RTO Mandate pushed me to look for a new job

This is mostly just a rant.

I live on the east coast, the rest of my team/coworkers live on the West Coast. Most of them live near the main office some are fully remote and a handful of us live near satellites. I live a 20 minutes drive from a satellite office that houses a call center. My position does not overlap with customer service in any capacity.

I have been told that all employees within a 30 mile radius have to go in every Wednesday. How they spoke of this made it sound like this was a pilot, and would be expanding to more days. To me, this is such a an incredible waste of my time. I now have to drive to sit alone in a loud office and be on zoom calls. I’ve talked to my manager and she agrees that it doesn’t make sense for me. She said she will share my feedback.

I get a lot of recruiter messages, up until this point I would ignore them, however the RTO Mandate has made me rethink that. The mandate has been in place for a month and I am interviewing with 4 different companies. I was surprised at how much these positions pay (10% – 30% more). They are all fully remote with one having quarterly travel to headquarters for team meetings.

It might sound petty but it’s the pointlessness that really gets to me. If there was any legitimate reason I would happily comply. I have worked hybrid before, but my whole team was in the same office as me so it made sense! This makes no sense.

I am just flabbergasted at the short sightedness of this. Our department is so short staffed as it is. I know of three other people in a similar circumstance that are also looking to leave.