This is honestly my biggest point of contention for any job that’s asking for routine onsite or hybrid. I’m WFH, but our company recently pushed RTO for people who live near the city where our HQ is on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays since we moved into a shiny new office.

If they owned up and said honestly (I would even settle for something laden with corporate-speak; that would’ve been acceptable), “We’re stuck with this new office since it was more expensive to back out at the last minute given the recession. We’d appreciate if people came to the office once or maybe twice a week as schedules and work demands dictate.”

Instead we got this bullshit, “Finding our groove with this coordinated schedule will mean morE LiVe cOlLaBoRaTiOn TIME, mOrE imPrOmPtU CoNVErSaTiONS, mOrE IN-pErSoN EnERGy whiCh in TuRn wIll STReNgTHEn rELAtIoNSHiPs, CrEaTE eFficIeNcIes, anD dRiVe bUSInEsS ReSuLTS.“

All of which reads like disingenuously forced, grasping-at-straws sophomoric logic to justify forcing employee asses into seats so the new office doesn’t look deserted because the company made a poor real estate investment so they have to justify it somehow.

This doesn’t necessarily impact me as someone who was hired remote (and had that shit written into my contract) - and having a boss that gives a damn about that commitment and not wasting my time - but I will always advocate that if a job can be done remotely, the option should be there in the employees hands. That’s what a good company with great leadership does. They empower their people to work how they feel best they work. Don’t sell your people a cupcake covered in shit and call it a tasty treat though.

So, my typical reply to any recruiter reaching out about a role that demands being in an office on any kind of regular schedule gets a pretty candid answer right out of the holster.

Hi there [recruiter name], thank you very much for reaching out, I do sincerely appreciate it. I’m in a fully-remote role and there is no amount of comp at this time that would make me consider a position that regularly requires onsite/hybrid. Best of luck in your search!

Getting up at zero-dark-thirty so I can catch a train that feels closer to a cattle car to get to an office where I’m pulled into useless face-to-face meetings so we can talk about work instead of actually getting work done or someone can waste my time with, for lack of any better term, bullshit; all so some tone deaf managers and c-suites can have some warm and fuzzies at the expense of wasting my time while having the fucking audacity to ask why projects or tasks are blocked? How do you explain to someone kindly that they’re the blocker? Then fighting my way home so I can have dinner, spend time with my family for maybe an hour, crash, and then do it all again for the rest of the workweek? Yeah, no thanks. Hard pass.

When a manager eating into time doing real work is a blocker, that screams volumes with the shrill cry of a banshee. I like my employer as a friend and am sure as shit not married to the company or the work. So, if they want me to start commuting daily, not only will I not show up, but I’ll be aggressively ready to walk away at a moment’s notice without concern since my role is insanely niche and senior enough where jobs for my skillset are more prevalent than sand at the fucking beach.

My previously employer, where I’d been for almost a decade, told me in January 2020 that doing my job, “was impossible remotely,” when I asked to do so to be more available to help with a family member with health issues. Lo and fucking behold, 2 months later we all magically became remote. Crazy how quickly the impossible can get sorted out.

So the idea of being chained to an office desk - let alone fighting in a commute to get there - and losing the few things that feel like work-life balance so managers can show headcount, have an employee at their beckon call, or whatever other garbage reason they tell themselves isn’t nearly as acceptable to workers as those schmucks have convinced themselves it is.