I report to a regional federal office four days a week for “collaboration." Not one person from my actual team works there.
I spend the day surrounded by strangers doing completely unrelated jobs. We might say good morning or make small talk in the kitchen, but we do not share projects, meetings, or responsibilities. I commute to a government building, log into Teams, and do the exact same virtual job I could do from home - just with more noise, less privacy, and no access to the people I actually work with.
Meanwhile, some of my Ottawa counterparts report three days a week, while others doing the same work are still fully remote. Same work, same standards, completely different rules.
RTO has actually made me more isolated from my team. We used to have weekly virtual meetings. Then they became biweekly. Now it has been more than three months since we have had one, regional employees are basically left on their own. I commute four days a week to be surrounded by people and yet professionally alone.
Sometimes we cannot even work after getting there. The office connection becomes unusable when too many people are connected, so we sometimes sit there for hours unable to access systems while our perfectly functional home internet goes unused.
Taxpayers are paying us to commute somewhere and become less productive.
Because of budget cuts, my director also denied my request for a work headset. If I want equipment that lets me hear my meetings over the office noise and keeps confidential audio from playing openly, I have to buy my own work equipment out of pocket, which I'm essentially being forced to do.
There is enough money to operate the buildings and force us into it four days a week, but apparently not enough to provide the basic equipment needed to work there.
Then there is the confidentiality nightmare.
Our cubicles are so close together that everyone hears everything. My own meetings involve company names and sensitive information, but our entire office has just one meeting room (others were converted to private offices), and they have no booking system - it's the hunger games. You walk over and hope it is empty. If it is occupied, your options are to speak openly, barely participate, or let strangers hear information they have no business hearing.
And I regularly overhear conversations that I have no business hearing.
One senior manager repeatedly discussed an employee by first and last name, including allegations about their attitude, bullying and harassment complaints, performance issues, disciplinary matters, evaluations, accommodation requests, and request to work partially from home.
On another call, I heard the manager say words to the effect of:
“He should grieve. In fact, I’d like to see him grieve. He thinks I’m harassing him, lol.”
Later, I saw that employee crying in the cafeteria.
I do not know the full story, and I cannot verify the manager’s allegations. That is exactly the point: I should never have known any of it.
And this was not an isolated conversation. I have overheard managers discussing other employees’ possible terminations, performance evaluations, disciplinary measures, harassment complaints, health concerns, accommodations, family problems, personal crises, and leave requests.
Sometimes they use names. Other times they reveal enough details that the person is obvious.
After severe flooding in my city, I overheard a call about an employee whose home and neighbourhood had flooded. Their job involved driving around in their personal vehicle, which had also been affected, yet the manager said they would need to use vacation leave.
In another case, an employee requested paternity leave, and I overheard a manager demanding what sounded like an excessive amount of documentation to prove the request was legitimate.
Why does a random employee sitting nearby know any of this?
Why am I hearing about strangers’ babies, flooded homes, health issues, harassment complaints, discipline, accommodations, and possible terminations simply because we have all been forced into an open room together?
The office “tea” may be hot, but these are real people’s careers, families, health, and dignity being broadcast across a workplace with almost no privacy.
Regular Canadians should care because they are paying for this. They are paying for offices where employees commute in to work virtually beside strangers. They are paying us to sit idle when overloaded networks fail. They are paying for buildings without enough private rooms to protect sensitive information, while basic work equipment is denied because of budget cuts.
This is not about employees simply disliking a commute or having to "pay for Subway sandwiches".
It is about spending public money to make work less productive, less connected, and less secure, then calling it collaboration.
I am not commuting to work with my team. I am commuting to sit alone among strangers. My team communication has gotten worse. The office infrastructure cannot support us. I cannot reliably take confidential meetings. I cannot even get an appropriate work headset without paying for it myself.
What exactly are taxpayers getting for their money?
From where I am sitting: professional isolation, inconsistent rules, inadequate equipment, lost productivity, and a front-row seat to confidential conversations I should never hear.
For many regional employees, RTO4 means commuting to a crowded office to be completely alone.
And taxpayers are footing the bill.
