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I’m a retired baby boomer who thinks Gen Z and millennial workers are smart to push back on return-to-office mandates

More companies are making employees go back to the office at least some of the time.
More companies are making employees go back to the office at least some of the time.

Sergii Tverdokhlibov/Getty Images

  • Many Gen Z and millennial workers are rejecting old corporate rules and return-to-office mandates.
  • Some baby boomers might see these young employees as lazy and entitled. 
  • But one who shared his thoughts on Gen Zers with Insider says he’s cheering on younger generations.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a retired baby boomer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. Insider has verified his identity and past education and employment.

There might be a misconception that people my age — I’m in my 70s — view remote employees as lazy. There might also be a sense that since we boomers paid our dues, we see Gen Z and millennial workers — particularly the ones forming unions and pushing back against corporate rules — as entitled. 

From my perspective, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been retired nine years. Now that I’m sitting on the sidelines of the workforce, I’m cheering on these younger generations with all my might.

The emperors had no clothes

After graduating from MIT and getting my Ph.D. at a large state school, I began my career in 1981 as an engineer and scientist in corporate America. That’s about the time some companies began implementing mass layoffs. Before that, if you were a good, loyal worker, you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment. That changed when certain captains of industry came along: Jack Welch of General Electric, then Lou Gerstner at my former employer IBM, and later others.

Those CEOs appeared to view employees not as an asset but a cost. They seemed to care only about shareholder value and the bottom line. Pensions disappeared, and mass firings became a regular occurrence.

I shake my head at what my colleagues and I put up with — toxic work environments, management’s constant gaslighting and gatekeeping, and the endless hoop jumping that was expected of us. But I realize this only in hindsight: The emperors had no clothes. 

Gen Zers and millennials, it seems to me, have a clearer grasp of what’s going on. Many of them seem quite hardworking and commonsensical. They watched as their parents and grandparents worked so hard and got so little. These younger generations see through corporate nonsense. Employers have lost credibility, and that’s why today’s workers are pushing back and demanding more.

Some of us baby boomers do not think highly of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan who’s demanding workers return to the office and disparaging those who prefer the flexibility of working from home. I applaud the people who are resisting back-to-office mandates, which I see as nothing more than employers’ attempts to regain complete control. 

When it comes to where you work, the question should be: Do you get the job done? If you do, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re doing it while swinging from trees in the Amazon or from an igloo in Alaska, provided that the company’s security is accounted for. 

The office is not some magical place

Portraying the office as some magical place that builds morale and boosts company culture is, in my opinion, absurd. The office didn’t do that 30 years ago, and I can’t imagine that it does today. Over the course of my career, I saw plenty of people who worked in an office and didn’t get the job done.

The latest argument to get people back to working in person is that it’s a way for young people to receive feedback and development opportunities. In my experience, the only employees who ever got feedback were the folks management took a shine to, but OK, sure. 

Being in an office at the beginning of a job can be useful, of course. It helps to have a break-in period. It’s also true that face-to-face interactions between colleagues are sometimes necessary when you’re trying to solve certain kinds of problems. But forcing workers to commute five days a week just so bosses can watch them do their jobs is ludicrous.

Back in my day, we sucked it up because we didn’t know any better. Today, with the rise of social media, workers can share their experiences and show the world how their employers mistreat them — all to achieve some gain in earnings or profits.

I, for one, am happy to be retired. And I sympathize with my Gen Z and millennial counterparts who have decades of work ahead of them. Keep fighting the good fight.

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The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was a pain in the neck for Democrats. Now, it could be used to their advantage in the Disney v. DeSantis feud.

Left: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to Iowa voters on March 10, 2023. Right: Mickey Mouse and friends take part in a cavalcade parade on Main Street USA at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World.
Left: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to Iowa voters on March 10, 2023. Right: Mickey Mouse and friends take part in a cavalcade parade on Main Street USA at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World.

Scott Olson/Getty Images/Joseph Prezioso/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

  • Disney lawyers argue Governor DeSantis is retaliating against the company for protected speech.
  • A legal expert told Insider precedent was set in the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court case.
  • Democrats have criticized the ruling since 2010 but may now benefit from its power against the GOP governor.

When the Supreme Court in 2010 handed down its ruling on Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats were scandalized. Then-President Barack Obama warned it would “open the floodgates” to corporations influencing politics by diminishing restrictions on corporate speech.

