I have long found it difficult to comprehend the ways of the Pinks, but perhaps they've outdone themselves recently. Just a shame my ass is one of the ones caught up in their trainwreck.

Recently, everyone from my office was pulled into a big meeting. Our office has been closed the last two months due to criminal damage by some kids over the road shooting off BBs at the windows; been going on for a while now, no one's been injured, no one's cars been damaged, but the windows of our office keep getting smashed.

Big meeting happens on "Teams" and all the regional big bosses are sitting in, cameras on. We're the UK branch of not small Company, HQ'd in the US (this'll become relevant later). We also handle a huge chunk of the European business, too. Mr. General Manager comes on, and announces what we all suspected; they're proposing they close our office for good. But fret not! For The Company will be looking to open a shiny, new, expensive office a couple of hours away in London.

Yeah, we all expected it. Even prior to me joining, the higher ups had been wanting to open a swanky office in London. It had been spear-headed by the "US Leadership Team" and the "EMEA Leadership Team" in Europe.

What wasn't expected was what came next.

With a faux-heavy heart, Mr. General Manager says we'll all need to up and relocate to London, or we were getting the axe. Well, probably. "We're entering a consultation period".

Shit promptly hit the fan.

You could see it plainly on the faces of the Directors of the UK and EMEA site of The Company who'd had their cameras on, their expressions had shifted to "wait, what?" then to fear. The faces of Managers, too, promptly changed. Mr. General Manager waffled on, with the back of some higher up from HR. A couple of teams were singled out as absolutely, non-negotiably needing to relocate up to London. And my team was one of them. Essentially letting slip that this whole "period of consultation" was but a legal formality.

Now, Reader, this is not particularly rare for businesses. As pain in the ass as it is, but this consultation period has been an absolute wild ride, and not in the fun way. The levels of perplexity and bullshit has baffled everyone, from the rank-and-file Pinks all the way to the corporate shoe-fellating Directors.

"Additionally, we will be requiring all employees on remote and home-based working contracts, to be switched onto in-office contracts"

I'd been office-based from the start, aside from the last few months, but a number of folks I'd been working with had been remote for years with no issues, in-fact the "productivity" of the team (and in fact, all teams) had been going up steadily even with more and more remote workers in the UK being hired. Something wasn't adding up.

The news hits my team like a BB to the fragile glass of an office building in spring. This isn't my first time getting hit with the old redundancy tactic; plus the mental fortitude granted to myself by knowing I've got "BOB" on my side, means I'm sitting there watching this shit knowing whatever happens, I'll be alright. But those Pinks in my team? Taking it real bad. Call me a bleeding heart, but I thought I'd help them out by getting real pedantic about it. I should possibly have taken a true back-seat and just let things go their course, but who doesn't love a bit of chaos. Besides, what were they going to do; fire me for asking inconvenient questions?

I had no doubt in my mind that at least part of the reason for this bizarre change of course for The Company was likely to be some Slack-sucking scheme. Something about London just drains you. Everyone in the UK knows it. Hell, most people over in Europe know it. You walk into London on a day off, and it's a bit of a drain energy-wise. But you end up in London for business reasons? That shit is a black hole for Slack.

We've had the opportunity to ask as many questions and bring up as many points as we like. "The consultation period will go on until we can all meet an agreement", the HR person had said during that first big meeting. Alright, let's test it.

The best way to get the Pinks riled up is to catch them in their own web, which isn't particularly hard. At first, they implied their could be a monetary aspect to this whole switching office business; but running the numbers, that didn't add-up one bit. The office we currently had was one-part office, one-part active warehouse. Turns out the Pinks at the top didn't know that, they thought it was just an office - wait, how does that work? Mr. General Manager, who was heading this project, had visited the office and warehouse many times. I was thinking this was the work of some replacement body-double.

Regardless, running the numbers, renting out an office alone, in London, half the size of our current one (to which The Company owned the building outright) would cost 11 times the monthly cost to rent out an office in our current area. Not factoring the warehouse space, either, which is at a premium because... London. Everything is a premium, even the air.

