Amazon is once again angering employees with its refusal to use or rely on hard data to justify in-office mandates, citing “serendipity” instead.

Amazon has been aggressively pushing for employees to return to the office (RTO), even asking some employees to relocate closer to one of the company’s offices in order to facilitate RTO. Mike Hopkins, SVP of Amazon Video and Studios, recently upset employees by saying, “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better,” when referring to RTO mandates.

According to The Seattle Times, AWS boss Adam Selipsky has added fuel to the fire at a recent all-hands meeting. The executive kept falling back to “serendipity” to justify the company’s RTO stance, much to the frustration of those in attendance.

“Just think about … the serendipitous things that can happen,” Selipsky said, referring to employees working in-person.

“Actual data … it’s very hard to come by,” he added, especially “any data that I think would stand scrutiny.”

That revelation did not sit well with employees, with many of them wanting more than just “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for” (per Merriam-Webster) to justify upending their lives for the sake of RTO mandates.

“The biggest thing that people have complaints about at the moment is the lack of communication and the lack of transparency on what the expectations are right now and what are the expectations shortly down the road,” an AWS manager told the Times. “It’s like pulling teeth to get anything there.”

That same employee said Amazon’s approach was “dehumanizing,” and it felt like the company didn’t trust its employees enough to communicate with them honestly, relying on vague ‘no data’ and ‘serendipity’ arguments instead.

Studies have already shown that RTO mandates have been a disaster for companies, costing organizations valuable employees in an environment where it is already difficult for tech companies to find the talent they need. What’s more, other studies have shown that remote employees work longer and harder than their in-office counterparts.

Evidently, however, Amazon appears to value “serendipity” over facts.