To all the people on here complaining about RTO—you are wasting precious time and energy. Don’t waste your efforts whining on here to a group of people who, to be honest, 90 percent don’t give a damn about your problems and the other 10 percent is glad you got you got ‘em. Don't live with the dogma of other people's thinking. You decide what your limits are, or if you have any limits at all.
My cousin’s company issued an RTO mandate a while back. Do you think he took to an internet message board to complain and seek pity? Nope. Not a chance.
He mocked up a concept for a small mechanism for his desk. I think it was a printed circuit board with a slot for his work access badge, connected to a small remote radio unit (it was a cheap RRU from the web) and some kind of signal repeater with a diffuser which made the system think he was on site 24/7.
When they asked him about it, he played d-mb. Then instead of complaining, again he went and improved it with an integrated I/O switch, a battery backup unit with uninterrupted power supply (BBU/UPS), and a linear encoder so the signal output run time was limited to a max of ~65 hours weekly. He tweaked the battery size and a few other design features so that he only has to go into the office once a month for routine maintenance.
My point is sometimes it is better to tap into your creative side than it is to moan and whine on the internet. With the time and effort some of you guys have invested complaining and ruminating here, you could have had 2 or 3 prototypes assembled and tested.
Update: They made him a partner/principal at the firm about 2 years later.