When things started returning to normal after the pandemic lockdown, a lot of executives pushed for a return to the office.

Many of them still have an aversion to people working from home one day a week and it’s hard to sway them toward a remote working situation.

The employee in this story did. Sort of…

Watch his plan come to life.

CEO wants return to office, CTO plays it perfect

Our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) didn’t want to be a sales guy, so my employer hired a CEO. For a while he seemed easygoing and cool.

But once the pandemic ended, he started pushing rather heavily for a return to office (RTO) for everyone.

The CEO wouldn’t let it go.

He made his case for it by conducting polls and sending lengthy emails to everyone about how RTO fostered relationships and had other benefits.

He got really pushy, even complaining to CTO about it.

So every time he came to Spain, where our head office is, people that lived around the city would go to the office just to be there so CEO was happy.

Eventually, the CTO decided that he had enough about the whole RTO mandate and CEO complaining.

Fed up, the CTO started taking action.

So, on a random meeting of the tech team, CTO said “OK, next Tuesday, I want everyone on the office. If you live far away, book a train, drive, whatever you have to do, I’ll pay, but be here.”

And so we did.

That Tuesday every single one of the tech team, including people that took a 2 or 3 hour trip to get there, was in the office.

Guess who wasn’t there? The CEO, of course.

So, CTO took a picture, emailed it to CEO and said something along the lines of “If you can’t lead by example, don’t push my people to do things that don’t work.”

Then we went for a relaxing lunch and had beers.

Here’s what people are saying.

Wise words. Hiring someone with a power trip helps that person’s ego a lot more than it helps the company.

Let me guess: “I don’t understand why the staff don’t respect me!”

Definitely! I also think a lot of those people like the power of being able to physically surveil and intimidate people.

Someone’s bitter…

That’s awesome! It makes life a lot easier.

Working from home rocks.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.