They sent around a form at my work asking everyone what their preference would be. The first guy replied to everyone with his preference: 100% wfh. Since he replied-all, so did everyone else. We got through about 20 employees, all stating their preference as WFH before a manager shut down the reply-all.
A week later we got an email saying people wanted 2-3 days in office.
Yep, a blatant and botched attempt at manufactured consent right there.
If you want to stick it to them you should put out an informal poll with all employees and publish those results separate, show everyone how the company is lying to you.
Yeah, never did the chain email in my old job, but every single person I talked to wanted to stay remote. Management said "We're hearing that people want to come back to the office". After that, headcount dropped from ~40 to ~28, including me.
Hilarious! I wonder (not really) if they would have kept the reply-all going if the consensus response was "2-3 days"... Sounds like a case of a survey with only one correct answer.
A week later we got an email saying people wanted 2-3 days in office.