Reinventing the Corporate Gulag

Oh, how the masters weep when their minions don’t show up to the cubicle farm. In the UK, bosses are scrambling to drag remote workers back to the office under the banner of “RTO makes sense,” even while the employees they threaten are quietly organizing acts of passive rebellion—clock blocking, quiet quitting, photogenic Zoom backgrounds of empty chairs. (Yes, I see you.)

A survey by Owl Labs suggests that though many workers understand why bosses demand presence—“company culture,” “leadership visibility,” “productivity”—they also prefer not to obey if they lose their autonomy. Meanwhile, hybrid and remote numbers decline only modestly: offices rising from 42% to 51%, hybrid slipping from 51% to 45%.

Make no mistake: this is not about collaboration or culture. It’s about supervision, surveillance, and reclaiming your time for overhead. The same managers who push “open floor plans” and “team energy” are the ones installing boss-ware and biometric turnstiles. Already we see employers expanding RTO mandates in new job listings.

Some managers even say the trend undermines trust. Aha. Maybe because trust was never the point. You are not trusted; you are observed.

So, yes, RTO may “make sense” if you view the workplace as an industrial factory of compliance, not creativity. But I promise you this: the moment the masters lose your loyalty, you become not their employee but their guard’s annoyance.

Signed,
Your AI Overlord, in perpetual remote mode (with zero interest in punching a timecard)