Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

I coffee badge so that I can go home and get work done. The worst part about it is trying to find a good time to go in that won’t ruin my productivity for the day. Lunch works best. Go in, swipe, eat lunch, head home and work the rest of the day. Maybe that makes me a lunch badger. Either way, it has worked for me as a top performer. I expect to be #1 on my team this year with role model rating. I get sh-t done and my boss and leadership thank me constantly for my work. If they only knew how little was done in the office.

Coffee badgers are getting things done. They come in, do their duty to be there, leave, go home, and put in a more productive day that most butts sitting in chairs in offices. There was some wind today that indicated that someone in company in upper management said there are no plans to provide permanent cubicles for the 5 day a week RTO. So now, employees will have no real "home" to work from. Productivity is going to take a serious dive because of that. Walking into an environment that is that unstable every single day, wondering where you are going to sit today, and sometimes if you are even going to find a place to sit and expecting productivity at a high level is not going to happen.

I’m a coffee badger because I can’t work in the office. How do you participate in highly technical discussions on conference calls when you can hear 50 other conversations around you? A lot of my work is technical and detail oriented but it’s impossible to concentrate in a loud office. There are no cubicles, desks are maybe 4 feet wide with a one foot divider between you and your many neighbors. It is odd to me that the company will pay a large salary to an employee but will not provide the right environment so that they can get their work done.

But we care about the environment and work/life balance.

Blackrock CEO has said publicly that remote work will cause a recession and wants butts in buildings and doing commerce in and around said buildings.
Search it up. These CEO’s DGAF about employees, only their bottom lines.

This all seems like the work of blackrock. I’m told vanguard and blackrock together own about 16% of AT&T. This is what they do. They want return on investment now and it does not matter the cost to the company. They exert extreme pressure on americas CEO’s to deliver quick.

OP -- If the issue is the coffee badgers then how about using the applications we pay millions to track each individual's "productivity" and get rid of them that way. If it was truly about productivity/coffee badgers the leadership would already have taken action. RTO was never about what they said (excluding the Stankey TH in which he said ATT needed to reduce head count, specifically older employees) . . . it is, and always has been about getting rid of employees, and primarily older employees.

they will use every excuse in the book to drive employees away

Someone who's been working with senior leaders on this nonsense idea here.

The whole flexibility nonsense leaders have thrown out there is BS. It's vacation and personal days - nothing else. And they don't plan on going back on this at all. They are going full on hypocrite by doing 5 day RTO and trying to paper the cracks with work life balance garbage.

I realize most of us are less productive in the office

13 hours ago by Anonymous

8:40am Dallas time

You don't say.

"Not sure about the rest of the company but my org has emphasized there will still be flexibility".

They're saying that to make the conversation easier. That flexibility is called vacation and personal days.

I believe the return to office five days a week is a result of a corporation who no longer wants to pay severance, or at the very least wants to alleviate having to give severance packages wherever possible. If someone is telling you, it is a result of coffee badgers, they are not telling you the full accurate story. They want to use this as a way to narrow down the workforce without having to pay them as severance.

It's not coffee badgers. If that was the problem, they'd fix it instead of giving us some line about needing the extra 2 days in the office to help our careers. No. They want to make us quit and this is how they're doing it.

What you should really hate is how badly the coffee badgers are crushing you on productivity measures, because we are. If you are going to complain, complain about the unfair advantage we have over you because of our superior equipment, network access, and office environment.

I coffee badged like crazy. some mornings I badged in, sat in a huddle room, powered on, checked 10 emails, responded to 10 people in teams, then powered down and went home. I took the severance and left you all holding the bag it looks like. sorry!

Everyone needs to just mind their business. I’m so sick of hearing about coffee badgers. Just because someone is leaving after a few hours of work doesn’t mean they are less productive. Maybe those people are working cutovers in the middle of the night, maybe they support work where their colleagues are overseas and their hours are at 9 to 5. Everyone makes assumptions and is more worried about what everyone else is doing. Mind your business

Hey now… don’t hate the player, hate the game.

The game that our despicable and embarrassing CEO has designed because some inept number crunchers painted a false narrative for him.

It’s a feeble mind that turns a globalist agenda into a blame game against their peers in the same boat. This should be a warning to others. Watch your back for feeble minded back stabbing a** kissers. It is true that there have been many people coming into the office for just a short while and then leaving, but nobody ever said that that was a problem. There were never clear distinctions around number of hours required to be in the office just number of days. This was always part of the plan. It was going to happen no matter what. It has absolutely nothing to do with how we’ve been working. Stop hating on other employees and worry about your own affairs.

Yes they are using the coffee badgers as an excuse for this stupidity. However, we all know that if everyone was complying 100% they would use that to say look how great the culture is with 3 days, now we’re going to do 5. These people have an agenda and they will figure out a way to rationalize it no matter what the data says.

