COMP NEWS – A lot of companies are pushing their employees to return to the office in a post-COVID-19. Some ask softly. Some beg earnestly. Some demand. And some release a very bizarre, confrontational video with low-quality special effects and executives telling employees “Don’t mess with us.” The parent company of WebMD chose the latter option, and the internet is perplexed.
The California-based parent company of WebMD has published a cringe-inducing video mocking remote workers and threatening employees who continue to refuse to return to the office.
In a video meant for internal employees but which was also published on the company’s public Vimeo page, Internet Brands CEO Bob Brisco tells employees that “unfortunately, too big of a group” is still only working remotely and that he is getting “more serious” about making sure that changes in the near future.
“We aren’t asking or negotiating at this point. We’re informing,” he says at one point.
In the two-minute video, which has since been updated to adress the criticism the company received, Brisco reprimands employees who have refused to come in while the classic New Orleans song “Iko Iko” plays in the background. The video crosses into the bizarre from there. At various points, a stock image crosses the screen of a white-collar remote worker taking a video call from his kitchen while still in his boxers, and a Google Hangout welcome page appears, stating that no one else is on the call because “Everyone is in person now!”
The video, which has since gone viral for its strange nature, is not the first artifact by a company to evoke outcries for its tone-deaf demands.
With its questionable video, Internet Brands—which, unsurprisingly, owns a number of internet brands including Medscape, Lawyers.com, and CarsDirect—has become the latest in a string of companies to fumble its return-to-office demand. The video is emblematic of how much executives have struggled to convince workers to return to offices over the last year, leading to awkward gaffes and ill-fated ideas. Last year, the CEO of Clearlink, a Utah-based digital marketing and technology company, enraged employees when he celebrated an employee who sold the family dog after he demanded employees return to office.
To read more about the bizarre video (and see it for yourself), click here.
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