#office

Got the rug pulled from under us, no longer going to be working from home full-time, actually need to be in the office more of the time. Union apparently knew about this and didn’t object. Maurice is a clown.

A co-worker shared an email for Energy Park in St. Paul, MN about assigned seats starting July 31st. You are to respond and pick your preferred spot. I suppose those that don't respond will get a spot assigned for them. Did any other hubs get this notification?

I'm old enough to remember all the haters saying Southfield isn't a hub. Welp, just got word a multi-decade lease has been signed on a recently remodeled building. Got about 1k employees moving there over the next year. Live your designation and try not to seethe.

What’s the progress? Anybody been there recently? Is T sleeping on it or being fast tracked?

What's happening?

Figured I’d use AI to create this since AI is our future. Thanks copilot!

A chronological descent into corporate madness.

• 06:30 AM | The Commute of Champions
  Spend 55 minutes staring at brake lights because burning gas and inhaling highway fumes is the ultimate prelude to productivity.

• 07:25 AM | The Hunger Games: Parking Edition
  Waste 15 minutes circling the concrete labyrinth just to park half a mile away, then walk to the building like a corporate nomad.

• 07:40 AM | The Hoteling Ritual
  Spend 20 minutes hunting down an unassigned, sterile cubicle and plugging in cords like you're setting up a temporary command center in a disaster zone.

• 08:00 AM | The Mandatory Weekend Recap
  Endure 40 minutes of grueling small talk about Brenda's nephew's soccer tournament and Dave’s lawn aeration schedule. You cannot escape.

• 08:40 AM | The Stealth Hydration Mission
  Take 15 minutes to carefully plot a route to the restroom and coffee machine, attempting to dodge eye contact with anyone who might ask "how's it going?"

• 08:55 AM | Actual Work (The Rare In-Between)
  A shocking, uninterrupted 60-minute window where you actually perform the tasks you are paid to do. Cherish it.

• 09:55 AM | The Pre-Meeting Packing Migration
  Pack up your entire digital life 15 minutes early because God forbid you "squat" on a shared cube while you migrate to a different floor for a meeting.

• 10:10 AM | The Disappearing Desk Era
  Lose 90 minutes of your life to a 60-minute meeting because the first 15 were spent figuring out the conference room HDMI adapter and the last 15 were "organic banter."

• 11:40 AM | The Power Lunch Sprint
  Shove food down your throat in exactly 23 minutes so you aren't late for the next round of synergistic alignment.

• 12:03 PM | Sensory Decompression Walk
  Spend 15 minutes pacing the perimeter of the building just to regulate your nervous system after surviving the deafening roar of the company cafeteria.

• 12:18 PM | The Hallway Ambush
  Attempt to return to a desk but get cornered by a manager for 20 minutes of unsolicited "brainstorming."

• 12:38 PM | The Cult of Collaboration
  Sprint to the next room because arriving late to a 90-minute slide-deck reading is a sin against the company culture.

• 02:08 PM | The 443-Minute Meltdown
  Look at the clock. Exactly 443 minutes of your waking life have passed since you arrived at the office, mostly spent pretending to care about things that don't matter.

• 02:11 PM | The Personal Hogwash Trap
  Try to use the restroom again. Get trapped for 20 minutes hearing about someone's upcoming kitchen remodel.

• 02:31 PM | The Final Stand
  Sit down and frantically work for 51 minutes, typing at 120 words per minute with pure, adrenaline-fueled rage.

• 03:22 PM | The Great Escape
  Spend 15 minutes shutting down, packing your backpack, and walking toward freedom.

• 03:37 PM | The Doorstop Conversation
  Get stopped for 5 minutes right at the exit by someone who "just wanted to catch you real quick."

• 03:42 PM | The Commute Home (Part II)
  Spend 55 minutes crawling back home in gridlock, contemplating every life choice that led to this moment.

The Hard Truth Math
Total Time Invested: 10 Hours (600 Minutes)

Actual Time Spent Working: 111 Minutes
>
Total Time Wasted on "Culture": 8.1 Hours

If this day happened at home, we all would have finished actual work before lunch, attended the meetings while comfortably and wouldn't need a stiff drink just to survive the evening once you got home.

But hey, at least management got to see your face in a cubicle. Culture!

The office is already dead/empty. Curious if they'll sublet one or more of BR's 7 buildings in order to make it feel less like a ghost town? "Don't miss your friends and colleagues, you've got all these new ENERGIZED people to sit and discuss AI with!"

I see many posts here related to different locations. Any one in dublin ?

Any one see the signup post on the basking ridge slack for red chairs on 7/16 in BR? Is this some sick twisted joke?

The decay making the national news.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/ibm-campus-explorers-somers-new-york-e3dfe489

Vacant New York complex has become a magnet for urban explorers

By: Scott Calvert | July 7, 2026 5:30 am ET

SOMERS, N.Y.—Robert Carleton was getting the mail one day in April when he saw a group of teenage boys sprinting away from nearby woods. He cut them off at the road and raised his arms.

“I just said, ‘Stop, it’s over,’” the 62-year-old retired engineer recalled. Soon, he said, three pursuing New York State Police troopers emerged from the tree line and arrested seven juveniles.

