Unfortunately, companies that stopped allowing remote work not only affect employees. Many pets are being abandoned because as people need to return to the office, they no longer have time to care for them.
According to the Nevada SPCA report, pets are being returned to their shelters because people must go back to the office. Remote work should not be mandatory, but it’s proven that in many situations, there’s no need to stop working from home!
And the worst thing is that forcing people to give up on this flexible lifestyle will not only impact the way they perform but also, in some cases, is causing them to say goodbye to their four-legged best friends. But is this the companies fault, or did people not think this through? Luis analyzes the situation.
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Luis:
Animals are being abandoned because companies discontinue remote work. Now, that’s not good. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Virtual Coffee Chat with Luis. I am your host Luis as all the ways. I need some coffee to calm my nerves. I’m sorry if my I’m not my usual cheerful disposition, but today is a sad day. I’m a bit raw because our family dog just died yesterday. He wasn’t doing well and we had to put him down. He died happily, right? He died with no pain and being held by the person he loved the most, my mom. So, yeah, it’s not a great day, but here I am to have coffee with you in the mornings as usual. Then because I wasn’t raw enough from that, I see that animals are getting abandoned as companies discontinue remote work.
So this news came at the time where it would make me the saddest/angriest. So apologies for my disposition, but yeah, let’s dive into it and let’s see how this sucks and why this shouldn’t happen and shouldn’t have to happen, right? So the reality is that this report comes from Nevada from the SPCA. What happens is that animal shelters are seeing a huge uptick as companies stop their work from home policy. Shelters are seeing a huge uptick of people going to give away their animals. It’s mostly cats because it’s cat season, but also plenty of rabbits and dogs, which is pretty sad. Most of the reason is that they can find the time to care for them now, et cetera, et cetera, and also because many people are being forced to move again because they can’t work from Nevada anymore. They need to go back to the office. That is absolutely horrible in two ways.
So first of all, this is just one more nail in the coffin for regular work. As much as I do say that we shouldn’t make remote mandatory because obviously some people thrive in the office. The reality is that this is just one of the many situations where working in the office, which is completely not needed because, come on, if you were working for the last year outside of the office, that kind of proves that it’s not needed to be in the office. In the end, it’s just causing misery and pain all around almost arbitrarily, right? Why would you, right? If remote work has worked out by all metrics pretty darn good in the last year, why would you force people to go to the office? Why not give them the option, right, as some companies are doing and we’re going to discuss that over a cup of coffee.
But why shouldn’t that just be a global thing, right? Why not just allow the people who, because maybe they want to have a life in Nevada, maybe they want to keep their pets, keep working from home? Now, it’s a totally different case when you’re looking to hire, right? If you want in the future to only hire people for the office, please do, right? The people that are considering positions with you, that will be their option if they want to put up with that or not. But for the people who already organized their lives around remote working, why are you forcing them to do a second reorganization in their lives, forcing them to give up on their new chosen place of living and on their pets? That’s just arbitrarily cruel and it doesn’t make any sense.
Now, the flip side of this is the people who, knowing that this was a possibility and probably knowing… I mean, let’s face it, if you’ve been working for some years in your company, you probably know, you probably have a pretty good idea of how the cards are going to fall, right? Why would you commit to taking care of an animal if you knew that it was going to be for a short term? Who thinks like this, right? I really besiege you before you adopt an animal. Animals are great. You’ve seen my cats jump around me, and even when I’m recording, jump to my shoulder and jump back there. It’s just the joy, and the company, to have them around. It’s really great. But if you can’t commit to taking care of an animal in the longterm, right, don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Look, if you commit to taking care of a living being, right, that should become one of the pillars around which you organize your life, right? Kids, animals, elderly parents, right? If you choose to take on that responsibility, then you owe them and you owe your conscience to make the living being that you are responsible for a priority. You might say that you’ll have to sacrifice some things for that. This is true, right? That’s why I’m not saying get the pet. But what I am saying is if you get a pet, then don’t treat it as a disposable thing, right? Don’t treat it as a temporary thing. Make that one of the pillars around which you organize your life, because they are. So first, you’re going to inflict suffering on yourself. Because if you even have something resembling a heart, you’re going to get attached. If not, why do it in the first place?
Then apart from that, you’re going to hurt them. Do you think that animals don’t care when you go away? They might go over it. Fair enough, right? Their memory doesn’t work exactly like us. It’s not like you’ve seen in Disney movies where they remember the person, their first owner for years and years, and I don’t know, go across the country to try to find them. But still, it’s going to hurt them. It’s going to. I can see, right, that when I leave them babysit… When I go to travel with my wife and I leave my pets to be babysat by my mom, which takes beautiful, wonderful care of them, I still can see that when I’m back that they missed me and my wife. Their behavior is changed. Sometimes, and my mother usually tells me that they didn’t eat as well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They do feel that the impact. You are causing suffering if you’re abandoning them.
Again, look, life is tough. Sometimes you need to make tough decisions. I’m not saying that you’re a terrible human being for abandoning an animal if you face some unforeseen circumstances. But this was almost 100% foreseen. You probably knew that your remote setup wasn’t going to last forever. I very much doubt that when some companies are telling you to go back to the office, that catches the employee by surprise. We usually know that companies default to the way they’ve usually made business. It’s very hard for a company to completely shift 100% and keep it shifted like that. So, sorry for the bummer. Sorry if this wasn’t like the cheerful Virtual Coffee Chat with Luis that you’re used to. I’m just a bit bothered today.
Anyway, thank you for hanging around. Thank you for listening to me. I do hope that this touches someone. If you could do me the favor of sharing it so that more people see it and maybe some people reconsider their options and maybe even some managers reconsider their remote work policy, I think that would be good for everyone really. At least the coffee still tastes good. Well, that’s it. If you want to know more about news like this one, right, or insights into remote work, please go to thinkremote.com. Press subscribe. Subscribe to our newsletter. That’s it. This was Virtual Coffee Chat with Luis. See you tomorrow.
