i’m the manager who has to enforce the return mandate and i hate that i’m the face of it

throwaway-ish because my team is on here.

i manage 9 people, all remote, all good at their jobs, all about to be told they have to come in 4 days. i did not make this decision. i argued against it in the one meeting where arguing was technically allowed and then got told the decision was final and could i please “champion it positively” with my team.

so now i’m the one who sends the email. i’m the one who sits in the 1:1 while someone explains that their kid’s daycare doesn’t open early enough for the new commute, and i nod, and i have nothing to give them because the people who decided this will never be in that 1:1.

i’ve got a direct report in another state who we hired as remote, explicitly, in writing. there is no office for her to return to within 200 miles. nobody at the top has an answer for that either, so it rolls downhill to me to “find a path forward.”

i know this sub mostly hates managers like me right now and i get it. i’m the visible one. but i want to say, from inside it, that a lot of us are just slightly-better-paid hostages relaying a message we didn’t write and can’t change.

i’m not looking for sympathy. half my team is going to leave and they should. i’m posting because i’m curious how many other managers are quietly in this spot, hating the email as they hit send.

anyone else stuck being the messenger for a thing you’d quit over if it were aimed at you?

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