For me, it’s not about the wages but about the micromanaging and loss of my time. Many of us have been begging to telework for years and told that the infrastructure isn’t quite there, only to see how fast the same companies went remote on a large scale the second COVID became a threat. We have spent the last 20 months working remotely and seen the same companies marvel at how productivity has gone up and costs have gone down. We have been told that telework will be offered permanently. And then we were ordered back to offices for no logical reason, when delta variant cases were still going up in many areas.

I hit my breaking point during the pandemic and realized I just can’t handle a job where I have to sit in a cubicle or open office for 8 hours a day with eyes on me and no privacy, having to pretend to work for 6-7 of it so that I can sit at a computer and do 1 hour of real work that can easily be done from home. I refuse to ever go back to an office job, and don’t care how much they are offering. I would turn down 6 figures if it meant I had to give up 8 hours of my life every day so I get paid to pretend to look busy.