This completely came out of the blue. I always knew that home office would end as soon as it started but this seems like a last minute decision from the senior leadership team. They are giving us two weeks to return to the office, there is no wiggle room or the ability for middle management to make exceptions for their workers (I actually really like my coworkers and lower management) and supposedly your on site attendance will be monitored by IT and there will be quarterly reviews by HR to discipline people who don't comply.
I work for a fortune 500 so I know that there are a lot of things senior management does for social engineering reasons rather than financial reasons. The weird part to me is how quickly it came. There has been literally no indication anything was changing from anyone, whether it be directors or the CEO. We even have these "town hall" meetings that are (ostensibly) to give everyone updates on what's going on with the company. We had one of these town hall's exactly two weeks before the back to work announcement came and the only explanation I have is they are sick of paying severance packages so they're trying to get people to leave or collect enough HR violations to fire them.
What's funny is the "official" story for why they want workers back is because of how much they value "face-to-face interaction" that fosters "team collaberation" but most of my team is out of state or out of the country and I haven't been able to do any face-to-face collaberation with them in 2 years because of budget mandated travel restrictions.
The real reason they are doing this is because someone who pulls the strings realizes there are too many workers who benefit from working from home and they want to screw it up for us because f-you that's why.
I tried to throw my weight around and negotiate coming in only 2 days a week. Nope. Absolute zero wiggle room. Any work from home day would have to be requested and only approved on a case by case basis. I left that job without even finding a new job before I quit. It took me 4 months to find a new job that was suitable, but now I walk 5 minutes to work twice a week and work from home the other 3 days. My pay is better, and the job is overall easier.
Don't let the company jerk you around. If they do, just leave.
Living paycheck to paycheck is high stress.
Others need to practice the DO NOT CONSUME portion of our movement. It is so tempting to buy a new gun or a new knife sometimes. I bought something last week but I had to convince myself it was going to more than pay for itself in providing energy savings. I consume things that can save me or make me money. Tools or improvements to my compound.