The fait accompli

First, the latest RTO news. All you kids working from home in your jammies, on your way to Starbucks, then yoga and the dog park might wish to take note. This is your future.

TD has now joined its banking brethren in saying enough is enough. After five years of abandoning the trad office model, the bank is telling employees to be back on the job four days a week, starting in early October. Says the HR boss, Melanie Burns, “working in person helps collaboration, decision making, learning and outcomes, as well as aids in career development and company culture.”

So this makes four of the five big Bay Street guys to announce RTO. The last, CIBC, will not be far behind. After all, it’s just finishing the massive CIBC Square development in Toronto’s rail lands – complete with those collaborative, intuitive, safe, inclusive workspaces that are so de rigueur.

Now, let’s put this in context. Several hundred thousand employees of the Big 5 have been on WFH status for five years. Once this evil return-to-office things happens, they’ll still be getting three-day weekends. Every weekend. And this doesn’t start until the autumn, to ensure pool and polo time is not compromised.

Have we lost our way? When people expect full-time salaries, corporate benefits, retirement plan contributions and employee rights for working remotely from the office, unsupervised? And it’s not just the bankers who have seen their firms’ work culture destroyed by the pandemic – government is in the same bucket.

The feds have had a tough time getting workers back in the saddle just three days a week. “We were absolutely furious,” the civil servant union boss said, as an unfair labour practice complaint was filed against the CRA. “Our people were very upset. We feel betrayed. The trust has been broken.”

See what I mean? This is equivalent to parents getting a monthly tax-free cheque to buy diapers and toys (or pay their mortgage), only to have it taken away by the same government a few years later. That would be political suicide – just as it is now workplace toxicity.

What have we done to society? And just as AI is about to sweep through our world and eliminate a slew of white-collar (banking and CRA) positions. So people who have resisted going back to work will now have to deal with the prospect of no work at all.

Oh, and guess who the easiest folks to let go are? Yup, the ones you don’t see, do not talk to, don’t bump into in the hallway or the food court, don’t sit across from during meetings, don’t brainstorm in person on projects or share stories of dogs and kids as you walk to the subway and can be fired by email or on Team. We are still humans. Some things never change.

Put on your pants before it’s too late.

Now, speaking of wearing the trousers, let’s pivot to the swaggering president of the USA. Today he’s doing an intimidation tour of the Fed. Guess why?

Central banker boss Jerome Powell has been desperately trying to justify the $2.5 billion bill for major renos at two of the Fed’s historic buildings. He’s done so in writing, to a Congressional committee and in a video released a few days ago. Some attack dog MAGA politicians accuse him of lying about the scope of the work, and have escalated the issue in asking for a criminal investigation.

This would all be a nothingburger if Trump did not desire Powell’s head on a stick, planted in front of the main Fed edifice as a part of the renovation project. The prez wants the chair gone, so his own lackey can assume the position and lobby for a drastic chop in interest rates. Powell is ensconced by law until May, but it seems unlikely he’ll last that long.

A moment of truth will come next Wednesday when the Fed next reviews its policy rate – now at 4.25-4.5%. Odds are Powell will hit the pause button once again, still cautious about the coming inflationary impact of Trump’s historic tariffs. That will probably cause a new presidential head-exploding eruption, and move us closer to Fed regime change. So, it could be a mess of plumbing, drywall and electrical work that comes to defang and discredit the most important financial institution on the planet.

Hence the visit today. A prelude to the storm?

Yeah, it’s definately time to go back to work and suck up to the boss. Get some new shoes, too.

About the picture: “Thank you for your blog,” writes Dan. “I have been reading it daily for almost two decades and your insights always help me put together disparate pieces of news and get a direction of where things seem to go. At least from publicly available information sources. Here are Zorro and Felix at 5. These days they operate as a small gang and I think this mafioso styled picture reflects best how the little guys approach the outside world.  They seem to be perfectly in sync with the tribalization of the western society…”

To be in touch or send a picture of your beast, email to ‘garth@garth.ca’.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2025/07/24/the-fait-accompli/