My company, a large, world-wide business, has put out their Return to Office mandate. They request that everyone RTO at least two days per week, “if it makes sense for your team”.
I work on a team of 7, 4 of us in the USA, and the other 3 in companies across the globe, so that our service operates in all time zones. We have daily handover calls to discuss anything we need to know from the previous shift's work. If our manager is not on these calls, they take roughly 10 minutes. When they are on, we can go up to an hour, mostly with chit chat about weather, our kids/families, cooking, hobbies, etc. We hate it and it's a waste of time. When we are in the office, the entire day is like this. Work is delayed or our manager over thinks issues and causes confusion.
My situation since the New World Order: I've been WFH full-time for 2+ years now. My youngest (8mo) stays home as he can't yet be vaxxed and daycare doesn't have an open spot for him yet. He had some health issues as a newborn so I'm more careful with his germ exposure. This arrangement also saves us about a grand a month in fees. I've been able to continue to breastfeed him without the irritation of pumping.
My commute is ~50min each way from the office so I've also gotten back roughly 2 extra hours of my life each day, and save tremendously on gas. This is even more significant with gas nearing $4/gal.
My mental and physical health has greatly improved as well as my work/life balance being able to stay at home.
I have to fill out a form today to express my reasons for my request. Most people are denied and my original request stating the reasons above was denied. This appeal will be discussed between my manager and their manager this afternoon. Any suggestions for what to write to get across that I am extremely unwilling to upset my life for this ridiculous order so that boomers can make smalltalk and they can justify the massive “upgrades” made to our building pre-pandemic? I'd really appreciate the guidance.
There is nothing about our job that would necessitate in-person collaboration. Our productivity actually increased and became more streamlined during the pandemic. I'm willing to change jobs over this but I'd REALLY like to avoid the hassle of possible and stick with this company as everything else about my job is pretty good and I make decent money for the role.
TIA