#commute

Any tips on making our daily commute to Tuas more pleasant? I don’t know what to expect

Oh, was that not motivating enough?
Well what if we completely fu---d you over and made you commute for 2 hours a day?

Oh well, I tried. I cannot figure out why the employees are not happy or motivated.

Time to give myself a 5 million dollar bonus for all that hard work!

There are absolutely times when people should be together, but in reality those times are few and far between. If the work actually benefits from being face to face, great. Get everyone in the room and get your sh-t done.

But that’s not what 5x RTO has become… We’re tracking badge swipes, building dashboards, calculating hours and obsessing over whether someone’s a-s was physically in a chair for eight hours. All for… what?

So people can drive to an office, put on headphones, open Teams and work remotely from the office?… Seriously, what the fu-k are we doing?

If my entire day is Teams calls, emails, spreadsheets and work with people sitting in different buildings or different states, then forcing me to commute to do it from a cubicle isn’t collaboration. It’s pointless theater.

I could do the exact same work from my house just like I did for a decade before Covid. I’d get more done, I’d be less burned out, and AT&T wouldn’t have to waste money supporting the office just so somebody can say we were “present.”

Bring people together when there’s a reason to be together. Stop confusing physical presence with productivity. They are not aligned.

If the end result of 5x RTO is that I commute an hour to sit in a building and work remotely from my desk, then congratulations, you did it (and nothing else)!

Way to go baldo! You just reinvented working from home - with traffic. What a joke!

Having to waste more than two hours on commute is certainly not making me more productive. What it is making me is resentful and slow and absolutely unwilling to go the extra mile, something I used to do all the time. I'm betting you RTO will turn out to be the biggest productivity ki-ler.

Could someone please clarify how the “4 good weeks out of 6” policy is measured? If it is tied to the 3‑days‑in‑office requirement, does that mean I would only need to be in the office 12 days over a 6‑week period (4 weeks × 3 days)?

Our team provides 24/7 global support, with all communication conducted electronically and no in‑person interaction required—especially for my role. My workday does not begin at 8 AM nor end at 5 PM, and weekend coverage is a regular part of the schedule. Despite consistently meeting or exceeding performance expectations, I have not received a meaningful salary increase in years, and I cannot afford to live near the office.

For me personally, the 40‑hour monthly commute is unpaid, non‑productive time that could otherwise be spent on work or on personal recovery. As a result, the in‑office requirement feels fundamentally misaligned with the remote, round‑the‑clock nature of the role.

Some people seem to genuinely need the office for their social life. Fine. Go in five days a week. Nobody is stopping you.

But I’m not going to work to make friends. I’m here to do a job. And we’re told loyalty is dead and we’re a market-based company, so let’s be honest about the relationship — I sell my time and expertise, AT&T pays me for it. That’s it.

I prefer working with people who can get their sh-t done without an adult babysitter watching over them. If you can’t perform from home, sitting in an office doesn’t magically make you productive. Now you’ve just added a commute and a day full of distractions.

We’re supposed to be here to work, not recreate a nursing-home social mixer five days a week.

If you need the office, have at it. Just stop making the rest of us pay for your social life.

• Show up at the office at 8am
• 8 hours of Teams calls with people in a different state/office or working from home
• 30 minute lunch break
• Leave at 4PM and drive two hours home
• Question the point of it all

It doesn’t get better than this!

This issue needs to be addressed before the new AT&T headquarters in Plano opens.

The Plano campus will have pickleball courts, which means employees may soon be competing against one another on a regular basis. However, virtual employees already have a major advantage: they do not have to spend up to two hours each day commuting to and from the Dallas headquarters.

While the rest of us are sitting in traffic, virtual employees could be using that time to practice their serves, improve their game, and prepare for the Plano courts. By the time the new headquarters opens, employees who have been commuting may be years behind in pickleball development.

This creates a serious fairness issue. The Plano pickleball courts should be a level playing field, but that will not be possible if one group has had significantly more time to practice simply because of where they work.

Leadership needs to act now, before the competitive gap becomes impossible to close. I am requesting that virtual employees return to the office so everyone has the same commuting obligations and the same opportunity to prepare.