But now, as Disney v. DeSantis has become an actual legal battle — with the Walt Disney Corporation suing the Florida governor for retaliating against it after CEO Bob Iger criticized DeSantis’ policies — the political roles have reversed. Liberals remain scandalized (albeit for different reasons) but now seek the protections the Citizens United ruling offers.

Citizens United explained

The 2010 ruling held, in a 5-4 decision, that corporations can spend as much as they like to convince people to vote for or against political candidates as long as the spending is independent of the candidates themselves, siding with the conservative nonprofit group that argued the FEC should not have been able to restrict it from airing a film critical of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton close to the 2008 election. 

The court had previously upheld certain corporate restrictions, such as a time limit before elections after which companies could not fund political advertisements, arguing that the limits played a role in preventing corruption. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that the expenditures had a small chance to influence political outcomes and limiting “independent political spending” from businesses and other groups, such as unions, violates their free speech rights.

“The First Amendment does not allow political speech restrictions based on a speaker’s corporate identity,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

“Imagine the power this will give special interests over politicians,” Obama argued at the time, speaking in the Rose Garden after scolding the Supreme Court justices during his 2010 State of the Union address for the decision.

Democrats quickly made repealing the ruling a rallying cry. At the same time, during the lead-up to the 2012 election, pro-business Republicans like presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued “corporations are people,” and corporate spending is their speech, drawing further ire from liberal voters.

Despite Democratic protests and attempts to overturn it, the ruling has remained in place for over a decade — but now, with Disney execs objecting to DeSantis’ controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other policies, liberals are suddenly keen to protect at least one company’s speech.

Representatives for the Walt Disney Corporation and the offices of Governor DeSantis, Senator Romney, President Biden, and former President Obama did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.

A political reversal

As recently as 2020, a decade after the Citizens United decision, President Joe Biden lambasted the ruling: “It’s not enough to just end Citizens United — we have to eliminate all private dollars from our federal elections.”

Though he didn’t mention the decision by name, Biden struck a different tone on Saturday, joking during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner while discussing the Disney feud, saying: “I believe in the First Amendment, and not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” before adding: “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got there first.” 

“I think all politicians are opportunistic to some extent. All humans are,” Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University, told Insider.

Dorf suggested, for example, that anybody could support liberal tax reform while still maximizing the deductions they are eligible for or support minimal federal intervention nationwide, except on issues they’re passionate about, which they think should be subject to federal law: “I think there’s a lot of that opportunism, you could call it hypocrisy, in politics — it just seems sort of especially blatant in this case, but I think it’s a difference of degree rather than kind.”

He added: “The people who, for the most part, don’t like Citizens United are liberal-leaning, but, in this case, they’re sort of on the side of the big corporation and against the government, so in that sense, there’s a bit of a reversal. But there’s also a bit of a reversal from the other direction.”

Dorf highlighted that DeSantis’ platform had taken the traditionally pro-business Republican ideology and turned it on its head, with the GOP Governor aiming at one of the largest employers in the state by trying to strip the theme park of its self-governing district status and drawing condemnation from his own party for the anti-corporate tactics.

“It’s very odd that DeSantis is sort of trying to build a national political brand on being anti-woke and what he seems to mean by being woke is that people who are woke are censorious, right? They’re telling you what words to use, and they’re trying to control it,” Dorf told Insider. “And yet here he is, using the power of government to retaliate against the company for exercising its right to political speech.”

Disney’s likelihood of success

Dorf said he expects that Disney will prevail against DeSantis on the grounds of the precedent set in Citizens United — as well as other cases, as he outlined in a blog post — though Disney’s success in court is not dependent on the Supreme Court’s rulings being ideologically agreeable, just legally sound.

“The complaint draws some of its most powerful evidence from DeSantis’s own unintentionally ironically titled and blandly platitudinous memoir ‘The Courage to be Free.’  Technically, allegations in a complaint aren’t ‘evidence,’ but if the case goes to trial, there would be little difficulty getting the underlying statements into evidence,” Dorf wrote in his analysis of the case.

He added: “Lawyers for the defendants (DeSantis plus seven other Florida officials) will likely argue that the legislature had mixed or unknowable motives, but no fair-minded person can read the recent events as anything other than retaliation.”