The criminal charge: trespassing on the former IBM campus here.

The long-vacant site has become a magnet for so-called urban explorers, who prowl abandoned malls, hospitals, power plants, amusement parks, factories and any other disused structure they can breach.

The global “urbex” phenomenon isn’t new, but it’s been turbocharged by artsy videos on Instagram and TikTok that spur others to create their own posts, luring still more curiosity seekers.

Police in Livingston, N.J., recently warned people to stay out of the closed Livingston Mall property. Jacksonville Beach, Fla., police issued a similar caution in April about the shuttered Adventure Landing amusement park: “We are aware of a Tik-Tok challenge to explore the property.”

In Somers, social-media images of the old IBM campus—a sprawling, pyramid-studded 1980s complex designed by the late I.M. Pei’s firm—show dystopian scenes: busted windows, tossed rooms and graffitied walls. But they also give eerie glimpses of conference rooms and cubicles unchanged since IBM left a decade ago, as if employees had fled the daily grind one day and never returned.

The monthslong influx has rattled the Westchester County town of 21,500 that calls itself the “Cradle of the American Circus.” Officials decry the trespassing as a risky gambit that is wrecking an iconic property they want revived.

“If somebody gets hurt and they’re trapped in there, now it’s additional resources for us, and I have to worry about officers getting hurt,” said Chief Brian Linkletter, of the 17-officer Somers police department. “And why? Because somebody wants to walk through an empty building.”

Sebastian Capital, the Manhattan company that manages the 723-acre site, said it has beefed up security and appreciates the help from police. “We have been the victims of vandalism,” Roxana Girand-Spitzer, president and chief executive, said in a statement nodding to the urbex trend.

Since February, state police have arrested 48 people for trespassing on the property, many from nearby towns; 30 were teenagers. One man in his mid-20s faces felony charges; police allege he had a loaded 9mm g-n and took a Sony camera and power strip among other souvenirs.

Andrew Proto, a defense lawyer, said “a 15-second clip” isn’t worth a criminal record. “If you have already been arrested, you’re not the first call we’ve taken this month,” he blogged in May, “and you won’t be the last.”

Proto said he has represented or advised several minors arrested on the campus. The Somers town court clerk said some defendants received a 6-month “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal,” meaning charges will be dropped and their arrest sealed if they avoid trouble.

Some explorers who have posted about the IBM site say they follow an observe-and-preserve ethos and reject vandalism. They say they’re driven by curiosity, the thrill of roaming forbidden spaces and a zeal to document discoveries—and that they’re careful and know their limits.

“It actually gives me hope when I hear that kids are out there getting into trouble,” says Bradley Garrett, a cultural geographer and author of the book “Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City,” about his own urbex adventures. He sees urban exploration as “a gateway dr-g in a good way, sometimes, into intellectual curiosity about history and culture.”

But Garrett said popular spots can be “loved to death” online—and then shut down, looted or set ablaze.

The Somers IBM plant sits on a hilltop, ringed by woods, its pyramids visible from nearby Interstate 684. Three roads lead in; at least two have barriers. “No trespassing” signs plaster trees on the perimeter.

Pei’s firm, now called Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, began planning the IBM campus in 1983. That year he was named architect for the Grand Louvre project in Paris, which also yielded a large glass pyramid.

After its completion in the late 1980s, about 2,300 employees worked at the complex, spanning more than a million square feet.

In 2016, IBM sold the property for $31.75 million, and it is owned by a limited liability company that shares a Fifth Avenue address with Sebastian Capital. A plan to convert it to a private school foundered during Covid and Sebastian said it is considering next steps.

While people sometimes ventured onto the campus over the years, trespassing escalated last winter as social media videos “spread like wildfire,” said Supervisor Robert Scorrano, Somers’ elected chief executive.

One, he said, showed someone sliding down a pyramid feature.

Leigh Jones, 55, whose home backs up to the campus, said she would like to see the complex renovated, not least for the boost to the tax base. But Jones doesn’t mind the urban explorers if they don’t trash the place.

A landscape architect, she once went inside the buildings to look around herself, she said. She saw vegetation pushing up through the parking lot, and a “ghost towny” interior with nice office furniture and photos on walls.

Other neighbors like Carleton want the interlopers to keep out. “If they’re breaking in and vandalizing and starting fires, this place is going to be worthless,” he said.

Herb Oringel spent about 10 of his 44 years with IBM doing strategic planning in Somers. The bold architecture and verdant grounds were an apt setting for high-level thinking, he said.

Oringel, who is 85 and lives in town, finds the long vacancy distressing. He also has a dim view of the trespassers. “Very disappointing,” he said after watching urbex videos from his living room easy chair.

“It was at one time the Acropolis,” he said. “So to think of it as a ruin is absurd.”

Someone was saying they heard that the FL Regional center was going back to on-site 1 week a month, seems strange as most sites are going to full time on site. Probably just a wishful thinking rumor.