We cannot wait until the first Plano pickleball tournament to realize that this problem should have been handled sooner. The integrity of AT&T pickleball is at stake and the time to act is now before it is too late.

When I was working from home during covid, I was amazed at how much work I got done. I was proud of how much I accomplished daily. It was a pleasure working every day. Now that I'm back in the office, the commute, the noise, distractions, bothered by boring id--ts has completely demotivated me. I only come in to do the minimum. They really miscalculated the whole opportunity.

I am a fool. I underestimated Dallas commute, Parking and the 8 hour requirement. What a mess. Door to door is 11 hours for 5 days a week. What the he-l? How are my fellow 50 year olds taking it?

I stay because the health insurance covers my kid's therapy and the commute is only 20 minutes. My manager is clueless, but my three teammates are sharp and we cover for each other. Why would I start over somewhere else that'd probably have the exact same issues and no seniority?

I do have to say that I am grateful that PNC let us work from home if we used the Parkway East. I would be so drained by the time I got to work and got home. You’re talking probably at least an extra two hours commute time plus spending more money on gas sitting in all the traffic. No matter which detour you took it was bad. I talked to a few few friends. I have in the medical field and it was a nightmare. Don’t let people tell you that it wasn’t.

So if the executives are reading this, I want to thank you for letting us do this because you didn’t have to.

Who is commuting 5 days a week, 60 miles each day. $25 per day in travel costs not including parking.

Aren’t you exhausted? Needs to be at least 3-4 years until Plano HQ.

Finding new employment in Dallas doesn’t help as commute doesn’t change. Those who work in Plano office are super lucky.

Why do the follow the work letters that are going out have Dallas listed when we are moving our headquarters 20 miles north in Plano? That is like a 45 min drive just between the locations.

How inconvenient to require people to drive to the Dallas location when the location is changing in 2 years. Who even comes up with this stuff? It is like they are actively trying to cause unnecessary stress and inconvenience to their employees.

Hard Pill to swallow but due to no job offer and single salary, my hand is forced. See you all on the commute. Might get used to the 2 hour daily commute in a Tesla.

I wonder how many of us will institute personal boundaries when we go back 100% in September? I will not be working remotely at all - this means I won't be doing anything outside of 9 AM - 5 PM EST. If you can't be flexible with me, then I am not going to be flexible with you Fidelity. Why should I be getting up early to have a meeting with offshore, struggling to get my kids on the bus, and then have a long commute just to take calls with people on zoom?

All my young life we used to move every 3 years. Now I despise doing the same thing again after 10 years of not moving. Though it is progress and might be good for me, but I am unable to be motivated enough to move for T. Don’t have a second job or option but need to move. The place, weather and commute su-ks. It will be great for family but not for me Ugh..

It’s been almost a month since we were required to return to the office in the name of "collaboration," and all I have seen is people including leaders finding different ways to minimize their time in the office.
Leaders have families to take care of too, so many leave after just a few hours because they need to pick up their kids from camp or school. It’s a reminder that everyone is balancing work with personal responsibilities.
Meanwhile, I haven’t seen any meaningful increase in collaboration. What I have seen is hours lost commuting, searching for parking, walking to and from the office, and dealing with all the extra logistics. It feels like a significant waste of time and energy that could have been spent doing actual work.

Media content on the networks is the future and there are significant synergies to be gained. See you on the commute!

Anyone else on a “hybrid” team where their entire management chains lives 2.5 hours or more from the office? my management chain is cheating the company- they dont like commuting so they show up around 10am, leave at 2pm, and barely do anything. how is this allowed? when will HR fire people like this? my director joins meetings from recreational events and encourages us all to cheat Verizon. basically if we dont tell on him- he wont tell on us. somewhat new to the company and the behavior of leaders here is atrocious. my AD is similar. he always takes off friday

What was your motivation to do so? I am feeling overwhelmed and under confident and just thinking all is going to he-l with this move as I dread that 2 hour commute

Why four days? Simply put, four is twice as many as two.

As a result, employees should expect approximately twice the collaboration, twice the innovation, and, where practical, twice the culture.

While these projections have not yet been validated, they remain directionally encouraging.

