Covid disrupts feudal corporate culture
Similar in my company. While laptops are commonplace, since many of us need to be able to travel to partners, customers and other offices of ours, corporate culture is pretty feudal.
However, we still had to panic buy one or two laptops.
A couple of months ago, we have done away our landline phones (in fact, they were VoIP phones). The phones themselves were made in hell, so I am quite happy about that move. However, ownership of a company mobile phone was pretty much tied to role (mid management and above) and/or title (only a select few below PhD).
Hence, our latest hire (a MSc) is totally without a phone. The landlines for the commonfolk are gone, and the mobiles are for the aristocracy.
Also WfH is pretty much restricted to the aristos, at the first possible moment when the lock-down was lifted, manglement announced a return to office. If you can state comprehensive and essential reasons preventing you to return to office, highest manglement will hear your case, and decide case-by-case.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
