I turned down the regional director job since they were thinking that I would have to be in an office in downtown Seattle a minimum of three days per week, and the additional pay did not offset the 90 mile and four hour per day roundtrip commute. I told them to talk to me again if it could be one day a week downtown and I would think about it.
What? You have that reversed! You MUST be in the office FOUR days a week, only out 1 day! We simply can't function in more of a remote environment than that.
Didn't the pandemic teach you anything about office dynamics? The old ways MUST BE RETURNED! WORKERS MUST BE UNDER THE CRUSHING GAZE OF THEIR MANAGERS AT ALL TIMES! OTHERWISE HIERARCHY WILL COLLAPSE!!!
I've seen (I'm sure we all have) a number of articles over the past few months about employers trying to force people back into the the offices full time with varying degrees of success and more than a bit of employee rebellion.
My situation is a bit different -- I MUST be in a dedicated, secure office, but I can be in any number of dedicated secure offices, including the one 2 miles from my house. Yet the PM/APM apparently think I'm incapable of doing my job unless I'm sitting with the rest of my coworkers.
Somehow they apparently view all of the work I did over the previous two years, the accolades I received from my peers, the problems I solved for the program, the immense amount of work I did, as a fluke. That's the only thing I can figure.
They either need to refigure that, or they'll lose me, and my direct boss, who said she is going to bat for me on this, says that as far as she's concerned, I'm a core employee who needs to be retained at all costs.
We'll see if her management agrees.
Yeah, I'm a little salty about this.