Alright! We're getting somewhere. Sort of. The rank-and-file Pinks, which I find myself hiding amongst, were extremely confused by this admission. Some seemed to question why they would make a decision that would cost the business so much more money, others questioned why they'd implied at first it was cost-related.

Now I don't mean to be too far up my own ass, and admittedly it's likely just due to natural SubGenius talent, but I'm pretty well-respected at this Company and privy to a lot of information from higher ups that otherwise wouldn't reach my level. I had a call with a Head of Department; they're as corpo-bootlicker as they come, and I've somehow swung it to be in their good graces. They admitted that they'd not been briefed on this before the announcement, just left to deal with the fallout. They'd be having to rebuild several teams under them, "were this to go ahead". Unfortunately, we kind-of all knew this was going ahead one way or another.

"If people are really committed to the business, we would accept commuting into London, rather than full relocation", had been said at one of the consultation meetings, a statement from one of the people heading The Project as read by one of the HR representatives. Very curious, as the specific areas they've suggested as office locations (yes, Reader, they have not actually chosen an office space yet) would bump up that commute time to 3 hours one-way, 3 hours back.

Another curiosity struck me, regarding something specifically about my team. "The other team in [Europe] can pick up [Hemlock's Team's] work while they're training their replacements if they are made redundant". This was strange because the other team have very different processes to ours, it would probably take us just as long to train them on the processes as it will to train our replacements; and the time frame for all this does not add-up if that's the case. Mr. General Manager and several others in The Project know this, full-well.

I won't bore you, with the nitty-gritty workplace-specific questions, but even now, this is still going on. We're awaiting a "decision", but the higher ups have made it clear that the office will be going ahead; myself and the rank-and-file Pinks are just waiting to find out if we can all be remote or if we'll be made redundant.

As more questions were asked, and just as many questions dodged, it became clearer that whoever had concocted this plan not only didn't know how how much of a ball-ache it would be to relocate or move from [our current location] to London, but also did not know how the team worked, also did not know what the office's situation and set up was, also did not know we had a full warehouse, etc...

So, my two theories are as follows;

* The EMEA Leadership Team has been replaced with poorly trained body doubles; poorly programmed robots; or had their brains sucked out via their assholes over the last few months.

* This entire "project" was not in fact thought-up by the EMEA Leadership Team, but instead dictated to them by another team. A team which has never stepped foot in the UK office. The US Leadership Team.

Yes, Reader. Once these two theories are proposed, it makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? The core issues are still confounding enough that it spins circles round the heads, enough to cause confusion and anxiety, but knowing where the decisions are coming from puts it more into perspective.

In truth, after compiling everything I have learned about this "Project" from the official communications and the persistent, pedantic questions I keep barraging them with, both theories could be true. Both theories explain the inconsistencies with the Pinks who're apparently "leading" The Project, and the huge gaps in knowledge

To the confused Pinks in my team, I proposed this explanation: The whole thing is a vanity project (the "prestige" of having a shiny new office in the Slack-sucking capital of the country), decided by and dictated upon by the "US Leadership Team", who have never stepped foot in the UK office (and were thus unaware of many of it's features, and unaware that the UK and Europe teams are very independent of each other). The "US Leadership Team" (and perhaps the "EMEA Leadership Team") view the rank-and-file Pinks as disposable; nothing but juice-boxes to squeeze and suckle the Slack and brain fluid out of and then sell on to the next Company in line.

This is still on-going, a decision hasn't "officially" been reached, but we know The Project is going ahead (as said earlier, I'm perhaps unfortunately privy to information above my station).

Several Pinks at The Company are, specifically, fighting for my job to remain with myself. So even though I'm also on the firing line, my job is a bit safer than the others, but really anything could happen.

This entire event has been fascinating to watch unfold thus far, both from the bizarre particulars of the "Corporate World" to how Pinks attempt to weaponise confusion and misdirection against each other.

I'm beyond shedding a tear for any Company. The only real strong emotions I have over this are that it'll be a real pain in the ass to find a new job.