#commute

The commute will be a pain, but being in the office will create a hard stop to my workday. In a way, it might even get me to have a healthier work-life balance than I do now remotely.

Not sure how I’ll be getting to work at PNC
tomorrow being that public transit has been suspended. I’m probably going to be told to drive in and risk my life on the parkway. SMH

I’m going to join the rest of you in Technology! PNC wants me in the office 5 days a week, no problem. Just to let managers know, when my shift ends, I am not available until the next business day at my starting time. I simply cannot make myself available during my commute into work or after work or on my personal time any longer. I have over an hour commute to and from work. I need to change my availability to be there for my family. It’s unfortunate because this is not something I wanted to do, but in order to accommodate my family I had to make some changes just like PNC had to do. As far as technology is concerned, I don’t think any managers should be reaching out after office hours when issues arise. It’s unreasonable to have employees come in the office every day and get home after 6 o’clock and then have managers calling you because online banking is down. My cell phone will be turned off.

I doubt there will an abundance of employees wanting to engage/volunteer in PNC Grow Up Great activities going forward due to the announcement today. I will no longer offer my personal time. It must be on company time, if I even decide to continue to do it. Who has time to volunteer when you’re spending hours during a 5 day work week just to commute to work!? I will no longer contribute to the United Way either. Why should PNC get the recognition for my donation? I hope you all will stand with me on these topics.

How do you feel about that? Is it going to impact your commute, better or worse location?

Working in the city can be very expensive. I’d rather drive. Anyone else going to the Long Island facility? How many work out of there? Is there room for one more?

Anybody relocated to Dallas with kids in school? How is Richardson for commute?

Now that they forced everyone back in, the stress levels are rising fast. People are exhausted from commuting again, and half the office is talking about looking elsewhere. Add the constant layoffs into the mix, and you have a recipe for a disaster. It feels like leadership learned nothing from the last few years.

Question was posed at this quarters fireside chat where Demchak essentially "hinted" that 5 day return to office will be required following a flowery rant about how while WFH "benefits employees" it "harms the company" and that he is trying to imagine a world where "he is asking you to do your job".

Good luck everyone in Pittsburgh, I would not plan on a cost of living adjustment or a commute benefit coming down the pipeline while Ol' Bill claims his 2026 stock award of the tens of millions.

Letting people work from home for the month would be a much needed reset from the weekly he-l of commuting five days a week. Most employees will be on vacation anyway, so how much real collaboration will happen? Offices will be sparsely populated, it’s dark and cold, and seasonal illnesses are everywhere.

Closing the offices for a month would also save a huge amount of money. For a company of AT&T’s size, one month of office expenses: utilities, cleaning, security, and overhead likely runs into tens of millions of dollars. That money could go toward employee bonuses instead of forcing people into empty offices. Employees get relief, morale improves, and the company saves money. Win-win.

I hate it but not because I hate being in the office but because of my commute, gas money and spending money on tolls that I can't avoid. I actually don't mind being in office for a few hours but I do know there is no "collaboration" going on lol. People go in, get their coffee then work for a bit and peace tf out.

My team is global and most are remote. Of my team, only 5 of us live in Texas and only one of my coworkers lives in Austin/RR. The rest are remote because they aren't in Austin/RR and there is no office to go to. The other two people on my team who go into office are in New Jersey and Virginia. I guarentee they aren't "collaborating" with each other lol. They are but it's via TEAMS.

I guess I'm failing to see or understand the logic behind the FIVE day in office RTO when Dell has always been a hybrid 3 days in, 2 at home company? It just doesn't make sense to me. They want us in daily but yet, claim to be flexible to our schedule and don't care how long we stay in office. Which means for many of us, it's a coffee badging experience lmfao.

I Do understand that dell wants the company to be more office centric rather than remote which, ok I kinda get that but, what about those who are full remote with no office to go into? THey are not eligible for promotion and in all honesty, the way Dell is heading, full remote employees I feel like are gonna be on the axing block sooner than later.

I mean, there isn't ANYBODY who is going to pick up their entire family, rip their kids away from their friends and school, simply to go to fkn RR to keep a job - all on their own dime... If Dell paid for reloaction then I think a solid 50% of remote employees would move, though.

