Apple delays plan to have workers return to office three days a week

Apple has yet again delayed a plan to require workers to come back to the office three days a week, citing a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, marking the latest failure in its efforts to return to normal work.
Apple Park in Cupertino, California
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:

The company informed employees Tuesday that it’s delaying the requirement, which had been slated to go into effect on May 23, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg. However, the company is still expecting workers to come to the office two days per week. The company said the requirement is being delayed for “the time being” and didn’t provide a new date.
Apple was set to require employees to work from the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning next week — a policy that had been controversial among some staff. Already, employees have been coming in two days a week as part of a ramp-up effort that began in April. For now, that mandate isn’t changing.

MacDailyNews Take: If Apple’s management grow any more spineless, C-suite offices will have to be converted into aquariums. Jellyfish.
Or front porches. Or cat boxes.
So, to repeat yet again, the amount of “work” that will get done on Fridays is pretty much nil. Therefore, Apple corporate employees have an implicit four-day workweek. Expect less to get done than in the pre-COVID panic days – it’s virtually guaranteed (pun intended) – until the labor market loosens and companies can once again begin requiring employees to put in a full workweek.
As we’ve written many times before throughout these endless return-to-work delays:
At some point, some Apple employee, likely someone older who unfortunately has multiple comorbidities — maybe who smokes, has asthma, is overweight, or has other risk factors — is very likely going to contract COVID-19 and die. Some lawyer will be enlisted to try to sue Apple over it. This sad scenario is virtually unavoidable. Return-to-work delays atop return-to-work delays were simply kicking the unavoidable down the road; a waste of time.
In general, human-transmissible coronaviruses do not disappear. There is no such thing as zero-COVID.
COVID-19 is here to stay. It will very likely become endemic, yet pose less danger over time. People will acquire immunity via vaccines (effectiveness TDB) and naturally as they contract and recover from variants since the partially-effective vaccines permit not only transmissibility, but also breakthrough infections. Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds (OC43, 229E, NL63 and HKU1) are, of course, also endemic, but a combination of annual flu vaccines and acquired immunity means that sane societies tolerate the unavoidable seasonal deaths and illnesses they bring without requiring lockdowns, masks, social distancing, indefinite return-to-work delays, etc.
At which point, if ever, will some people decide that wasting away their short lives in abject fear of a bad flu (that’s now mutated into a bad cold, if that), very likely engineered by China and partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is an hysterical self-defeating overreaction?

As we wrote last month:

Puleeze. Can the crap.
The only people who complain of having to go into the office to actually work for three whole days are, to use the scientific parlance: lazy assholes.
So, Apple’s management should collectively grow a pair and promptly extend a parting cordiality to the “Apple Together” wannabe layabouts: Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

As we wrote nearly a year ago (!):

Employees who don’t want to return to work in person should pound sand either of their own volition or via pink slip…
Returning to offices in early September is already ridiculously late.
There are literally millions of qualified, talented, driven people who would gladly work five – gasp! – whole days a week in the office for Apple.
Get back to work or get lost.
Successful companies like Apple don’t run on layabouts who’ve already enjoyed a very lengthy year-plus extended vacation and who are now ruined.
If these employees don’t quickly wake and wise up, cut them loose, Apple. Swing the axe, don’t coddle them.

• I do not adopt softness towards others because I want to make them better. — Steve Jobs
• Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. — Steve Jobs
• “A” players attract “A” players. “B” players attract “C” players. — Steve Jobs

As we wrote rather presciently back at the beginning on March 9, 2020: The real virus is the panic.
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