that only waste everyone's time, and for "culture" that is everyone uncomfortably silent sitting in isolated carpeted cubes. Sure, maybe they, the CEO, work best from the office, but they need to understand the way forward isn't in the past. 

This worker shared how productivity in their company plummeted when they were all forced to return to the office, detailing a downward spiral that led to the near demise of the company and the worker's own departure from the company. 

Read on for their account of events. Next, see this worker who got their supervisors involved when their terrible coworker refused to do their work.