I've been 100% work-from-home for about 10 years. Pre-covid, a handful of us worked remotely but a majority of my co-workers still worked in the offices. My company is one of the latest to be 'strongly encouraging' people to start coming back in the office at least a few days a week. Apparently those who were 100% remote before covid are not exempt from this.
I've been having a bit of back and forth with my boss about this today. They said I'm “only 20 mins from the office”. Ok, getting pedantic, Google Maps puts the time at 25 mins, but this is also with no traffic. Plus, it's also only TO the building, but there's also a moderate parking garage to navigate through and find a spot, so it's usually more like 30 mins.
One of my voiced concerns is that my kids get dropped off by the bus at 4. My boss suggests they can be flexible and ~allow~ me to leave early the days I come in, and then either log back in at home to make up the time, or add it on to one of my at-home days. So with an average travel time of 30 mins, but also taking into account unforseen delays (because the kids are in Kindergarten, a parent/guardian is required to be at the bus stop or they won't let the kids off), I'd probably need to be shut down, packed up and out the door by 3:15. This means adding 1 hour, 15 mins either later that night or to another day, instead of my normal working from home, taking all of 5 mins to accomplish the walking to and from the stop and getting back to work. This just feels ridiculous and unnecessary and not at all “flexible”.
There are a few other issues, such as only 1 single other person on my team lives near the office–everyone else is in other states so it feels pointless, and also I'm an introvert with social anxiety so I'm not about to be doing any of the in-person collaboration they seem to think will be happening in abundance.
Anyway, just needed to rant a bit. But this is a hill I will die on. Like I said, right now they're just 'strongly encouraging' this, but if it actually becomes mandatory I will be resigning.