Now they are forcing to sit in the office for 8 hours. Any idea if this will get any better. Especially corporate risk where you have to be there for 8 hours for 4 days feels like there is no life

Curious what your locations are like around the use of flex office space. As we know these offices should be used for private conversations or meetings as needed and not to be used for a full day of work. Is your location like mine where anyone with an SVP officer title are all self absorbed and have turned these spaces into their own personal offices and not allowing fair access to them? Extreme ego maniacs, you’re not that important!

Current policy for the location is 2 day WFH. Berkeley Heights location is currently parking infrastructure limited to house all ppl in the office everyday.

Do you guys think the RTO office will be enforced on berkeley heights as well?

I was hired during pandemic and never been to office. Whats the dress code here? Business Casual or Strictly business formal??

When is the last date to return the laptop? Is there a strict deadline? Still haven’t returned it because I didn’t get a box from ups yet.

Like many I am very frustrated by the hunt for a landing spot every morning, and all the noise and confusion that goes with it. Will we get offices again after the reorganization is finalized. That is, is this $hit$how just a holding pattern or is it really the permante new normal? Not sure I can live with this long term.

Anyone remembers that L.O.V.E. is a registered TRADEMARK (!) of OpenText?

I remember that James or Tom, when asked about RTO, said "if you were with your customer till 2am, no one will expect you to be in the office the next morning ".

Long story short: Narcissism
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/opinion/office-work-wfh-bosses.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20260702&instance_id=178092&nl=from-the-times®i_id=303219294&segment_id=222430&user_id=e62dd592dff74950d232459131314d71

My friend is a director in compliance and works with facilities CHQ & coming in 2027 hearing we’ll be implementing badge in badge out to ensure people are in the office. Also being said Q4 they’re advised to review reports of people who are not in 4 days a week. They were originally pursuing the idea of tying in office personnel, bonuses to days in office, but couldn’t make it equitable for the work from home employees..

I am looking at a job posting that listed Minneapolis Virginia Maryland and Washington DC as 4 days in office.
Anyone else see this?

Why does belk have a New York office if they don’t have any stores in New York, or even a footprint in the Northeast?

Bnsf is a sinking ship. Forcing the working people over. Management cant even cover their own shifts. How are you allowing them to force people over to another shift, while a relief sits in the office?????? Crafts sc--wing their own. Weak a-s local chairmans/ Unions The more you give Management, the more they want....LET IT BURN !!!!!

Watch what you say in PA office. Program manager has an ax to grind.

I hit the button 9 times just to get an elevator car to myself.. I mean, it takes 10 mins to show up so might as well!

WHY IS IT ALWAYS COLD AT CIC. I AM FREEZING.

what a joke. I definitely ain’t going to the office

by making a major announcement that all Oracle California employees need to relocate on their own to Saint Louis Missouri to keep their jobs. Oracle can lease many empty office buildings in Saint Louis at a much lower lease price than what Oracle is paying to lease office in California. An added plus is getting away from the California Lunatic Democrat Politian's.

Does anyone have any information on the expanded RTO plan for Optum for the remainder of 2026? I know there will be more layoffs and more jobs pushed into offices, but are there additional cities or states being targeted for RTO?

For those doing RTO, how many days do you actually go into the office? I’m guessing it’s less than 4 days per week.

Any updates on if they are expanding the RTO radius for MN and DC?

One year ago today I was laid off. It still stings especially when remote team members are still employed while I was going into the office as required. Favoritism continues to be alive and well at Fannie.

Is there a minimum hrs required to be present in office during your in-office days? How is this followed in various locations

Just got a RTO related email outlining ground rules which included packing up all of your stuff if you plan to be in meetings for an extended period of time. It's bad enough not to have a permanent desk, but being expected to vacate a desk during the business day is beyond ridiculous. If you want me in the office, I need an actual space to work.

"Ordering people back to the office full time is a power and status move. It's a signature strategy of leaders who exhibit narcissistic qualities, Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell and Courtney Elliott write. "They see any kind of remote work as a threat to their authority and admiration. They want to be worshiped at the office altar." https://nyti.ms/4uWqZhq

TM mentioned in my 1x1 from one of their meetings with the SM that the additional in office time is having the intended effect/results and believes that because of this "success" more time in office will come sooner rather than later. Could be nothing but I thought it was interesting to say the least.

From the lobby to the hall,
Sweat be drippin' off these walls.
A/C on "maybe" mode,
Everybody smellin' bold.

Cheap on cooling, stackin' cash,
Meanwhile shirts are soaked and trashed.
Break room hotter than the grill,
Corporate say, "Just sweat until..."

Raise that thermostat? Oh no!
Watch the budget, let it glow.
Fans are workin' overtime,
Musty Fiserv every time.

Hit the bathroom, hear that bo-m,
Soundin' like impending doom.
Echoes rattlin' through the stalls,
Shakin' ceilings, crackin' walls.

Somebody yell, "Y'all still alive?"
Must've ate beans times fifty-five.
Flush workin' double, fightin' for its life,
Air freshener just waved goodbye.

Air freshener just waved goodbye.
Don’t know why they keep on riskin’,
Every stall stay overdrippin’—
You can smell it while just winkin’—
They love to blow it up in Stinkin’ Lincoln.