The Value of Presence

Research consistently demonstrates that employees working in close physical proximity are more likely to:

• Ask if anyone has seen the conference room adapter.
- Spend fifteen minutes determining whose turn it is to reboot the meeting-room computer.
- Participate in spontaneous conversations that begin with, "Quick question..." and conclude forty-three minutes later.

These are the kinds of high-value interactions that cannot be replicated through purpose-built collaboration software specifically designed to replicate them.

Visibility Matters

Although employee evaluations will continue to be based entirely on performance and results, it is important that those results occur where they can be observed.

This allows leadership to appreciate the effort that accompanies the work, such as walking briskly between conference rooms while carrying a laptop.

Building Culture

Many employees have indicated that they already feel connected to their teams.
This is encouraging, but incomplete.

Organizational culture is strengthened through shared experiences, including:

• Searching multiple floors for an available meeting room.
- Listening to someone else's conference call while attending your own.
- Discovering at 11:58 a.m. that everyone had the same idea for lunch.

These experiences build institutional knowledge that is difficult to quantify, which is fortunate.

Addressing Productivity

Some employees have expressed concern that additional commuting time may reduce the number of hours available for focused work.

Leadership recognizes this possibility.

To offset the impact, employees are encouraged to become more efficient.

Frequently Asked Question
Q: If my team is distributed across three states and we still meet on video calls, why am I commuting?
A: While your meetings may still occur virtually, it is important that they occur virtually from the office.

This reinforces our shared commitment to flexibility

What we get at Voyix:

• Suggestions to take public transportation and allow extra travel time on game day
• Game day experience at GHQ

Tells you how much Voyix cares about its employees🙄

Single income and Have 2 kids in elementary school going to middle in 2 years. Frisco seems to be best so far based on what I saw in great schools. But commute su-ks. Can you please recommend other areas, somewhat closer to commute. I may have to drop off kids and pick them up as well. So some flexibility there would help.

What is your daily commute look like from home to HQ? What time you start if you have kids in school and how do you manage day to days life?

Not sure if others have noticed, but the Frisco executive center is now sharing space with Intuit employees. It’s been noticeably more crowded lately and it doesn’t feel like the same place it was when we first moved in.

Which honestly brings up something I’ve been thinking about for a while — was Frisco even the right call to begin with?

The location is surrounded by toll roads. For a lot of us commuting in every day, there’s really no way around it. Those tolls add up and that cost falls on employees, not the company. That felt like an oversight when we moved in and it still does.

And now we’re sharing the space with an outside company? That wasn’t exactly part of the pitch when this place was built. So it makes you wonder — is this a cash flow issue? Or did the business case for building here just not hold up the way leadership said it would?

Either way, it’s a fair question. The people who made this decision aren’t the ones paying tolls every morning to get there.

My son was born when I had a remote job, then Covid happened and I was home all the time (he’s always been in daycare while I’ve worked, though). Now he’s in first grade and this back to office is ki-ling me because I can’t be in multiple locations at once. I get him to school at 8. We live just north of spring and on my best days, I’m still coming into the parking garage after 9am. I have a friend who helps me with carpooling from our neighborhood a couple of days a week and gets the boys to their mutual after school activities so I can meet them there but I feel like all I do is manage a commute to satisfy a rule that is not in the best interest of anyone who wants to also be present with their children. I was always very good at my job and being the mom with fully stocked cooler at the field. I look around and wonder who else is quietly dealing with this? And why aren’t we saying anything as a collective voice. I’m tired of decisions being made for me by men whose wives or nannies have made them believe this is manageable for people who are lacking coparenting support.

On my deck. In the sun.

Looking at that solid red traffic map and reflecting on how often I was stuck in that grind that was taking years off my life. Quitting that toxic hellhole was the best decision I ever made!

3 hours a day.
15 hours a week.
60 hours a month.
720 hours a year.

That’s 30 full days of your life spent commuting every year.

One entire month annually sacrificed sitting in traffic so a presence report can show the “right numbers” for work that still just happens on a laptop and Teams calls.

Thousands in gas, tolls, parking, wear and tear, and unpaid time gone forever.

And for what? Morale is worse. Burnout is worse. The stock is down. People are leaving.

