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By Elizabeth Spiers

Ms. Spiers is a writer and digital media strategist. She was the editor in chief of The New York Observer and the founding editor of Gawker.

Among the many brilliant touches in the dystopian workplace thriller “Severance,” on Apple TV+, are the perks offered by Lumon Industries, the cultlike, fluorescent-lit corporation where the series takes place: company-branded Chinese finger trap gag toys; cheery if mediocre caricature portraits; a baffling “waffle party”; the much-discussed “music dance experience”; and, more than once, a melon-ball buffet served on a rolling bar.

It’s hard not to see real-world analogues — in the table tennis and kombucha taps of Silicon Valley, and especially in the post-pandemic flurry of office happy hours and gift card giveaways, as companies try to lure white-collar workers back to offices. At the high end, a real estate data company offered employees who returned to the office a daily chance to win $10,000, a trip to Barbados or a new Tesla; more common incentives are company swag, pop-up snack stands, Covid personal protection gift bags and stress balls.

Companies aren’t wrong to perceive a reluctance to return to offices among some workers. Even if bosses see the return as simply a resumption of the terms employees had agreed to, workers are increasingly aware of the ways that those terms have shortchanged them. After two years, those who were able to work from home have seen real benefits — reclaiming time from commutes, flexibility for family responsibilities, freedom from perpetual distractions and restrictive dress codes — and now they can’t unsee them. Surveys taken last year indicated that two-thirds of workers would prefer to have continued remote work options and would sacrifice $30,000 in raises to keep them. Somewhat higher percentages of women and Black knowledge workers say they are reluctant to return to offices.

But among executives and managers, there’s still a strong perception that in-person work is the only real work. So as younger workers in particular resist company mandates to return to their desks in the overly air-conditioned offices where many had never felt comfortable, companies are trying to sweeten the deal.

There are, of course, good reasons some workers may prefer to return to in-person work: more visibility into what’s happening in the workplace; opportunities to socialize with co-workers and find mentorship; a desire to separate work from home — a place where many have already been logging long and grueling days of work. And not all companies are in denial about what they need to do to get workers back on board with coming into the office; many are offering permanent flexibility for remote work and hybrid schedules, and finally addressing workplace discrimination issues that have become more apparent in recent years. Others have added management training and worked to improve work cultures, or instituted mental health programs and coaching services as new or expanded benefits. It’s doubtful, however, that a new pair of company-branded office slippers will be a real draw.

I’ve come to think of these corporate toys and rewards as the work equivalent of the cheap prizes you win at a carnival after emptying your wallet to play the games. The difference is that the point of the carnival is to have fun, and the prizes are incidental. In the workplace, this is just a laughably terrible trade-off. Who wants to give up the two hours a day they gain by not commuting for a coffee mug?

Perks in exchange for more time at the office and in work-related activities are not new to American work culture, of course. In prior eras, this sort of light corporate bribery might have manifested in golf outings and in-office bar carts, but the end goal is the same. Putting in long hours at the office is often conflated with a strong work ethic and more productivity, though it may not be indicative of either. To make employees feel this approach is reasonable, many employers blur the line between work and the rest of life, while offering little diversions here and there to approximate fun.

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