I have a few observations and feelings on this and in no particular order…
Compliance actually feels higher than I thought it would be. I am in MMK so I can only speak to that location, but many people are clearly showing up & ki-ling time by going on walks around the buildings, spending long durations in the cafe, playing games, talking to co-workers, then leaving after putting in however many hours of “in-person”. The productivity despite being in-office can’t possibly be any higher than remote. Fidelity’s gonna stick with it regardless though and pretend like collaboration is up. It’s purely pretend and very obvious at ground floor if they act like this had any positive benefit in the slightest.
Piggy backing off the first point, most people seem to do their badge-ins, and the office is full. Nobody is happy about it obviously, and it causes the energy to be miserable. RTO has been the only topic of conversation since the start and it’s clear that people are burnt out. Even if you try to enter the office in a good mood, it quickly gets suffocated away. There’s no choice but to interact with other people who also don’t want to be there, and the feeling multiplies.
The FLIK workers are slammed every day. They were already full-time before everyone else came back and so it’s clear they have their own set of frustrations over needing to double their output every day. Some are handling it well and others are not. The ones who aren’t, while I definitely don’t blame them and even feel kinda bad from the collateral damage, it adds another layer to the frustration and discontent with being overcrowded and surrounded by unhappy people in the office.
Depending on the time you arrive in the morning, the LAZ parking attendants tend to point to obvious places and don’t add any benefit whatsoever, mostly just funny/useless observation.
Like I said earlier, I am in MMK. I’ve heard so much about how nice the new seaport office is and how much money Fidelity invested into it. I’ve only been at the company for less than a decade, but those who have been here since the 90s and early 2000s attest that there have been next to no improvements or changes to MMK. It’s absurd how dated the office is, and I for one am quite jealous over the blatant neglect of locations outside of headquarters.
I (naively or not) hold out hope that eventually we move to something like 3 or 4 days a week expectation instead of 5, but I can’t see that happening with the current people making the decisions. Also, the rumor of someone stealing FLIK food doesn’t shock me given the state of affairs & economy.
This deserved a thread of its own, the OP is @a6+1m3dc6nye.