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Image shown for illustrative purposes; person depicted is a model.
A remote worker types on a laptop at a desk -
When you have a long commute, this can drastically impact your relationship with work. It can make it feel a whole lot harder to show up on time, and to stay at your job for as long as possible. It can feel like you're losing hours of your life to something, just at the convenience of somebody else. You're not being paid for your commute, and gas is expensive, so it's also a financial concern as well. It's a well-documented fact that commuting can have a negative impact on our lives. A 2022 study on the effect of commuting time suggested this, saying, “The longer the commute, the lower the satisfaction with work and life; the length of commuting can also cause damage to health, affecting physical health and causing inactivity.” It's not only your relationship with your job it affects, it's your whole wellbeing.
It's not easy to stay in a job that you feel is actively harming you. But it's also not easy just to pick up and find a new job. The market is not easy right now, so it's tough to just give the advice of “quit and move on.” It's rarely that simple, especially if you like your job.
When it's not the content of the job that's rubbing you the wrong way, but rather the circumstances around it, this can be a bigger blow to the psyche. You feel like it doesn't have to be inevitable. Remote work has a lot to do with that. A study of over 7000 employees found that “Employees who worked fully remotely reported the highest levels of well-being, while those who worked entirely onsite reported the lowest.” So it follows that you would want to work remotely as much as possible, if your job allowed it. This worker, though, was caught in a tough place where is job was making it difficult for everyone to make their own decisions regarding this. Keep reading for the full story and see what commenters said.
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Last year, my company announced a hybrid policy requiring everyone to come into the office 2 days a week. However, it quickly became clear how pointless it was for most of us—all of our meetings, collaboration, and daily tasks are done virtually anyway, so most departments started going back to working remotely.
One single department that makes up the majority of our staff have to be on-site most of the time due to the nature of our work.
Because they were frustrated about being in person while others weren't, a few colleagues in that department took it upon themselves to start tracking who was at their desk and when. They began filing complaints to upper management about other departments not coming in enough. -
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via Kristin WilsonIndividual pictured is a model used for illustrative purposes.
A remote worker sits at a chair in front of a window
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My commute is an hour each way. Since 100% of my role can be done remotely, my manager was understanding and gave me approval to work remotely more frequently to save me the brutal drive.
Instead of minding their own business, these colleagues started going directly to my boss to ask why they "haven't seen me around much" and literally logging my office attendance. Now, instead of addressing the boundary issues, leadership just dropped the hammer: effective immediately, everyone is required to be in the office 5 days a week.
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I’m furious that petty hall-monitoring from a completely unrelated department just tanked the flexibility for the entire company.
How would you handle this? Has anyone successfully navigated a situation where management capitulated to office snitches like this, or is it time to polish the resume?
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03 via Vitaly Gariev
Individual pictured is a model used for illustrative purposes.
A woman looks frustrated, typing on a laptop -
Polish your resume. Wth these gas prices is time to leave. But hey make sure to "thank" them by name in every meeting for holding everyone to a standard. As people quit, make sure they know it was the office snitches who caused it. And every single person who was forced back into the office needs to complain about commute time, gas prices, schedule, how productivity has tanked now everyone is back in office, yet still on virtual meetings, and extoll how close to home competitors are and how they advertise WFH to your bosses. All of you. Apparently your leadership caves to pressure.
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Upper management likely wanted RTO anyway and they were a convenient scapegoat. Theyre still *******s but if its gonna happen its gonna happen.
When my company first went rto after ****d people that didn't like it quit. So find another job, then theyll either say "ok you can wfh" or you can enjoy a job that allows you.
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Models for explanatory purposes only.
A stressed businessman puts his head in his hands
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I'd be very passive aggressive about it. If I knew who the people were, I'd bring it up in every meeting, asking them if they were happy with how often we were showing up, and if they're happy with getting us all back in the office five days a week. Make sure *everyone* knows.
Hate is too kind a word to describe workers who ruin WFH for everyone else, either by slacking or by doing this.
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Never underestimate people who are *****d off about rules that apply to them but not others.
I work at the central office of a transit agency, and I’ve heard operators who get mad that we’re hybrid, that we don’t have to wear uniforms, that we can tell them what to do when we’ve never even driven a bus. I’ve had transit unions lobbying against me in the name of fairness, actually talking to state reps and telling them that we need to end our remote work policy because reasons. Dude, I sit at a desk.
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