The plan was to allow people to choose to move to Dallas and choose a home near HQ or south, where homes are slightly more affordable. Then move HQ ~26 miles north (which falls within the loophole for severance), adding another hour plus of traffic if you live near downtown Dallas. This will NOT be the only move that will be happening. other reporting locations near Dallas are also moving north.

Coincidently the company is aware of what demographics will be most disproportionally impacted. For those employees who live in south Dallas, this will put your drive (in traffic) to about 2.5 hours each way.

Sycamore is mandating a four-day commute to Deerfield starting in February, which significantly increases out-of-pocket costs for employees, especially those who commuted to OPO previously. Yet, despite 3% inflation over the past year, salaries are not being adjusted - not even to cover a basic cost-of-living increase. What a slap in the face

This Houston traffic grind is rough, miss the work from home days lol.

Just reflecting a bit this morning. Here are mine:

• I'm holding much more money that I really need to in cash or liquid instruments because of the layoff risk, and as a result have missed out on big gains in the stock market the past few years

• My wife and I have forgone a couple of big purchases the last few years, because of a desire to keep a bigger cash buffer. We're getting to the point where we NEED to buy a car rather than want to, and because we were waiting, the post-tariff prices of cars have shot up

• I've spent about 350 hours commuting to the office to take teams calls and talk to no one in person (45 minute commute one way x 3 days a week x 18 months approximately since I was forced to RTO)

• My wife has been frozen in her role. Her job doesn't pay particularly well, but its completely stable, she would be the last person in the world laid off. She has declined to pursue other opportunities, because between my job and hers it would introduce to much risk of job/income loss. So she's stagnating, and our income is lower than it would be if she had more freedom to move. Well's layoff culture is not just impacting Wells employees, but their families as well

• I'm stagnating in my own career progression also. Wells ki-led the training program for process engineers last year, so I can't progress to a master black belt cert here. Instead we get webinars on AI, lots of slop on pluralsight if you want it

• I've been forced to accept certain medical treatments that weren't the first thing my doctor recommended, because we of course use the insurer with the highest denial rate in the entire industry

What have you seen?

If leadership wants increased office presence they need to consider satellite offices. Almost two hour commutes because of Charlotte traffic is taxing. Is it helpful to have people together and stressed out because of the accident they narrowly missed coming in on highways with aggressive drivers? You want people in a facility then build facilities on all sides of Charlotte.

I've been RTOing for a while now, and it still feels pointless most days. My work gets done the same as when I'm home, just with more noise and random chatter I don't care about. The constant interruptions make it hard to focus, and the commute eats up hours I’ll never get back. And for what? I still can't figure that one out.

Every single day I hear of more people from corporate that are leaving the company. Primarily Planning positions. I am certainly not overlooking this. Think there will be a ton within the next 2 months. All the commuters will be done the first of the year too. Good luck to everyone

I can only imagine many others are in an even worse predicament than I am. And for what? RTO has been rolled out across the country for quite a while now, and there’s plenty of data showing that none of the things they talk about, like collaboration or efficiency, actually improve by herding us back into the office. The only explanation is that they want to make a lot of us quit.

Can anyone direct me to how to get ride share benefits at Chevron?

Ah, the newest corporate gospel has arrived. Another “inspirational” RTO email reminding us that being in the office builds connection — which is ironic, considering I haven’t connected to anyone except the guy who keeps stealing my chair.

Leadership preaches “collaboration,” but what they really mean is: we signed leases, now fill the seats.
They’ve got family photos, doors, and flexible calendars; we’ve got assigned burnout.

The new buzzword of the week? “Ten toes down.” Cute. I guess that’s easy to say when your toes aren’t in traffic for two hours a day.

Every line of these emails reads like it was generated by a bot trained on stale HR slogans. “Culture!” “Teamwork!” “Innovation!” — all while the rest of us are juggling hot desks, dropped calls, and existential dread.

If they actually believed in teamwork, they’d try working by the same rules they force on everyone else.
Until then, spare us the sermons and just call it what it is: office rent recovery.

Says the executive living in a multimillion-dollar home just 30 minutes from Deerfield, with a $100,000 car parked in a heated garage. If I were making $500,000 a year, I’d probably enjoy the daily commute in a brand-new Mercedes too.

If executives truly want camaraderie, perhaps they should rent city apartments and commute alongside us - waiting for buses and trains together this February when it’s -15 degrees with windchill would certainly build solidarity.

