Ryan Lobrano

The Olympics used to mean something to America. That simply isn’t the case anymore, and I’m trying to wrap my head around why.

When I was a kid the Olympics – particularly the Summer Olympics – were a huge event that commanded your attention. I recall as recently as 2008 diligently tracking the medal count and making sure America was still on top. And now? I couldn’t tell you more than a handful of things about the Olympics. The only real fact I know is that the Seine is filthy, possibly too filthy to swim in, and the surfing events for the Paris Olympics are in Tahiti.

Why don’t we care anymore? I’ve got some ideas.

I came across comments made by the Chief People Officer at Zoom about the success of their return to office initiative. The painful irony of this is that the man himself works remotely and has been for quite some time. The good news is he wasn’t granted some individual single exception. Zoom’s RTO mandate states that anyone living within 50 miles of one of their corporate offices must go work in that office. There are likely hundreds of people at Zoom still fitting that description. Still, if you’re one of the ones receiving a benefit that not everyone gets, the smart move is to keep your head down and mouth shut. Instead:

“I think I can manage people at Zoom effectively while working fully remotely,” he said in the interview. “I go into the office from time to time, obviously, for my role, but the majority of the time, I’m home.”

It takes a level of willful delusion usually reserved for politicians to be in the C-suite of a company requiring employees to work from an office while rarely stepping foot in one yourself, and then he took it even further by lauding the results in an interview.