Agree, and nothing tells an employee they aren't valued more than not providing them an adequate workspace

> Does the company need capacity planning in the form of making everyone do extra work

Serious question - is it a hard process? Or do you just have to check a box that says "I will be in the office and not WFH tomorrow"? Because it definitely seems like it's a minor inconvenience at worst.

I don't know about this company, but I've used something similar at other companies, and it involved loading a web site that's unbearably slow and picking a desk on a map of the floor plan daily. Maybe 6 clicks and 10 seconds of waiting for the thing to load if everything goes well and you don't have to zoom around the map or change buildings or floors. What's flow anyway?

That sounds like a horrible interface given the most common use is likely to be "same desk tomorrow please".

Although I wonder how that impacts flow. Presumably you can do it anytime during the day, so you can do it when you were taking a break anyway. Unless it opens at a specific time and you have to make sure your desk isn't sniped!

So the extra work part is infantalizing? I am not here to judge, just genuinely trying to understand.

PS: Should be obvious by now that I don’t work for a “paternalistic megacorp”…

It's not the extra work, it's the requirement to ask for permission to have a desk to do the work they're asked to do.

Let's say you are a company that hires a lot of flexible-remote workers? The deal is that everyone works from home but can come to the office if they want to have a real meeting or if they feel like it. Makes prefect sense they should book a desk if they intend to work from the office. What am I missing?

For some, hybrid work is becoming mandatory. Having to beg for space to work in the office when it is required is infantilizing.

Further, being forced to be in the office so the boss can see you're busy (and thus having your location tracked) is clearly infantilizing. That's what we went through in school as children. A lot of us expect better treatment as adults.

In any case, I don't personally find the argument that there is a reason compelling. There's plenty of things that have a reason but are unreasonable.