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And if you've been reading us all week, thank you.

A few of you have written back saying you're genuinely enjoying Still Monday, which is excellent news for us and slightly concerning for your workload.

Keep voting at the bottom. Keep replying. Tell us what works and what doesn't.

And if someone you know complains about work often enough to qualify as a subject-matter expert, forward them this newsletter and tell them to subscribe.

Now.

You know that manager who really, really wants everyone back in the office?

Science has entered the meeting.

Let's get to work.

Companies have spent years explaining return-to-office policies with very serious words.

Collaboration.

Innovation.

Culture.

Mentorship.

Productivity.

All reasonable arguments.

But researchers recently tested another possibility.

Maybe part of the remote-work fight has less to do with the work.

And more to do with the boss.

A study published this year in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes examined whether narcissism in leaders helps explain opposition to remote work.

The researchers studied 259 Fortune 500 CEOs, surveyed 359 leaders, and then ran an experiment with another 546 leaders.

Across all three studies, the pattern was remarkably consistent.

More narcissistic leaders showed greater resistance to remote work.

Why?

The researchers found that working remotely can interfere with two things narcissistic leaders tend to value heavily:

Power and status.

Which makes sense in a deeply human way.

An office is not just a building.

For a leader, it can also be a stage.

People see you walk in.

You have the bigger office.

You sit at the head of the table.

People come to you.

You control the room.

Your status is physically visible.

Zoom does something unfortunate to all of that.

Everybody becomes approximately the same-sized rectangle.

The CEO is Box 1.

The intern is Box 17.

Someone's dog is Box 22.

Power survives.

The theater around it gets weaker.

The researchers even gave the paper a title that would make Still Monday proud:

“Worship me at the office altar.”

Their conclusion wasn't that every executive who wants employees in the office is a narcissist.

Obviously not.

There are legitimate reasons to work together physically.

Training.

Creative collaboration.

Relationship building.

Sensitive conversations.

Complex decisions.

Some jobs simply work better in person.

But the study makes an important point:

Leaders often present workplace policies as objective business decisions.

They aren't always completely objective.

Because companies are run by humans.

And humans have preferences.

Egos.

Habits.

Comfort zones.

Ideas about control.

A manager might sincerely believe:

People are more productive when I can see them.

But that's not the same statement as:

People are more productive in the office.

One is evidence about the work.

The other may be evidence about the manager.

And there's more research pointing in the same general direction.

Another recent study of 301 U.S. employees found that personality traits helped predict preferences for in-person versus remote work.

Extraversion was associated with stronger preference for working in person, while traits and needs related to autonomy and competence leaned more toward remote work.

Again:

Different people genuinely work differently.

That's the part many workplace policies struggle with.

Organizations want one clean answer.

Three days.

Five days.

Tuesday through Thursday.

But knowledge work contains very different kinds of activity.

A sales kickoff isn't the same as writing a financial model.

Training a new employee isn't the same as analyzing data.

Brainstorming with six people isn't the same as finishing a report.

The better question may not be:

Where should employees work?

It may be:

Where does this particular work happen best?

That answer is messier.

Unfortunately, nobody has yet created a corporate memo called:

It Depends.

Recent research on workplace preferences found that extraversion and the desire for relatedness were associated with greater preference for working in person.

Meanwhile, autonomy and competence were associated with greater preference for remote work.

Which means the great remote-work war may occasionally consist of two people confidently assuming everyone else has the same brain they do.

A separate 2026 study involving 288 managers responsible for more than 8,000 employees found that manager-employee trust is an important factor in remote-work adoption and performance.

The research also found that informal forms of control mattered more than formal controls in explaining performance outcomes.

In other words:

If your remote-work system requires screenshots every six minutes, you may have discovered a management problem before a productivity problem.

Security workers contracted to protect offices used by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Salesforce recently authorized a strike in California over wages, benefits, training and working conditions.

Anthropic had already advised some San Francisco employees to work from home amid concerns about a possible strike.

Remote-work policy update:

Stay home because the people protecting the office may not be there.

Corporate flexibility finds a way.

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

Open tomorrow's task list. Then, label each task:

ALONE

or

TOGETHER

ALONE might include:

TOGETHER might include:

Then organize your day around the work instead of around a generic rule.

This sounds embarrassingly simple. That's because it is.

We've spent several years asking:

Where should people work?

Sometimes the better question is:

Where should this task happen?

Imagine two job offers.

OFFER A

$125,000

Five days in the office.

OFFER B

$118,000

Two days in the office.

At first glance, Offer A pays $7,000 more.

Maybe it does.

Now calculate:

Suppose the commute is 45 minutes each way.

Five office days means:

7.5 hours a week commuting.

Over 48 working weeks:

360 hours.

That's nine additional 40-hour workweeks spent traveling to work.

Suddenly that $7,000 difference has a denominator.

This doesn't automatically make remote work financially better.

Maybe the office role offers more growth.

Maybe the company is better.

Maybe you enjoy going in.

But flexibility belongs in the compensation calculation.

Companies already understand this.

That's why they advertise it as a benefit.

Treat it like one.

Research presented this year at the Academy of Management found that some employees perceive remote work as a threat to things like career opportunities, social relationships and workplace status.

For those workers, remote days were more strongly associated with workplace FOMO.

So apparently both sides have something to worry about.

Managers may fear losing control.

Employees may fear becoming invisible.

And HR would like everyone to know the company offers a meditation app.

If you're enjoying Still Monday, vote below.

Reply and tell us what you're seeing where you work.

Is your company moving toward more office time?

Less?

Or has everyone simply agreed not to discuss it anymore?

And if you have a coworker who's currently commuting into an office to spend the entire day on Zoom, forward this issue to them and tell them to subscribe.

They've earned something from that commute.

Technically Thursday. Emotionally Monday.

See you tomorrow.

— The Still Monday Desk