‘Don’t Mess With Us’: WebMD Parent Company Demands Return to Office in Bizarre Video::“I’ve seen better acting by hostages in direct to DVD movies,” one anonymous worker wrote about the video.
I’m so tired of businesses claiming that the only way for a company to be successful is if everyone is in person for the dear dear meetings. We all know exactly what this is about. 1. It’s more dofficult to micromanage employees when a manger can’t constantly observe them, and 2. All the giant real estate investments companies have made is now coming due and they cant fill up their buildings fast enough to get those tax breaks. Why the hell else are they “tracking” people in the office. Meanwhile senior leadership can come and go whenever they see fit. It’s control. Plain and simple.
WebMD is owned by Internet Brands, which is owned by KKR, an investment group with $64 billion in real estate assets. This has fuck all to do with productivity or middle management.
Fuckin kkr. The ones who got Toys R Us to go bankrupt just to make a buck. They also purchased the company i worked for then sold it to another company which resulted in big layoffs some years back. They can eat shit and die.
I miss Toys R Us
Well, good news—Macy’s has brought them back.
There are company’s where their whole business strategy is to get their employees on the board of a struggling company with the plan to enact policies that seem like they will help but just dig the hole deeper. Until they can start selling off assets, move to bankruptcy, then sail away with golden parachutes to do it all again.
It’s really just “we need people so that our real estate investments don’t tank”, I’m rooting for their shit to tank, fuck the rich.
My company had a badge in/badge out procedure, badge out was new after covid. No one actually badged out. They have since installed security guards at all exits and they will chase you out the door if you forget to badge out.
All the giant real estate investments companies have made is now coming due and they cant fill up their buildings fast enough to get those tax breaks
What are these tax breaks for filling up buildings?
They don’t exist. This made up tale about commercial real estate driving RTO policies has been around since early 2021 when things started opening back up on larger scales. It’s a fiction that just won’t die.
Because it’s not fiction. City leaders and even Congress, at the behest of lobbyists, have clearly urged RTO as a cure to real estate woes.
US Real Estate Firms Urge Federal Government To Bring Workers Back to the Office
Can you back that up with any evidence whatsoever?
Evidence, that something doesn’t exist?
Here: …
You can also use this evidence freely to prove, that you didn’t receive the package that you ordered.
It’s time for a boycott WebMD campaign. Let’s see how well they handle THAT 👹
Doing my part. I literally never visit that toxic site.
You have it backwards. Completely.
- I have no intentions of bringing my work home, work is a job, it has no place in my home impacting my family.
- I will not lose a part of my home to my jobs business. Its not their property, it is my home.i would rather the office be a bedroom so my children dont have to share a room.
- We evolved without video conferencing, it is natural and easier to meet with someone in person to convey emotion and understand people we meet with. It is too easy to dismiss someone over a screen, empathy is too easily lost. It is also harder to be ignored in person.
- I can see when my ataff are struggling off meeting or when talking to others and help them. This is a bit micro-managey however I value the insight especially for staff that struggle to communicate.
The only thing I loath about working in another building is: the commute and distractions. The commute is expensive and a huge waste of time. I try and minimise the time waste with audio books but its forced waste of money. The distractions can be minimised with headphones.
I’d say it depends on the job and the person. If it’s the sort of job that can be done remotely, and the office culture is such that people are constantly getting interrupted by people ‘just passing by’ and ‘oh one more quick question’, and/or dragged into hours-long meetings that could easily have been a quick email thread, then it’s not a stretch at all to see that WFH has improved their productivity.
The realestate claim is just plain backwards. It does depend on the person, but making the claim that people in general are happy to donate part of their home to their employer and impact their families with work from home is just wrong. Emails instead of meetings should be common sense for status meetings and has no impact on the choice to work from home. Meetings that have agendas should be in person, especially if its on sensitive topics. All reasons I have listed above.
Some people sure do benefit working from home. I liked no commute, it saved a lot of money and wasted time but it made home worse.
We work to live. Work should have no place in our home.
What I was describing was something many people who are happy to work from home have said about their jobs. Others cite their terrible commute as the reason they love not having to go into the office.
If you don’t want to give up a part of your home to your job that’s totally fine. But don’t go around saying that everyone should do things your way. Many people are quite happy working from home, and cite having more time for their family and hobbies, and never having to deal with annoying meetings or commutes.
You can see many examples in the comments on this very post, as well as the sheer number of people quitting when their jobs tried to force them back into the office.
Yeah this is bullshit. Just middle and senior management trying to justify their jobs and all the expenses they’ve made on office real estate. I’ve worked 100% from home for 3 years now, and not only is my productivity much higher, but the team dynamic is better and the worker output overall is better too.
I get some people do better face to face with colleagues, and are happier and more productive. And to those people I say: Go for it! Go into the office and be at your best!
