For context, I work for a financial institution which encourages a hybrid model of working from home and coming into the office. However, they don’t even monitor or care really if people are actually coming into the office. I do a phone job which I can do just as efficiently at home. In fact I have been working almost exclusively from home for the past few months. Normally they allow us to work from a different location other than our home address if we are traveling, as long as we put the address we are staying at in their system. However they just announced that we will not be allowed to do that for the holidays, and if we are traveling we will be forced to take PTO for those days.
My issue is that when I started this job a few months ago, I was told it wouldn’t be an issue to work remote for the holidays. My family lives across the country and I was planning to work remote there during Christmas and thanksgiving. I do not have enough PTO to cover both of these holidays so I will be forced to stay here alone for one of them. They said if we try to travel and work, we will be disciplined up to termination. The thing is we also have to do a lottery for PTO around the holidays, and if you decide to call out you are still penalized. I feel like this is very unfair to people whose families do not live near the office. What is the difference between me sitting at my apartment or working from my sisters house? It just doesn’t seem logical and to me seems like they are trying to control people.
Edit: to clarify they can tell where I log in from. So if I log in on the laptop in another state, they can track that.