The pandemic fundamentally changed how people want and expect to work. But a lot of employers aren’t fully on board with the idea.

See how this worker took advantage of her employer’s new policy.

If you want to micromanage me, you’ve just doubled my vacation budget.

I took a new job within my company during the pandemic that was 100% work from home, which I was pumped about despite a 20% pay cut. I got an awesome new boss, I’m now a manager myself, I have a healthier working environment, it is a day shift only job, and I didn’t have to make my a 100 mile round trip commute every working day in a car that gets terrible gas mileage.

All that plus I get to work the office shifts – office personnel only work Monday thru Thursday, but 10 hrs per day, so we get three day weekends every week – it’s been that way since before I was hired. All around win despite less money.

But the win was shortlived.

The pandemic was awesome for my working life. All good things must come to an end though. People were getting vaccinated in addition to new cases in my area started to fall. I can do my job 100% remote 100% of the time, but being on site makes 25% of it easier.

My department started coming to work for the 25% of our job that really should be done on site. I have no qualms with that and am happy to be back on site for that, since it makes my life easier. That was status quo for a few months…

My company elected to set guidelines for working from home (or remotely) as an option for 50% of the time going forward. This will be the new standard as our company has “grown culturally and modernized” during the pandemic. My department director said these company standards were on a case by case basis but the director was going to enforce the new 50% maximum remote work standard for everyone unless there are extreme circumstances.

It was a completely arbitrary decision and I am convinced was made only to micromanage employees and empower old traditional style managers especially since my department can do 75% of our work from home extremely efficiently and effectively.

So he made the best of it.

Soon after the new work from home rules were announced and it was communicated that they would be stringently enforced on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

So I canceled all my vacation on Mondays and Thursdays and rescheduled all those canceled days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays following or preceding my already scheduled vacations. I get nearly five weeks of vacation per year plus comp time for anything worked over 40 hrs. My new supervisor who is awesome approved all the changes I made the same day.

I took off every day I was required to be on site and plan on working remotely on Mondays and Thursdays while extending all four of my week long destination vacations already scheduled by one week each

I now have ten weeks of vacation (combined with holidays and comp days) scheduled away from home in 2021 since earlier this year was so busy and I haven’t taken much yet.

I still have to work on Mondays and Thursdays, but it is a lot more fun to work from the beach or mountains or jungle or desert or while visiting family for four out of 16 days than only be in a given place for 8 days.

Here is what people are saying.

Working from home rocks!

I think so, anyway.

Whatever you say.

Hybrid is okay, I guess.

I wonder when working from home will become the norm.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.