One of the (many) things angering me about the return to office policy is that I'd finally found a nice work-life balance.
Once of the problems I've always had is not enough time to do creative stuff, which has fed into the lack of comics and writing. Since working from home, my work-day is exactly that. Nine hours of work. I wake up, roll over, and I'm at work. When I'm done, I turn my laptop off, and the rest of the day, seven hours, is mine.
I'd banked Jenn's Great Reset on that. I now had time to write scripts, work on stories, and I was even about to gear up comic production again. Moving forward, that 7 hours was mine to be creative. Or maybe not. Maybe I'd play games, or surf the web. But that 7 hours was MINE and I had TIME to do what I wanted without rushing or forcing myself to stop at a preset time.
With a return to office, though, something we were told wouldn't happen, I've just gained at least a two hour round-trip commute. Not to mention now I have to shower and get dressed for work (thirty minutes) before work (I was doing it on my lunch hour from home). I also now have to get up earlier for that, say an hour, which means I go to bed an hour earlier.
My 7 hours to myself is now just 3. And in that 3 I also have to keep the house clean certain days. And I'll run into the dreaded "pencils down" issue of having to put away the art as I'm getting revved up.
I really wish work from home was going to be a permanent thing for everyone whose job was doable from home, because you got ALL your time to yourself, versus burning that (unpaid) time getting to and from work.
I won't even get into the cost of making and maintaining a home office for work that was supposed to be permanent, "induced attrition," and broken guarantees.
@lispi314 - Honestly, most of us are prety sure that they're trying to get us to leave to replace us with cheaper folks over in India. All our new hires are there, and they just keep ratcheting up the metrics to levels that aren't possible to fulfill.
This is just another turn of that screw.
@dolari Ah that's kind of messed up and not fun.
Unfortunately there's little to do beyond leaving that won't further negatively impact you at this point, they'll just keep making things worse if you endure.
@lispi314 - Yeah, I'm working at leaving. Just hard to find a place that's Work From Home and will pay my rent at the same time. :/
@dolari That's unfortunate. I wish you luck at finding that anyhow.
@lispi314 - Thanks. I super appreciate it. :)
@dolari I recommend frequently submitting complaints to HR about it and encouraging others to submit them too.
It probably won't do a thing, but when they notice a trend of employees leaving for related reasons, they might get a hint.