This is the point of view I'm struggling to understand. Patagonia is a business, one of many who overhired during the pandemic, and now they need to reduce staff and made a decision to mandate a RTO. Why is there this expectation that an employer-employee relationship is some enduring pact that can never end? If we can trust that severance is indeed generous, how are the employees being treated poorly? An employer is not required to pay any severance, nor are they required to provide a job for them at their in-person locations.
Everyone is just struggling with the fact that traditional employment is dead and outdated. Nature keeps trying to nudge us toward being contractors but most people frame this in their mind as some sort of regression. The real regression is trying to remain an employee (family member) in a world that doesn't favor that.
We are, I think, allowed to be repugnanted by a world which keeps showing us how callous cruel & uncaring it is.
It's up for debate what's regression & what's norm. The tough love crowd loves to pretend like this is how it always has been, but there's just no historic evidence about for showing what totalized every business versus literally every other business on the planet looks like. You have to be a dumb fucking sap to not see that things are different as fuck. (And heartless & brutal, if you accept this is the way.)
Why anyone things we should accept this shit is beyond the pale to me. The purpose of a business is to provide a good way of life for the people in it. Anything else creates irresolvable internal tensions that will not be good for this world, and which will drive a company apart from excellence ongoingly.
