Company Announces Mandatory Return To The Office It Sold Three Years Ago

AUSTIN, TX — Corvus Analytics informed its 1,400 employees Tuesday that beginning next month they will be required to return five days a week to the company's former headquarters, a building the company sold to a real estate trust in 2023 and which now houses a CrossFit gym, a Chipotle, and eleven furnished micro-lofts.

"Culture doesn't happen over a screen," said CEO Todd Wexler in a memo titled "Coming Home," which did not mention that home now belongs to somebody named Doug who paid $4.1 million for it at auction. Employees were instructed to badge into the lobby each morning, at which point building security escorts them to the sidewalk. From there, HR said, "in-person collaboration" can proceed "in whatever adjacent space is available and not currently occupied by a spin class."

Wexler's memo cited a company-commissioned study finding that workers who stand within 200 feet of a former employer are 34 percent more likely to feel "aligned." The study did not define alignment, sample size, or what happens at 201 feet. A Corvus spokesperson described the metric as "directionally true" and declined to say whether anyone involved in producing it works from home.

By Thursday, product managers had begun holding stand-up meetings in the Chipotle dining room, ordering one burrito bowl per team to justify the table. A Chipotle shift lead named Renata Ojeda said the 9 a.m. rush now includes "a lot of guys in blazers arguing about a Q3 roadmap over chips," and that management has asked her not to seat customers at the table with the extension cord. Corvus employees have taken to calling the arrangement "hybrid," in the sense that half the team works from the sidewalk and the other half works from inside the Chipotle, provided they buy something every ninety minutes.

Workplace psychologist Dr. Ellen Furst, who was not involved with the policy but was willing to comment on it anyway, said the decision reflects "a very pure form of institutional memory," in that the company remembers having an office and simply hasn't updated the paperwork. "Some organizations grieve differently," she said. "This one is holding a wake in a parking lot and calling it Tuesday."

Corvus has scheduled an all-hands for September to discuss "next steps on physical footprint," to be held in the parking lot, weather permitting, or in the Chipotle if it rains. At press time, three employees had been mistaken for CrossFit members and were forty minutes into a workout before anyone noticed.