However, because Disney is not seeking damages — only a reversal of the revocation of its district status — it’s unclear what a settlement between the state and the company might look like. 

“Nor do I think, if DeSantis is about to launch a presidential campaign, will he likely want to settle,” Dorf told Insider.

“He might be content to let this drag out in the courts. And even if he loses, he can then have it as a badge of honor like: ‘I went to bat against this woke corporation’ — or whatever he wants to call it.”

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Florida is trying to oust an elected school superintendent who publicly criticized DeSantis

Ron DeSantis
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

  • The Florida Department of Education is investigating an elected superintendent who is a fierce critic of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
  • Superintendent Rocky Hanna says he is being targeted for expressing his “political beliefs.”
  • Hanna has criticized the governor’s education policies and has encouraged teachers to ignore political pressure.

Florida is threatening to remove an elected school superintendent who has been critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Leon County Schools Superintendent Rocky Hanna publicly criticized DeSantis for the governor’s ban on mask mandates at schools during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

And at the beginning of the fall semester, Hanna sent an email to school staff telling them to ignore political pressure in the state and “continue to teach the standards just as you have always done.”

Now Hanna may be facing retribution.

The state education department gave Hanna an ultimatum in early April to either attend a hearing or risk being fined, put on probation, or even having his teaching license revoked, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

In a letter to Hanna, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. said the department had cause to “justify sanctions against your Florida educator certificate,” according to the outlet.

Hanna told The Daily Beast that he believes the state’s investigation stems from a letter sent by a Moms for Liberty leader to DeSantis last year.

Moms for Liberty is a conservative parent group that originated in Florida and advocates for the removal of books from classrooms it deems inappropriate and has worked to get members elected to school board positions.

The letter the group sent to DeSantis complained about the email Hanna sent to school staff at the beginning of the school year. The letter was penned by Brandi Andrews, the vice chair of the Leon County chapter of Moms for Liberty, and was stamped with “Let’s Go Brandon” at the bottom, a phrase used by conservatives as an insult to President Joe Biden.

“How this is being handled and the tactics the Florida Department of Education is using to create this ‘investigation,’ are certainly a serious cause for concern not just for myself, but for any superintendent or school employee in the state of Florida,” Hanna told The Daily Beast.

Hanna and the Leon County School District did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment on Sunday.

According to The Daily Beast, Diaz said the education department’s justification for sanctions against Hanna was that his email could cause teachers to express “their own individual political and religious views on students and teachers failing to teach with fidelity the Florida standards.”

Leon County is also where in March the school board forced a principal to resign after parents complained that sixth graders were shown photos of Michelangelo’s David.

The DeSantis administration has also retaliated against Disney for criticizing the governor’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which he signed into law last March. It prevents teachers from holding classroom discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity. 

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Here are the weirdest items in Uber’s annual lost-and-found report, including a Danny DeVito ornament, unicycle, and fake blood

Uber lost and found report
Uber recently released its annual list of the most unique lost items reported in the app over the last year.

Uber

  • Uber released its seventh annual “Lost & Found Index” tracking unique lost items.
  • Among the strangest items include fake blood, pets, a Danny DeVito Christmas ornament, and chicken wings.
  • The most commonly lost items include clothes, tech devices, and wallets.

Uber released its seventh annual “Lost & Found Index” this week, a wide-ranging list of the strangest and most interesting items left in cars, from a Christmas ornament featuring actor Danny DeVito to a Tamagotchi. 

This year’s list of 50 of the most unique lost items includes a bizarre mix of intimate personal items like a remote control vibrator and a bottle of Britney Spears “Fantasy” perfume, to outright strange belongings like a 16-ounce container of fake blood and “my friend’s fake tooth.” 

Other Uber riders submitted reports of losing a “power of attorney document issued by Turkish consulate,” chicken wings, one singular feather, and a slushy machine. Uber also reported it saw a spike in lost Disney and Harry Potter-themed items like magic wands, Disney’s iconic mouse ears, and lightsabers.

Several living things were also reported lost, including multiple dogs, turtles, hamsters, and at least one rat, all safely reunited with their owners. Also notable was over 40 sets of dentures and false teeth, however the company said it actually saw a decrease in lost diamond-encrusted grills, which were reported lost 20 times on the 2022 list.

Among the most commonly lost items are more predictable belongings like clothing, wallets, and devices like phones and laptops. According to Uber, the “most forgetful” city was Jacksonville, Florida, with San Antonio, Houston, Atlanta, and Indianapolis also featuring in the top 10. 

