As the U.S. economic picture started to turn cloudier last year, a particular belief strengthened: any contraction in the job market would give corporate leaders the leverage they needed to impose return-to-office (RTO) mandates on even the most reluctant workers. And certainly, we’ve seen examples of managers pressing the advantage, most recently Robert Iger at Disney. But despite the tech sector’s layoffs, the overall job market has remained relatively worker-friendly, leading some employees to simply balk at demands that they come back into the office.