Amazon employees are slamming the company’s return-to-office policy and plotting their exit less than 24 hours after CEO Andy Jassy announced that they must return to the office five days a week from January.

While some Amazon workers are ripping into the company’s toughened RTO policy on social media, others are even blasting their employer in the company’s internal Slack channel.

"Please do note that this is (in a lot of cases) significantly more strict and out of its mind than many teams operated under pre-COVID,” one staffer wrote on Slack, according to Business Insider.

“This is not 'going back' to how it was before. It's just going backwards."

Another employee suggested they’d rather be put on the company’s aggressive performance improvement plan than comply with the mandate: "Can I negotiate my manager to PIP me… Take my money and leave?"

Employees aren’t just talking about quitting, a small few have already changed their status on LinkedIn to #opentowork as they openly search for more flexible jobs.

“Amazon has announced 5 day RTO, which is unfortunate because I’m interested in working for a living, not live-action role playing and virtue signaling,” an Amazon Web Services engineer posted on the networking platform.

“If you have remote opportunities available, please message me. Nothing is off the table. I’d rather go back to school than work in an office again.”

A commentator on Reddit who claims to have worked at Amazon for three years said that they’re mentally checking out of their current role while they hunt for another.

“Probably going to soft quit and get a new job. F—k Jassy,” the user wrote, describing the measure as a “swift kick to the nuts.”

Amazon’s latest RTO mandate

Amazon veteran, Jassy—who took the helm after Jeff Bezos stepped down in 2021—issued a memo to all staffers yesterday that said they will be required to work in the office “the way we were before the onset of COVID.”

“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward—our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances,” Jassy, who started working at the $1.94 trillion tech giant in 1997, wrote.

Of course, many people moved to the suburbs and made childcare arrangements according to the company’s current 3 day in-office policy—or as Jassy puts it “set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments.”