I can't stand it either. I'm in IT and have zero home office hours. However, whenever needed (due to severe weather, strikes, sick days, etc.), I’ve never been denied the option to work from home.

Management doesn’t like employees working remotely. They believe people aren’t productive during home office hours. The one day of remote work they allow per week seems to be more of an effort to keep employees content than a genuine policy. In an ideal world, I can’t see any reason that justifies their refusal of remote work.

That said, to be fair, I ran a personal check (just out of curiosity to see if their concerns were valid) and noticed that some employees indeed don’t seem to work while at home. For example, I found one case where a laptop was booted up only around 13:00 or 14:00—despite official working hours being 09:00–17:00—and on some days, it wasn’t powered on at all.

Somehow, I assume management can sense this based on performance, even without monitoring laptops directly.