These Workers Were the Bosses’ Favourites. Now They Feel Jilted.

What’s waiting for people heading back to the office after Labor Day? Jealous looks from the under appreciated colleagues who returned long ago.

The prodigal son of biblical lore gets a ring, new sandals and a feast—with fatted calf!—to celebrate his return. For workers just now going back to offices, a more contemporary welcome can include company swag, cold brew on tap and cash bonuses.

One thing is the same: the jealous looks from peers who consider themselves more devoted and deserving.

Like the young man in the parable, whose brother loyally stays on the family farm and complains that he’s under appreciated, many resuming in-person work now have colleagues who remained on site throughout the pandemic or came back a long time ago. And those colleagues are a little annoyed by the fanfare.

“Where’s the acknowledgment?” says Cherokee Lindsay, a banker in New York who staffed a bricks-and-mortar branch in the early months of the pandemic while much of the finance sector worked from home.

Mx. Lindsay, who uses a gender-neutral honorific and pronoun, recalls talking to customers through glass doors when the branch was closed to the public, sometimes helping people who had always banked in person learn to use a mobile app.

Mx. Lindsay moved to a corporate job within the same company in time to join colleagues returning to a gleaming new office building and a food-filled, employee-appreciation event this summer.

Having been in both camps—the one that stuck around during Covid and the one that came back recently—they say the business world is celebrating people who return to their desks but largely taking for granted those who never left.

“I do get upset” about the imbalance, Mx. Lindsay says.

Resentments could fester as companies toast (often literally, with boozy reunions) another round of office returns this month. Comcast, Apple and Peloton are among firms pushing to significantly boost head counts in offices after Labor Day.

“Tension is a real risk with this group,” says Kristie Rogers, an associate professor of management at Marquette University. “If we’re not paying attention to those who have been around a while, making sure that their efforts were valued and continue to be valued, there could be some division that undermines the purpose of bringing people back in the first place.”

She adds workers who believe their in-person contributions are not sufficiently rewarded may quit or “quiet quit,” staying in a job but doing only the bare minimum.

Keeping everyone satisfied is especially difficult since many workers feel empowered to resist office callbacks and expect new perks in exchange for showing up. Those who’ve long been working in person can hardly be blamed for resenting the incentives—why weren’t they offered sooner?—even though the benefits are available to all.

“I sit on several CEO councils, and the No. 1 thing we talk about is the labour shortage,” says Bart Valdez, who leads Cincinnati-based Ingenovis Health, a medical staffing firm. “The second thing we talk about is: What are you doing to get your employees to stay engaged, stay working and at the office? It’s really a challenge.”

This from a Navy veteran who was a stickler for office attendance before the pandemic, insisting that his 1,500 employees with desk jobs show up just like his company’s 10,000 front-line medical workers. He was a self-described, old-school boss in Brooks Brothers suits and wingtips.

These days he’s sporting polos and thinking up ways to woo back his office staff. So far, he’s upgraded outposts in several cities with gyms and regular visits from taco trucks.

I told him he’s gone soft.

“Oh, my gosh, I know!” he said. “My old drilling instructor would be killing me right now.”

He says he’s been careful not to overlook his in-person stalwarts while showering perks on those who are only now coming back—and part-time in many cases. Ingenovis recently rolled out gym memberships and career development services for its medical workers but, alas, no tacos.

One of the company’s traveling nurses, Grover Street, told me healthcare professionals are split within their own ranks. Some stayed at the bedside throughout the pandemic. Mr. Street, for instance, says he took short-term assignments in one Covid hot spot after another, even though his wife was immunocompromised while battling breast cancer.

Lots of others shifted to telemedicine or changed careers to join the millions working from home.

Now, as more workers return to hospitals, some can command five-figure signing bonuses in places where there are staffing shortages. While Mr. Street says he welcomes these prodigals because his profession badly needs reinforcements, not everyone is so gracious.

“There are doctors and nurses that are sour,” he says. “They have some resentment at people abandoning us and then coming back—you know, running from trouble and then saying, ‘Hey, now that it’s taken care of, we’re gonna come back and help you guys out.’”

Seeking spiritual guidance for the embittered, I called Bob Massie, the rare business consultant who in a previous career was an Episcopal minister. He contends the prodigal-son fable is really about the protagonist’s long-suffering brother, and the relevant question for workers who’ve stuck it out in person is this:

“How are you going to react when good things happen to other people?”

Emma McCulloch says she’s glad to see colleagues trickle back to the tech company where she works in California, even though their recent arrivals have been marked by luncheons, goody bags and team-building scavenger hunts that were missing when she volunteered to help reopen the office early this year. She says the company didn’t want to pressure people, and she reasons that fun and games for the first returners would have signalled a preference for in-person work.

Still, Ms. McCulloch hopes companies like hers will remember the harder-to-measure contributions of people who returned to the office early. While those who worked from home longer posted big productivity numbers, free of commute times and distracting conversations, she and her office colleagues were mentoring interns and building camaraderie over coffee.

She’s not looking for a feast in her honour, but “I think you have to look at productivity in a different way,” she says.

For some vacationers, the ideal getaway involves $1,200 ozone therapy or an $1,800 early-detection cancer test.

