How is RTO negatively impacting your life? (2025)

1) Paying $300 / month for parking
2) Having to leave dog at home all day / worry about dog, or pay $50+ a day for a walker or daycare
3) Having to quit a book club I really enjoyed (no time to get there after work)
4) Having to quit a gym I really enjoyed (latest class starts to late for me to get there)
5) 90 minutes of commuting time a day

Not able to drop off my kids at school in the morning. SACC before care is full. Trying to find a sitter to do it.

Will have to buy more office clothes.

Quitting all my volunteer work that I normally do after hours because the commute will kill that time.

Dog daycare for the pup.

Anonymous wrote:Spending 90 minutes each way commuting by bus and train

Not able to drop off my kids at school in the morning. SACC before care is full. Trying to find a sitter to do it.

Will have to buy more office clothes.

Quitting all my volunteer work that I normally do after hours because the commute will kill that time.

Dog daycare for the pup.

OP: I forgot. Also will have to significantly cut back on my animal rescue volunteering (gone all day, so hard to foster).

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been working in an office for 2 years; the negative impact for me is the sudden increase in traffic.

And possibly no parking.

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, not much.
DH will commute about 45 mins each way, which means a return to pleasure reading or napping and decompression time. A commute can be a good thing.
I sacrificed my career years ago to help with house and family stuff. I am a teacher and will continue to handle all kid stuff and most house things.
DH has a different answer to this post.

A commute can be a good thing if public transportation is an option. I’m glad it is for your DH, but it is not for everyone. My commute is 2.5 hours round trip by car (there are no public transportation options for me that would take less than 2 hours each way) and there is nothing relaxing about it.

I was already doing it four days/week on average, but now I will do it five. I am federal contractor at an FFRDC and never had a telework agreement; our telework was all only situational to begin with. But we are also being affected by RTO (directed by parent agency), and it is not yet clear whether the time I (or my direct reports) work during evenings or weekends to meet deadlines will be considered work time since that work is not occurring at the office, or whether we can continue to hold off-site meetings, or work at home rather than taking leave time when we are sick, etc. The impacts? Less time spent with my child, less flexibility, less sleep, less productivity, more expenses, and more stress.

I'm much more worried about my remote workers and the fact that this incredibly hostile atmosphere will make it impossible to recruit qualified candidates for a decade or more.