#commute

I can’t believe how overcrowded and busy this branch is now. AUS3 is packed to the brim and it’s an absolute joke how messy this process was. So ecstatic to have my headphones in 8 hours a day while I work with people scattered across the country and the WFH contractors. Amazing returns on RTO for me, I still don’t need to speak to a single person in office since I don’t work with them! Thanks for the massive pay cut via commute time, gas, and vehicle wear and tear!

Legislators have apparently taken note as return to office (RTO) mandates continue to roil workforces at financial and technology firms. A bipartisan effort has led to the establishment of a toll-free hotline (1-888-299-3022, M-F 9 AM-4:30 PM EST). Operators are standing by to record and advise on RTO-related complaints, particularly as applies to difficulties involving childcare, commutes, and health issues. There’s no guarantee that action will be taken, although there reportedly may be in egregious cases and every data point is important in painting a picture of the problem.

Am I the only one thinking about this? Is anyone else concerned we have to go into the office every single day… in time square…. After ellisons buddy Trump started a war with Iran….. commute in the busy subways to the office IN TIME SQUARE…. so now on top off thinking about layoffs survival I have to think about ACTUALLY surviving life just to get to work where I don’t actually have to sit in the office to do my job? Anyone else?

Has the RTO threshold changed? I am outside of the 35 mile distance to RTO but learned today I am on the 2nd wave of teammates to RTO. I am 38 miles from a designated Truist office.

Where do you commute from and how long does it take?

Just trying to get idea of how many people are suffering from a bad commute.

Reply with information so we can make a case for shuttles, small offices etc.

Guess I should just be greatful to still have a job but man does this su-k. Guess I should've seen it coming.

For all of us in Phase 1, curious to hear your thoughts on the experiment thus far after the snack cart honeymoon period has worn off.

I for one think it’s worse than expected. For sure my productivity has gone down with my commute and working hours. I am no longer amenable to responding to Slacks or emails after hours if this level of rigidity is in place. That alone is a big productivity drop.

While in the office finding rooms to have meetings or private conversations are becoming more and more complicated. Why do unused offices and meeting rooms get locked? Is it a safety issue?

s it normal to feel overwhelmed at Verizon?. Or is just because we are heritage tracfone and the are doing it on purpose for us to quit?

Plus the new office will make worst commute due the traffic in Miami next to the airport.

Is it just me or the New Jersey ppl don’t feel this overwhelmed with the amount of Requests while you doing your daily job?

I can’t afford this job anymore. I can’t afford to lose 15 hours per week just to commute. I can’t afford a vehicle. Let alone paying maintenance upkeep on a used vehicle. Then toll fees. Forget it! Everything was fine and financially manageable prior to the RTO announcement.

One more thing I was given a 1.25% increase. I know I had to sit down and read it as well. It seems like nobody “earns” a raise. Regardless of your effort and experience, PNC will decide what it will give you and it is usually the bare minimum. Nonetheless the raise is just another reminder that I can’t afford this job.

We had to literally buy the second car to our family just because I have to commute 5 days a week different way than my partner. We couldn't share the car anymore. Now imagine how much it costs our family month and all of the emissions.. this is crazy.

Uniondale office has been used since early 1990s. Leased space trimmed down year after year to what is only one floor now. “Rumor” says entire location closing 9/1 with notice to be given 6/1. Take the Long Island railroad commute to NYC or resign. Approximately $5000 annual cost. No word if it’s 200 Park Avenue (Grand Central station) or downtown Greenwich office (train ride, subway ride, then a few block walk to the building). For most in the building commute will be 60-90 minutes one way when currently it’s 15-45 minutes. Best estimate is this affects 300 people, all of whom are well aware of the “rumor”. Also “rumored” is the closing of the Franklin Avenue location of wealth management (20-30 people?). Progress tells us to be robotic commuters, sit in small desks in a football field sized environment, everyone wear the obligatory BNY vest or Eliza jacket, whisper so as not to disturb colleagues, watch higher ups use their offices, never get a glimpse of the C suite, arrive early, stay late or be subject to ridicule. Leave home at 6AMish arrive home at 8PMish. Sounds attractive?

Hired 2 years ago as full time employee remote. I am being required to RTO even though I was never in the office. I was hired as a remote employee. The nearest office is at least 80 minutes away at 4 A.M. on a Sunday morning. Easily 2+ hours each way during the work week. I can't afford the commute costs. I can't afford the approx 18+ hours per week just to commute. I give 45-50 hours of my time per week but only get paid for 40. Now I gotta devote upwards of 70 hours per week to this company (work + commute). Going into the office means I must change my work location for tax purposes so as my luck would have it I get sc--wed on that too. More taxes on the same work I've been doing for 2 years. I know I should only be working 40 hours but if I don't then the work starts to get backed-up. Our team could use more help. We are down 1 person since rto was announced. Cant imagine finding more help let alone even finding one individual after Pnc announced this terrible rto decision. What was wrong with the remote work? If it ain't broke don't fix it. It seems like the executives couldn't bear to witness remote work functioning so well that they needed to do something about it. and like many others have voiced if I were to go into the office 60% of my day would be on teams calls. My first 10 contacts I ask for help/collaborate with aren't even in my state.
Please someone make it make sense.

do we need to protest or unionize just to have a voice. this su-ks

We all did the five-day commute for years without this much fuss. Yeah, WFH is nicer, but going to an office is what we all signed up for originally. I don't get why it's such a shock to the system now. It's just a return to normal.

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.