Call it the longevity vacation. People who are fixated on optimising their personal health are pursuing travel activities that they hope will help them stay healthier for longer. It is part of a broader interest in longevity that often extends beyond traditional medicine . These costly trips and treatments are rising in popularity as money pours into the global wellness travel market.

At high-end resorts, guests can now find biological age testing, poolside vitamin IV drips, and stem-cell therapy. Prices can range from hundreds of dollars for shots and drips to tens of thousands for more invasive procedures, which go well beyond standard wellness offerings like yoga, massages or facials.

Some longevity-inspired trips focus on treatments, while others focus more on social and lifestyle changes. This includes programs that promise to teach travellers the secrets of centenarians .

Mark Blaskovich, 66 years old, spent $4,500 on a five-night trip last year centred on lessons from the world’s “Blue Zones,” places including Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan, where a high number of people live for at least 100 years. Blaskovich says he wanted to get on a healthier path as he started to feel the effects of ageing.

He chose a retreat at Modern Elder Academy in Mexico, where he attended workshops detailing the power of supportive relationships, embracing a plant-based diet and incorporating natural movement into his daily life.

“I’ve been interested in longevity and trying to figure out how to live longer and live healthier,” says Blaskovich.

Vitamins and ozone

When Christy Menzies noticed nurses behind a curtained-off area at the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii on a family vacation in 2022, she assumed it might be Covid-19 testing. They were actually injecting guests with vitamin B12.

Menzies, 40, who runs a travel agency, escaped to the longevity clinic between trips to the beach, pool and kids’ club, where she reclined in a leather chair, and received a 30-minute vitamin IV infusion.

“You’re making investments in your wellness, your health, your body,” says Menzies, who adds that she felt more energised afterward.

The resort has been expanding its offerings since opening a longevity centre in 2021. A multi-day treatment package including ozone therapy, stem-cell therapy and a “fountain of youth” infusion, costs $44,000. Roughly half a dozen guests have shelled out for that package since it made its debut last year, according to Pat Makozak, the resort’s senior spa director. Guests can also opt for an early-detection cancer blood test for $1,800.

The ozone therapy, which involves withdrawing blood, dissolving ozone gas into it, and reintroducing it into the body through an IV, is particularly popular, says Makozak. The procedure is typically administered by a registered nurse, takes upward of an hour and costs $1,200.

Longevity vacationers are helping to fuel the global wellness tourism market, which is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2024, up from $439 billion in 2012, according to the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. About 13% of U.S. travellers took part in spa or wellness activities while traveling in the past 12 months, according to a 2023 survey from market-research group Phocuswright.

Canyon Ranch, which has multiple wellness resorts across the country, earlier this year introduced a five-night “Longevity Life” program, starting at $6,750, that includes health-span coaching, bone-density scans and longevity-focused sessions on spirituality and nutrition.

The idea is that people will return for an evaluation regularly to monitor progress, says Mark Kovacs, the vice president of health and performance.

What doctors say

Doctors preach caution, noting many of these treatments are unlikely to have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, producing a placebo effect at best and carrying the potential for harm at worst. Procedures that involve puncturing the skin, such as ozone therapy or an IV drip, risk possible infection, contamination and drug interactions.

“Right now there isn’t a single proven treatment that would prolong the life of someone who’s already healthy,” says Dr. Mark Loafman, a family-medicine doctor in Chicago. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Some studies on certain noninvasive wellness treatments, like saunas or cold plunges , do suggest they may help people feel less stressed, or provide some temporary pain relief or sleep improvement.

Linda True, a policy analyst in San Francisco, spent a day at RAKxa, a wellness retreat on a visit to family in Thailand in February. True, 46, declined the more medical-sounding offerings, like an IV drip, and opted for a traditional style of Thai massage that involved fire and is touted as a “detoxification therapy.”

“People want to spend money on things that they feel might be doing good,” says Dr. Tamsin Lewis, medical adviser at RoseBar Longevity at Six Senses Ibiza, a longevity club that opened last year, whose menu includes offerings such as cryotherapy, infrared sauna and a “Longevity Boost” IV.

RoseBar says there is good evidence that reducing stress contributes to longevity, and Lewis says she doesn’t offer false promises about treatments’ efficacy . Kovacs says Canyon Ranch uses the latest science and personal data to help make evidence-based recommendations.

Jaclyn Sienna India owns a membership-based, ultra luxury travel company that serves people whose net worth exceeds $100 million, many of whom give priority to longevity, she says. She has planned trips for clients to Blue Zones, where there are a large number of centenarians. On one in February, her company arranged a $250,000 weeklong stay for a family of three to Okinawa that included daily meditation, therapeutic massages and cooking classes, she says.

India says keeping up with a longevity-focused lifestyle requires more than one treatment and is cost-prohibitive for most people.

Doctors say travellers may be more likely to glean health benefits from focusing on a common vacation goal : just relaxing.

Dr. Karen Studer, a physician and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University Health says lowering your stress levels is linked to myriad short- and long-term health benefits.

“It may be what you’re getting from these expensive treatments is just a natural effect of going on vacation, decreasing stress, eating better and exercising more.”

These Workers Were the Bosses’ Favourites. Now They Feel Jilted.

The latest trend in wellness travel is somewhere between a spa trip and a doctor’s appointment

Vitamins and ozone

What doctors say