TL;DR: multinational company, 8 year tenure, I'm working in US office where the team is just me and my manger. Asked to relocate to another state, team manager denied because “it would be unfair to others in the global team”, without actually hearing my case or even looking into possible options or compromises.
At my job, we have multiple offices around the world. The team I am working in has over a dozen people in Europe HQ, 2 people in Asia and here in USA state X it's just me and my direct manager, let's call him John. While it's just the two of us in the team, the office has hundreds of people working in other departments, but there is no interaction with them whatsoever. I have been working in this position for 8 years now. Team manager (the boss, let's call him Dave) is located in European office. The official company policy is that we have a “hybrid” working arrangement, where we are required to come in to the office 2 days per week to “foster collaboration”. However, since it's just me and John here and we have little overlap in our projects, we continue working mostly from home, in addition to that, there is an off-site location where we occasionally have to go and work, which does not count as being in the office (as far as badge swiping data is concerned). John is very chill guy, a family man, so he couldn't care less where I work from, especially since he himself takes advantage of this flexibility to beat the traffic, take his kids to school and back, etc.
Nearly all interactions with colleagues in the team are over zoom with people in Europe anyway. Because of personal life choices I want to move to and live permanently in another US state Y. The company has some fully-remote workers which are exempt from the mandatory office attendance. There is also an official FAQ how to accommodate this exception, getting approval from you direct and team managers, checking with tax, legal compliance, etc. It's well documented and there are forms to fill out readily available.
I thought this would work out easily, since we're both here remote in everything but the title. Brought this up to John, told about the personal reasons: I want to lay down some roots and get some stability, be a part of community, get a permanent home and I just don't see that happening in the current state X. I also implied that I will be moving to state Y sometime anyway and it would be great if I could continue working for this company if it can accommodate my needs in this situation. He seemed positive about it and did not think that my performance of company would suffer from it in any way. John was also pragmatic and said yeah, you've got to live your life, and it's up to us if we want to keep you as an employee.
John then said he will check with the team manager in Europe to see if it's possible. After that conversation which I was not a part of, John explained Dave's (team manager) decision: It's not possible, because it would be unfair to other people in the “global team”. The argument is that if I ask to work fully remote, then everyone in the global team should have the same equal opportunity to work fully remotely. i.e. I cannot have a special treatment compared to my colleagues.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this decision. The company handbook claims that it values employees and tries their best to work out arrangements that could accommodate it's employees life circumstances. I worked here for 8 years, you would naturally expect that I would be valued and there would be some effort to retain me. I think fairness argument is not really applicable here because by the nature of the request I am asking an exception.
Also now that I had a day to think about it, that argument is also totally irrelevant, it would be unfair if I had a large team here, everyone came in 2x week and I got special treatment to stay in the same city and WFH full time. That's not really the situation here. At the same time I'm disappointed in John, since it seems he didn't even try to make this work. It feels unfair that a person in another country has the authority to decide how we organize ourselves here in the USA. From the perspective of teams in other locations, there would be no change, all our interactions would still be remote as they were before, so what's the harm? Do you think I have a strong case to push further on this matter and try to work out this remote work arrangement or is it better to let it go and start looking for a new job?
Sorry for the long post, I'm just venting here, but I don't think I have ever been this pissed off. While it was never a guarantee, I expected at least some investigation or exploration of options, compromises, or considering other cities that the company has a presence or SOMETHING. Apparently it's just easier to not care and replace people. Now I'll be having wet dreams about finding a new job asap and giving that sweet 2-week notice.
edit: formatting