If you haven’t seen this video that WebMD parent company “Internet Brands” sent to their employees telling them that they need to return to the office, you really have to check it out. It’s cringe-inducing, tone deaf, and callous in the way that American business has desperately worked to normalize for decades.
“We work better together,” Internet Brands CEO Bob Brisco states in the video, adding, “We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point.” The video leaked to the public and the reaction was… Predictable.
“Well,” you might say, “CEOs gonna CEO.” That’s true, the withering empathy of the C-suite, unchecked by labor or anti-trust protections dissolved by Ronald Reagan, has allowed the American CEO to evolve into a different species, one which looks upon its employees as “inconvenient gut flora1.”
But all that aside, the entire stated basis of this message is fallacious, and I’ll tell you why.