RTO Mandates in Ottawa: What’s Progress Without a Good Regression?

Ah, Ottawa. The city of frozen eyelashes, endless “planned” detours, and a transit system held together by sheer optimism. And now, just as we'd collectively adjusted to the glorious sanity of working from home — fewer bus cancellations, no more soggy shawarma at your desk - along comes the latest great idea from upper management: Return-to-Office mandates.

Not full-time, mind you. That would be too honest. No - they call it hybrid, a word that's starting to feel like the corporate version of "I'm just being devil's advocate."

Let's break down why this is not only tone-deaf, but actively hostile to anyone with a brain.

Because Nothing Says Productivity Like Sitting in Traffic on the 417

Ottawa isn't exactly walkable - not for most of the city, and not for the majority of its workforce. People live in Barrhaven, Nepean, Orléans, Kanata, Stittsville - not because they love urban sprawl, but because housing prices said so.

So what do hybrid mandates actually mean for us? Spending 90 to 120 minutes in traffic to go to an office where - drumroll - we log into Zoom calls anyway. Add a bit of bus and LRT roulette to spice things up, or hyper inflated parking costs with the possibility that you have nowhere to station yourself, and you've got yourself a stress cocktail before your 10 a.m. Agile stand-up even begins.

We fixed this once. We had remote work. But no, let's go back to 2013 because “collaboration.”

Hybrid Work: All the Inconvenience, None of the Value

Three days in the office, two at home. Sounds reasonable on paper - until you realise it's basically a part-time commute to do a full-time job while remembering which set of pants fit.

You still need a home office. You still need work clothes. You still forget your USB key on the wrong desk. It's all the logistical hassle of office life without any of the consistency. And let's be honest: most people go in, put in AirPods, and spend the day pretending the office isn't just a glorified co-working space with worse lighting. And don’t get me started on the wonderful mess called '“desk hoteling.”

“But What About Culture?” Please.

The word “culture” has been abused so thoroughly during this debate it should qualify for workplace harassment protections.

You know what happened to workplace culture during remote work? It evolved. We built Slack channels for shared jokes, virtual coffee chats, and working relationships based on actual outcomes - not awkward breakroom encounters over stale muffins

Culture doesn't live in the walls of an office tower. It lives in how people treat each other. Forcing butts back into seats won't fix morale - but it will grow resentment like mold in an HR-approved ergonomic keyboard tray.

Your Downtown Latte Economy Isn't My Problem

Yes, downtown restaurants and cafes took a hit when the offices emptied out. That sucks. But let's not pretend we're all just cogs in the economic engine of Bridgehead and Booster Juice.

Workers aren't responsible for Ottawa's lack of post-pandemic urban planning. We're not foot traffic - we're people. If the city wants downtown to thrive, they can try something novel: invest in housing, culture, and infrastructure - not guilt-tripping employees back into $4 coffees and $24 parking per day.

To make matters worse, the demand completely dismisses the valued third spaces like coffee shops and brew pubs in your local community - and they are fully equipped with wifi so you can find yourself a comfortable place to work from outside of your home. Those places need your support just as much.

We're Knowledge Workers, Not Factory Line Staff

Ottawa's workforce isn't welding widgets (well, the large majority anyway). We're writing code, drafting policies, designing systems, crunching data. You know what all of those things have in common? They happen on computers. Ones that work just as well from your couch as they do in an open-concept hellscape where we need to hear Dave from Procurement’s chewing sounds while he eats egg salad while he works from his desk.

If you trust us to handle confidential files, major projects, and stakeholder meetings, maybe you should trust us to decide which chair we sit in while doing it.

Final Thought: You Want Us Back? Prove It's Worth It.

Ottawa proved it could work - literally - without daily commutes, micromanagement, and bad office coffee (assuming you get any, anyway). The RTO mandates aren't about collaboration or culture. They're about optics, ego, and the lingering delusion that presence = productivity.

So unless you're paying our gas, fixing the LRT, and babysitting our kids - maybe let us work where we're most effective: not in traffic.

Ottawa deserves smarter policies. Workers deserve respect. RTO deserves to be refiled under “bad ideas from people who never left their office in the first place because they need to justify their building expenses.”