Return to the office

Until recently I’ve been enjoying the joy of unlimited work from home, 2 days before the end of June, our CEO heavy-handedly (I’m sure he talked to other C-level people) decided, if you want to work from home for 9 or more days in a month OR for more than 5 days in a row, you need to apply for it. So, I want to write down my thoughts on the matter. This is from the position of being an IC on a team spread between a few different offices. I generally have a daily meeting at 17:00 (on teams or in person), and company meetings are on teams or zoom. Our office is ridiculously quiet and communication is done via slack, Jira, Confluence or e-mail… My commute is about 3hrs round trip… I have two kids in elementary and my partner also works full time (remote at least). So, needless to say, this sucks. Also, there’s a twist! If you go to the office, then go home and work, it counts as working in the office! If you start work at home and go to the office, it’s work from home. So, why? CEO likes seeing the expensive chairs in the office have butts in it? I don’t particularly like the office space, it has an uncomfortable chair, and the monitor is so big my neck gets tired looking around the screen!