From 1 week a month to 2 days/week RTO

After nearly a year of a one-week-per-month office attendance policy, Management has now shifted to a mandatory return-to-office policy of two days per week insisting that we complete 10 days total each month. Living in another city, I had to travel around 11 hours to reach my work city and live there for a week which I adjusted like a weekly trip each month. Now with the 2 days a week routine, I travel overnight on Monday and spend Tuesday-Wednesday in office before returning home on Thursday.

On a regular day, I get around 8-10 hours of work done, on the office days I barely get 5 hours of proper work done since there’s a lot of socialising and catchups. In the past if there’s a serious work project going on, I’m exempted from office visits since work is priority. For the rest of the year, the company considers the commute as the priority. I think I can try this 2 days a week routine for a few months before I finally call it quits. To be fair, I did like my company and my team but the upper management makes this a horrible place to work. Before I leave, I got to ensure we don’t get that GPTW certification anymore since our upper management has earned that.

On a regular WFH day, I wake up at 930 and work from 10 till 5-6, now I spend 22 hours on travel to the new city each week. Then around 3-4 hours for commute to work daily. So somewhere around 40 hours per week lost due to this RTO nonsense. I personally would not complain much had I lived in the same city as my office but that city is a shithole and the management would be happy if we all paid rent in that city.

P. S. Missed the most important part, I have one team member at office who comes at random times. The rest of my team is spread across different cities and countries. So half of office days are zoom call days. And since there’s no senior reporting for me at office, there’s no dress codes or anything I need to follow.