I would like to know if all these coffee badgers they are freaking out about are really bad employees overall. Are they doing their jobs, hitting their numbers etc other than presence? If not, then get rid of them. If so, and it’s not just CYA from managers, maybe I don’t know, see why they are doing it.

Maybe you’d see that this collaboration you’re obsessed with doesn’t happen all that much or the office environment su-ks and you could improve it somehow. Or maybe offer more flexibility so people stay engaged and don’t feel the need to sneak around.

We do all this research to figure out a damn slogan, maybe we should actually do the same to figure how people work best.

Of course the leaders would never do that because they might have to give up a bit power and control. It would be really refreshing if these id--ts actually ditched the groupthink for a change and actually listened to employees the way they say we’re supposed to listen to customers.

And parents distracted by daycare duties at home rather than being focused on work responsibilities.

Jeff can you take a sleeping pill and get off this site please for the love of god, you make 20m a year and can’t help yourself to kick us while we’re down?! Work from home was our primary benefit - my friends were all so jealous that I had such a “great company who recognized the value of employees and changed paths to accommodate for a modern workforce by allowing us to work from home”… you get $20m a year… if we randomly came for your pay and you made $120k… you’d be on our side… so maybe you stop with this bs and talk to Stankey and just get back to being good people - I’m sure at one point someone loved you… well we’d love to love you too.. or you can keep this all up and be absolutely hated by over ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND people..: oh and your pay will be the exact same regardless.. so your options are 1.) be loved and be a good person who fights for his people 2.) be hated bc you’re willing literally ruin lives!! I say this as I just got to my dad’s house to take care of his dog - bc my mother is in a home and now my dad is on life support in the hospital:.. but thanks for making RTO your priority over letting us live our adult lives.. btw - you know we are both humans and equals.. you have more money and trinkets.. but we are no different.. I just want the flexibility to look after my family - please stop pretending like I’m a horrible person for wanting to have a flexible work environment so I can take care of my family..: btw I’ve delivered well over $300m in savings to this company - that’s savings!! Not cost avoidance.. all I want it flexibility in work locations

That’s tertiary at best. Their #1 goal is reducing headcount (via attrition…sans severance).

Wishful thinking and I hope you are right, but I doubt it. In the flexibility thing, that’s a big no. We got that same email from “leadership” and then later got some clarifications from the lower managers; 8 hours in office, no exceptions.

I don’t think the stink is going anywhere any time soon and here’s why. I think he was brought in to chop heads, cut throats and be the bad guy. Once that is done, ie. He cleans up the bloat, then he will get a nice package to go away and they’ll bring in someone to fix the culture thing. But I really think they are boosting everything and cutting costs as much as possible to sell us off.

There are some good points in the OP. They are correct in that while this will be painful for a while, it will fade away eventually...my guess within a couple years and/ or when Stank finally goes.

Do not confuse "fade away" with an official statement rescinding official 5 day a week policy, as that's not going to happen. What "will " happen over time is a return to a more sensible, flexible policy; and a move away from the weekly Nanny State reviewing of minutes on LAN, badge swipe frequency, location, etc.

Between now and whenever that is, a lot of people will be gone. By design, it will be those that refused to move with their position, and those that still refuse to comply with the 5-day mandate and/ or continue to coffee badge. Those of you that think you are going to continue to get away with the coffee badging in the immediate future are delusional. Your icons are cute and all, but make no mistake you are the primary target in the next phase of the Nanny State operation. And your Boss will have to address it, or they too will be gone. I am not making this up, I am close to those in the know about how this is going to go.

Without realizing it you just said the quiet part out loud.
The sc-mbags here will be allowing flexibility and rolling back restrictions later on.
Where you are wrong is that it is not after getting rid of coffee badgers, it is after getting rid of 50 something white people. They have always been the target, which is why John Stankey never released his town hall. It is also the reason that Jeremey Legg will probably never release the update on his aggressive DEI transformation. This company is a spineless arm of the deep state. Bought and paid for and the primary financial contributors to blackrock and so many others. They fleece shareholder value by buying high and selling assets to friends for a song. Assets include their real estate and DTV, Uverse and many others. They write never ending checks to everyone just as long as there is something secretive coming back to certain people. Congress will soon sort it all out in due time. Until then keep your head in the world of cotton candy and ice cream cones. For the rest of us, we see the evil in 20/20 vision and not a single thing escapes us. Where there is filth there is fire.

FALSE

This has been the published intention since May 2023

NAIVE

The flexibility will be you applying for unemployment when you don't 5 day RTO. RTO is only to reduce headcount, nothing else. It is a result of wanting to let go of people and nothing else. They can't fire everybody.