As PWInsider.com broke last night, WWE employees have been ordered to return to work full-time at Titan Tower and/or the new WWE HQ in Stamford after a long period of time where they were most working remotely. While this can't be considered 100% scientific results across the board, we've heard nothing but negative reaction to the decision, in great part because it was dropped on employees in an email from CEO Nick Khan in the evening and that they are required to return this coming Monday, not giving them much prep for that return. For employees with young children, they will also have to scramble and figure out a new routine, child care, etc. because working from home remotely, they'd be able to burden some of that responsibility themselves.
Basically, everyone will have to reconfigure their lives by Monday and get back to the old ways of doing things.
Given that Nick Khan himself and Stephanie McMahon, when she was with the company, instituted the full-time hybrid mode of home/office for the company, the immediate response among employees has been to blame Vince McMahon for the change. While the call could have come from Vince, there's no way to 100% confirm this was one of his edicts, but it would make sense he wants his people in his building working.
The problem most employees we spoke with today felt is that the world has changed post-COVID and that they found they were far more productive working from home at their own pace (and even spending more time working in that environment) then they would be spending time traveling to and from the office. One employee noted that they used to spend the day waiting to get out of the office and at home, that stress wasn't there - they could just get what they needed to do done without having to worry about "office politics, traffic, whether I felt ill that day, all the things that weren't an issue if I was in my own home."
For some employees, there's also the fear that post-merger, they may be out of a job and as if that wasn't stressful enough, now they will be back in the office full-time, compounding that stress. There weren't a lot of happy employees opening their emails.
TRUNKED
As you saw last night on WWE NXT, Pretty Deadly now swim with the fishes.
At least for now.
PWInsider.com has learned that the team is expected to be at this Friday's Smackdown taping in Corpus Christi, Texas. There's been rumblings they would be called up for some time, so the timing of this being the Draft certainly makes one feel like this is the time and place, but we will see.
CORA JADE IMPRESSES
We are told that WWE management was really high on Cora Jade after her match this past Monday against Nikki Cross for WWE Main Event, which will air tomorrow on Hulu. There were some who felt she's got herself "in the race" for a call-up.