But companies should not force the rest of us to piss time and money away commuting for zero gain and just extra frustration and unhappiness.
it’s honestly blowing my mind learning recently how many people not only literally love their shitty jobs but also want to see millions of others subjugated to the grind for absolutely no net benefit
to piss time and money away commuting
So much this! Why is it OK for us to waste our most valuable resource, time?? If you waste company time or assets, you’ll be fired.
That and layoffs without firing people.
As a consumer, I will now forever remember that WebMD’s C Suite is most interested in “crushing their competition” and being heavy handed with their employees. I once thought that they were concerned about the betterment of societal health. This is how you lose your most performant employees.
I can’t believe they published this to a publically available platform like Vimeo. Did they already lose their Marketing executive?
Dude’s delusional thinking he’s going to crush Mayo Clinic while his employees pass COVID back and forth. Straight goofball thinking.
Yeah, I’m with you. At least make the video private…
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They run a website that helps you self diagnose even the slightest illness as cancer.
Cystic fibrosis or legionairres disease.
Fucking UNIONIZE.
Just did. Won our vote Wednesday night 💪
Oh, that is righteous. Congratulations!
Louder
Web MD. The website. The website designed to make visitors feel a false sense of expertise about their health so that they don’t leave home to see a doctor about illness, is threatening their workers to leave their homes, to unnecessarily return to work, during a wave of life threatening and easily transmitable illness, that they will have to bring home.
They ALL are on green screen. There isn’t anyone int his video present “in person”!
I’m so sick and god damned tired of corporations and governments making sweeping decisions with no evidence base to back them up. I work in a field where there is no option for remote work, but I think it’s pretty clear at this point that most non-service industries can be just as effective via remote options. All of this is just about control and it’s so stupid.
They don’t care. It’s about control and real estate.
More about real estate than anything else, to be honest. You have far more control over remote work than in the office. I know how many minutes each member of my team spends on any and all websites, can log keyboards, to the point I don’t recommend to anyone working remotely to access bank accounts on their work computers.
Jesus. What fucking lunatics. That video never needed to exist. Just be like every other corp and send an email. At least that news story would have blended in with all the other RTO trash.
Now I’ll just forever remember that webMDs parent company is operated by unhinged boomers.
Do you want more unions?
This is how you get more unions.
Fuck around and find out. I’m ok with more unions.
Make all of us mad and put us all in close proximity. Good idea. Not one of us will consider googling “how to form a union” with a few coworkers. It’s probably too hard to do anyways (it isn’t).
Do you want more unions?
Yes.
I remember WebMD was one of the most chaotic places I worked at. It was 2000-2001 and there was a president Marv Rich and a CEO Marty Wygod. They were both building duplicate ERP systems that basically did the same thing. One day, my boss Al was in a meeting, and they told him that he needed us to move the data center to the East Coast. The most valuable part was a bunch of big EMC Symmetrix arrays with all their data. He was freaking out because he got into an argument about loading all of them into one airplane, and he didn’t want to do it. He was telling them that if the airplane goes down, all of WebMD would be gone, and it needed to be loaded onto two airplanes. I don’t know why, but for some reason, that story always reminded me of my time at WebMD.
WebMD? They realize we’re in the midst of a Covid resurgence, right? You’d think a company like that would be a bit more understanding of stuff like that, given that they’re supposed to be experts on medicine and all.
Return to the office isn’t about medicine, it’s about entitled executives power tripping over the workers. At every medium/large company I worked for, upper management lived in its own bubble completely disconnected from the rest. I can give so many examples of poor decisions made by upper management that had a huge negative impact on the company and especially the workers. But regardless, they never gave a shit about our opinions and feedback. They didn’t even tell us why they made those decisions.
It’s about corporate real estate, profit margins, taxes, banks, interest rates, the economy, and more.
WFH has completely changed the economic landscape, and virtually all industries are impacted.
I embrace the change. Business men with shareholders do not. Banks with trillions of dollars in corporate mortgages and leases also do not. Etc.
Lolbruh. Remember that their unitary purpose is dolla dolla bill.
Are they in front of green screens? Did he not even bother to come into the office to record this?
Let the corporate whips crack! Let the slaves fall back in line! We want profits!
Because you’re awesome, important to us, we care about your well being. We are a big family after all!
Being in the office ≠ more profit
It in fact takes away from the workers profit.
It doesen’t matter that much, corporate ghouls have justified their existance!
I love response to the backlash. It’s basically “Sorry our video was cringy and tonedeaf. We have removed the cringe.”
People who haven’t come in to the office yet do it for a reason. They like it. They are happier. Happier employees are better employees.
They get more sleep so they are more alert or have more time for hobbies and recreation. They don’t have to spend as much on gas or childcare. They don’t use the office’s electricity, water, facilities, coffee/snacks.
Make it a choice. For the betterment of humanity and the planet.
When someone makes videos like this, you don’t get the best people to come work for your company, you get the most desperate.
But then again, maybe that’s what they want. Idiots.