Uber also reported a rise in lost drug paraphernalia as marijuana legalization continues to spread across the US, urging riders in the report to remember their various “ganja goods.”  

Americans reported the most lost items on Saturdays and Sundays, and the three days with the most reports were April 5, 9, and New Years’ Day, per Uber. Riders reported the most lost items around 11 p.m., much later than the most common time of 5 p.m. Uber cited last year.

The company said the main motivation for the annual list is not just the amusement of looking back at particularly odd lost items, but rather to remind users that the app has a specific process for reporting and getting back a lost item.

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A writer for FX’s ‘The Bear’ went to the Writers Guild of America Awards with a negative bank account balance and won for Best Comedy Series. He’s now applying for jobs at movie theaters as writers prepare to go on strike.

Writers Guild of America West offices
The Writers Guild of America West offices in Los Angeles, California. Union members are prepared to go on strike as their contract expires on May 1.

Mike Blake/Reuters

  • Writers Guild of America members are set to go on strike as their contract expires on May 1.
  • The union is seeking better pay and regulation on the use of AI, among other demands.
  • “It’s a very regular-degular, working-class existence,” one writer told The New Yorker. 

A 28-year-old writer for FX’s award-winning series “The Bear” said he’s looking for jobs at movie theaters as members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) prepare to go on strike Tuesday to demand better pay from studios.

Alex O’Keefe, one of seven writers for the comedy starring Jeremy Allen White, told The New Yorker that writing for an acclaimed show has not translated into a glitzy Hollywood lifestyle.

“It’s a very regular-degular, working-class existence,” O’ Keefe, who has also worked as a speechwriter for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, told the magazine.

O’Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.

While writing for the show for nine weeks, O’Keefe lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn without heat, wrote at a public library when the power was out, and was never flown to the set, according to The New Yorker.

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When the show was nominated for Best Comedy Series at the Writers Guild of America Awards in March, O’ Keefe told The New Yorker he attended the ceremony with a negative bank account and dressed in a bowtie purchased with credit.

The writers won the Best Comedy Series award that evening, beating “Abbott Elementary” and “Barry.”

“Unfortunately, I realized not all that glitters is gold,” he said.

About 98% of eligible WGA members — representing thousands of TV and film writers — voted to authorize a strike if a deal is not struck with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) by their contract’s May 1 expiration date.

The members’ demands are better compensation and residual rates or pay for reusing a writer’s work. Charles Slocum, an assistant executive director for the WGA west coast division, told Deadline part of the problem is streaming services decided to pay residuals at a lower rate than traditional broadcasting outlets.

And as streaming services slash costs by removing shows from their libraries, writers are also paid fewer residuals, the Associated Press reported.

The WGA union also wants to address “mini rooms,” which allow studios to pump out a script with fewer writers before a show is greenlit. There are also concerns about using artificial intelligence to produce material.

“Writers are facing the most comprehensive assault on compensation and working conditions that we have seen in a generation,” Bob Hopkinson, a spokesperson for WGA West, told Insider in an email. “In this negotiation, we are fighting for a contract that increases writer pay and makes writing a sustainable career again. When the studios invest millions into producing a certain film or series, they can find it in their budgets to pay us for the value we create.”

In an emailed statement to Insider, AMPTP spokesperson Scott Rowe said the association is trying to “reach a fair and reasonable agreement.”

“The AMPTP companies have approached these negotiations with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority. We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and we are fully committed to reaching a mutually-beneficial deal,” Rowe wrote.

O’Keefe told The New Yorker that his compensation does not add up to much after accounting for representative fees and taxes. Agents or representatives who help clients obtain work and negotiate contracts typically take a percentage of a writer’s check.

Television writers are paid weekly rates, according to WGA’s compensation guide. A showrunner told Insider that first-time and newer writers could make around $40,000 to 60,000 for ten weeks of work. 

O’Keefe said the experience has been disillusioning.

“A lot of people assume that, when you’re in a TV writers’ room, you sit around a table, and you just dream together,” O’Keefe told the magazine. “With ‘The Bear,’ I learned from these masters that, if you are given a shit sandwich, you can dress that up and make it a Michelin-star-level dish. And they were consistently given shit sandwich after shit sandwich.”

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