The big resentment: the bosses look at the workers as a revenge for the great resignation when they had to distribute once in a generation

It’s more than a dei or ESG backlash. It is more than if a remote or flexible workplace is the most productive. And it is more than a market correction for a period when wages and inflation, briefly returned economic historians to their textbooks on the 1970s series crises.

These are employers who go up the power of work. It is a question of recovering – for the surpassing of workers who forgot who was really in charge. This is the social class, a reminder that some people are wealthy and others. More than anything, it is resentment.

Put a lid on wages

During the pandemic era, in particular between 2021 and mid-2023, companies rushed to fill roles in competition with breathtaking wage bumps. Employees changing jobs have regularly experienced wage increases of around 16%, especially in sectors such as hotels and retail. Job offers have announced unprecedented wages and workers have entered their new lever effect, which has often left mass roles to pursue better offers – a phenomenon that has become known as the great resignation.

But while the dust has set up, the work pendulum began to swing. With the cooling and dismissal of the request until 2024, the negotiation of power turned to employers. According to a ziprecruit report in 2023, almost half of the American companies surveyed admitted to having lowered wages announced for certain roles, justifying reductions as reset after the hiring frenzy of previous years.

The tightening of the labor market, marked by less job opening and the rise in unemployment, left the employees a reduced lever effect and the bosses on the top.

Back to the office is discipline disguised as politics

The most visible expression of the employer’s revenge is perhaps the return to the office (RTO). What started as a progressive change at the end of 2023, in 2025, hardened in policies without compromise. CEOs insist on five -day work weeks; The resistant workers face discipline or termination. Although some companies cite collaboration and productivity, it really serves a different objective.

Research confirms what many workers suspected: for some employers, RTO is a barely veiled workforce. Managers know that forcing the distant staff again in rigid office parameters will cause resignations, thus reducing payroll without manifest layoffs. This tactic has disproportionately affected employees who have prospered under the flexibility of the pandemic era and are widely considered by labor defenders as remuneration for years of workers’ autonomy.

Salary cuts and “adjustments”: back from the clock

Beyond RTO, companies quietly relaunch the salary increases in the pandemic era. The most hard industries affected by the great resignation – hospitality, retail, health care – have started to freeze wages or implement graduated salary reductions. Perhaps the CEOs are unleashed because they are not as safe: turnover in the first job reached a five-year summit in 2023 and has been degenerate since. Consultant in Challenger, Gray and Christmas employment nicknamed 2025 the start of the “CEO’s concert economy”.

Some companies justify reductions by affirming that wage growth has exceeded inflation, while others simply cite the need to reset compensation to pre-countryic standards. The result: workers hired in the boom are now faced with smaller pay checks for the same jobs, if they are lucky to keep these jobs.

Employee reaction: revenge leaving

This “big reimbursement” has not remained unanswered. Unhappy workers, in particular generation Z and millennials, feed a new trend: “revenge leaves”. Unlike “merging silent” or “slow disengagement”, the merger of revenge is steep and often timed to inflict a maximum disturbance, as during critical commercial periods.

There are also anecdotal evidence of “RTO revenge”: workers acting in all kinds in small ways to calmly protest the increasingly descending work environment in which they were repulsed. The Reddit anti-work anti-work forum has a whole document documenting (and brainstorming) “acts of subtle resistance”. The boss may have ordered the return workers, but they can choose never to answer their phone at the office, too socializing, or even intentionally burning popcorn in the microwave.

In fact, the workplace in the mid -2020 is nothing like a jungle, with all kinds of fauna of different workers, adapted in various ways to dodge the great wave of resentment. Take the emergence of the “coffee badger”, a worker who slides his badge to enter the office just long enough to have face time with colleagues, probably assuring you that their boss can see them, take a cup of desktop coffee and bring home. Coffee badger is a species of generation Y, because the half-carrier workers have often settled in a groove of years of remote work and that they do not like to get out of their hole as much as Gen Z, which is surprisingly impatient of mentoring in person and old-fashioned office vibrations.

CEOs overflowing with resentment concerning the loss of status and being able can benefit from their moment of revenge, but they should listen to all the emerging species of the lazy office. Resentment, after all, is a two-way street, and it is a jungle there.