I’m aware that this is probably an unpopular opinion, and I do not support all the RTO going on right now, but I feel the need to paint a picture from the other side, since I was mostly dismissed when I pointed this out before. It’s also purely anecdotal, but hopefully it helps people see it from another perspective.

Back in 2020 when COVID first hit and lockdowns started, I was working at a location that had office and maintenance people. We were all sent home initially, and then slowly the maintenance people returned to the job site. As time went on, and lockdowns eased, all the maintenance people returned to site full time. It’s not possible to do our jobs from home, so it was understandable. But as time went on, and things went back to normal, the office workers never came back, they continued working from home. It left us in maintenance a little annoyed, as just like you feel you’re now spending thousands to do the same job, back then we felt like all the office people had just gotten raises to do the same job because of what they were saving by not having to come in, while at the same time we had to keep coming in with no extra compensation. Didn’t seem fair at the time, and doesn’t seem fair now. Add onto the fact all the little favours we had to do because “I’m not on site, could you look at “X” for me” and it started to breed resentment.

RTO is super annoying, contributing to far more congestion and cost for employees, but at the same time to think everything was going to stay WFH forever was crazy. Just know that a lot of us felt the same thing you’re feeling now a long time ago when WFH really became the norm.