RTO and employees who live outside the DC metro

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Office-based work is also completely out of sync with the real estate market. Most people change jobs multiple times throughout their careers. It makes no sense to uproot a family and take on the expense of selling a home to work for a job that you have not have (voluntarily or involuntarily) in five years. I even know people in the DC that have sold and bought homes when they changed jobs (e.g., moving between MD and VA or PG and MoCo counties) to be closer to work. Owning a home is a huge deterrent to changing jobs when in office work is required, even within in the same metro area when commutes can be very long.

This is a great example of another tangential argument about RTO. My company has decided that we work best together in our office together in person, period full stop. Your real estate market concerns, child care arrangements, feelings about public transportation, etc are all irrelevant. If those are more of a priority for you please go somewhere else and we will find some other worker who better fits our company.

No one cares about your company with hostile supervisors. There is no way to take public transportation to these buildings. We have teens, no child care issues, but when you are working all day and a few hours at night it’s a driving and safety issue. Do you have to get up at 2am regularly to fix something? Have calls between 7-12 at night? Calls at 6-7 am?

We don’t have hostile supervisors, people who seem to like interacting with other humans in person do well in my company at any level. I do have to get up and fix something or have calls at night, and I’m compensated well for my time. Also my 12 and 14 year old kids take the metro and public busses without incident so I find these sudden misgiving about public transportation from grown adults laughable. I’m sure my job and lifestyle aren’t for everyone but the constant complaining from the insufferable pandemic-life-is-my-forever-lifestyle crowd is exhausting.

I wouldn’t be as anti-RTO if I actually worked with people in my office. Except I don’t. I commute 3 hours round trip to work by myself in a conference room. I’m on a project for the next 3 years with 15 people and not a single one is based in my city.

Similar story as my husband. Forced to commute to an office to sit by himself.

There are millions of us commuting for absolutely no reason but to change our laptop’s location.

So you’re saying both you and your husband commute hours per day and then when you get to the office there are zero opportunities to interact with another live person for the 8+ hours you’re there, like it’s an apocalyptic wasteland? I find that surprising for the millions of you.

NP, this actually is the case for DH and I, both lawyers. We joke on his in office day about whether or not he made it through the day without interacting with a single person. More often than not he does. I see people in my office, but we are not “collaborating”, and I am the one that doesn’t leave to go to lunch etc. because I do my 8 hours and then leave.

You are fortunate if you only work 8 hours and no work at home. That would be ideal, but that's not the reality for most. There are early morning and late night calls.

I went hard line with that when we were forced back in. When I am in the office on back to back days I do not even bring my laptop home. I definitely work more than 8 hours when I’m home to get myself caught up but on the days I’m in the office I get in as early as I can and roll out after 8 hours. It also allows you to learn what is a true emergency that cannot wait until the next day to be responded to. It seems like many DCUMers have an inflated sense of their importance at work and act like every request needs to be responded to ASAP or catastrophe will ensue, but that is not the reality for 99% of people. So yeah, I’ve leaned out as far as I can on my office days.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Kids can observe parents working at home and learn from that. The issue is many are not working 9-5. Tonight my husband had a call with his boss at 7 PM for an hour and another work call after that. So, you expect him to go to work (with an hour+ commute each way), then come home to 2-3 more hours of work/calls and a few nights a week, being on call waking up in the middle of the night to deal with emergencies. If you have a 9-5 job being in the office is no big deal, but when its not 9-5 its a huge deal. He'd gladly go in if it was just 9-5 and no work at home.

At some point it also becomes simply impractical....You want someone who has an hour commute each way to be in the office from 9-5:30 pm. But you also want them to regularly give a presentation during a meeting that goes from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm. If they commute home between 5:30-6:30 they are cutting it close; obviously trying to present while driving a car or sitting on public transportation are both bad ideas for safety and confidentiality reasons; and staying at the office from 9:00 am to 7:30 pm is a 10 hour day, not an 8 hour day.

This is what happens on my spouses office days now. He has to take calls driving home and ifyen when he gets home. Very unsafe.

[Anonymous]

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Kids can observe parents working at home and learn from that. The issue is many are not working 9-5. Tonight my husband had a call with his boss at 7 PM for an hour and another work call after that. So, you expect him to go to work (with an hour+ commute each way), then come home to 2-3 more hours of work/calls and a few nights a week, being on call waking up in the middle of the night to deal with emergencies. If you have a 9-5 job being in the office is no big deal, but when its not 9-5 its a huge deal. He'd gladly go in if it was just 9-5 and no work at home.

At some point it also becomes simply impractical....You want someone who has an hour commute each way to be in the office from 9-5:30 pm. But you also want them to regularly give a presentation during a meeting that goes from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm. If they commute home between 5:30-6:30 they are cutting it close; obviously trying to present while driving a car or sitting on public jtransportation are both bad ideas for safety and confidentiality reasons; and staying at the office from 9:00 am to 7:30 pm is a 10 hour day, not an 8 hour day.

This. I’m not taking calls from the west coast on my way home from work. It’s impractical and also dangerous. I didn’t have these calls pre-Covid. This is after spending all day alone in a conference room on Teams. I’m looking for a new job.

Problem is this is what they want. They want people to quit. The west coast has no consideration for the people here. Their day is just ramping up as our day shut down.