The truth is, we already proved during Covid that collaboration doesn’t depend on geography. Microsoft Teams and instant communication make it possible to deliver on time and at a high standard. To suggest otherwise is 100% disingenuous.

I was genuinely hoping for more detail on RTO during this afternoon’s Town Hall. Instead, it was barely mentioned. But at least now I know how many kids our executives have and which sports teams they root for - that’s exactly the information I needed to finally sleep soundly tonight.

It’s here just to push out as many people as possible on the cheap. If I’m wrong, convince me otherwise. Give me one example of RTO actually improving collaboration, efficiency, morale, productivity, anything, really. All I’ve gained is more time wasted commuting and higher expenses. I balance out the idiocy of RTO by making sure I’m not available after hours. None of it makes sense unless you see it for what it is - a way to make people quit.

Almost two hours wasted on the commute. On a good day. Feels like that was the plan from the start, to force people out without paying a dime. People mention real estate/tax incentives as the main driver of RTO, but I think it’s mostly about cutting headcount on the cheap. Everything else comes second. Time will tell.

The office has become a shell. For those who have returned, it feels like working in a morgue — silence, no collaboration, no energy. At least at home people could put the radio on and feel some life around them. We tried free coffee for a week, but once that was gone, so were the people. Now we have staff commuting in only to sit in isolation on video calls. It is soul-destroying, and I worry about the mental impact on those who are complying. If management isn’t prepared to properly enforce office attendance, then this halfway approach is pointless and damaging.

We never see the guy in the parking garages - not in Ross, not in DalPark. We never see the guy roaming the headquarters either. The guy lives in Bluffview, TX - one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of all of Dallas. He gets driven 15 min to the HQ in his Range Rover and parks in private parking. Then proceeds to take his private elevator that lights up straight to floor 4.

Yet, I have to commute from McKinney - a middle class city to downtown and sit in bumper to bumper traffic. I am waitlisted from DalPark so pay 50 bucks per month to park in Ross. But that requires taking a crumby shuttle past the homeless to global HQ. So, I decide to pay double for parking and pay the daily parking fee at Ervay St and then walk over 5 min to headquarters. I pass several suspicious, crazy, and homeless people and realize I don’t have any pepper spray on me. Once I get in HQ, I see impressive led screens then take the elevator to floor 8 where the monitors, keyboards, and mouse haven’t been refreshed since 2010. Just 2 floors above Stankey where the floor was recently redone.

1 company. 2 different people. 2 very different lives. Rules for thee but not me.

I was rushing to get to work before 7am so I can find a parking spot and desk. it’s a waste of money and time by coming in to the office

True? Another cost cutting move forcing employees into long commutes.

RTO really boils down to two drivers: control, and the financial interests that CxOs hold in commercial real estate companies. The more employees are physically in the office, the more those properties stay profitable. It has little to do with productivity and everything to do with money and power.

On a personal level, RTO has increased my monthly costs by about 25% compared to working from home. Between gas, parking, meals, and other daily expenses, the difference adds up quickly. On top of that, I’m losing about 90 minutes a day to commuting - time that could have gone into either more focused work or simply maintaining some balance at home.

So while companies frame RTO as being about culture or collaboration, for workers it often just means higher costs, less time, and no real improvement in output.

A pay cut? Loss of benefits?

I have a few offers on the table paying less. Some have little to no benefits.

The math says i should stay here but its hard to put a figure for savings on things like mental well being, commute, and not being exposed to every single strain/wave of covid.

So my question is, what would you give to never have to go to the office again?

Anyone else wonder if productivity has diminished with the 4 day a week requirement? Everyone was already burnt out from the ever growing workload. Add the commute and I continue to see people’s ability to care fading away.

The sheer volume of work communication is overwhelming. It feels like I'm stuck in a tailspin of Jira tickets, Slack and Teams messages, and endless slide decks and worthless meetings. Data is buried on the network; nobody seems to care. The work itself is often straightforward, but the process we're using is a mess filled with red tape and bureaucracy. It's no wonder we're constantly redoing work and bleeding money. Recalls are the norm, and we've only seen the tip of the iceberg, folks; thousands of cars with the same inherent issues will soon go belly up. $$$ spent on new buildings and programs with little hope for success. I have a feeling layoffs are just around the corner, which is how things usually go here. F