That’s #LifeAtATT

Relocating to Dallas this summer and thinking of moving close to Hosp Elementary school in Frisco. I have kids in elementary schools and wondering if anyone is in this situation to commute from Frisco to downtown Dallas and what times you usually start your commute and manage the 9 hours at office. I am unsure if there are any closer areas to cut down the commute for present HQ and upcoming HQ

I have been calculating my commute time lately, and the numbers are depressing. I spend about ninety minutes in the car every day, which adds up to more than an entire workday each week just sitting in traffic. I am curious what everyone else's numbers look like. How much of your life have you lost to driving since we were forced back into the office?

There is something different about Friday in Downtown Dallas. The week is nearly done, and you can feel it. The pace is still fast, but the mood is lighter.

On my way to AT&T, I notice the people around me more. The coffee cups, quick steps, quiet faces, and small signs of relief. Everyone is still moving, but Friday gives the commute a different energy.

It is not just a commute. It is a reminder that we are all showing up, pushing through, and making it to the end of another week. Friday makes the city feel more human. I am looking forward to seeing others on the commute.

Recently moved and now I’m apparently 30.1 miles from the nearest hub which is about a 45 min - 1.5 hour drive depending on traffic.

HR says that I’m “within” the 30 mile range.

I’ve pulled maps on my own, it goes from 30.1 to 31 to as high as 50 miles.

Should I even try to fight this? How far are you from your hub within that 30 miles?

If they want to continue to treat us like children what’s stopping us from acting like children?

You know RTO5 is absolutely coming soon. They will start monitoring how long you’re working somehow.

Have a long commute? You better be working while driving. If not you better work as soon as you wake up and as soon as you get home to make up for the commute you didn’t ask for.

My top 10

It increases commute time & stress. Period...
It raises costs for emplyees...
It can reduce worklife balance.
It limits access to wider talent pools.
It hurts productivity for focused work.
It creates unnecessary office overhead.
It can lower employee satisfaction.
It makes caregiving harder.
It can increase burnout risk.
It is not improving collaboration.

It is deeply frustrating to navigate a demanding, long-distance Return to Office (RTO) mandate while balancing personal caregiving responsibilities, especially when that burden is not shared by the executive team.

The Reality of RTO Disparity

1) Executive Perks vs. Employee Costs: While executives often have commuting costs (limos, premium transport) covered as business expenses, average employees face thousands in annual fuel, vehicle maintenance, and parking costs.

2) The Caregiver Burden: RTO policies disproportionately impact employees with young children, creating immense pressure on work-life balance that senior leadership—whose families are often grown—frequently fail to recognize.Impact on

3) Retention: Research indicates that 80% of companies that enforced strict RTO mandates experienced talent loss, with high-skilled, senior-level staff, and women being the most likely to leave.

To have a modern workforce, nimble, ready to work at anytime and anywhere, and now they return us to our father’s old fashioned office drudgery.
We aren’t “liberated” we’re back to being pawns and cogs whatever you want to call it!
All that investment in tech just to have it wasted with commutes into the office wasting time on traffic on delayed subways or the MBTA commuter rail.
“We’ve come a long way baby”
Fools oops you didn’t think licking us down for three years in Massachusetts would have a deleterious effect to the local economy real estate and restaurants?!!
Now six years into it all of a sudden it’s back to work slave.

My life is ruined, my daycare bill is up , and over an hour commute to this sh---y Dallas building with sh-t parking and rediculous gas prices, this company is a joke, everyone is exhausted and less productive professionally and personally

I know it's exactly what these knuckle-heads want from us, but I just can't tell if this RTO B.S. will come back around or not. I don't make nearly enough to be spending extra money on gas just to sit in virtual meetings! I know many of ya'll are in the same boat as me. But what about the Mgrs, any news on RTO? Its been months and all we've heard was ZIP.

Long story short: After a long time of searching I finally found the right therapist for me, and was reassured that RTO couldn't interfere with my appointments. Well sure enough, my manager allows me to leave the office for my appointments, but the real issue is having to commute basically 4 times just to continue seeing my therapist. I literally cannot afford it. Thank you Bill.