A woman has revealed that she quit her six-figure job after they demanded that she come back to the office full-time.
Working from home became the norm for most employees during the Covid-19 pandemic, and even now, many workplaces still offer people the chance to continue that model.
However, some companies have informed their workers to return to the office for five days a week, in the hopes that this will improve productivity.
This was enough of a reason for Felicia, an administrator from Arizona, to hand in her notice and leave her staggering six-figure job.
Speaking to the Insider, the 53-year-old revealed that she had to go into the office for two days a week, and was able to work from home for the other three days.
"I found that I got a lot more work done when I was working the hybrid days," she said, sharing that in the office there were so many "distractions and interruptions" that messed with her workload. "I was going home and working four hours because I couldn't get the work done," Felicia added.
When her former workplace decided that everyone needed to be in five days a week, she persevered for one month before determining that she would look for another job that doesn't mandate a full-time office presence.
Recalling the moment she knew it wasn’t working for her, Felicia said: "Just sitting there and thinking, oh my goodness, that feeling of I have a meeting coming up yet I'm stuck in this. And it's like, why am I doing this to myself when it's not even necessary?"
"I know how to do my job. I don't need to be in an office to do my work," she told the outlet. "I just knew I didn't want to go back to what it felt like before."
The administrator thinks her managers were suffering from "productivity paranoia" which made them assume that their remote staffers were not doing enough work.
Felicia challenged that notion by telling the publication: "That is not true. We got most of our work done when we were working the three at home."
"I just got to the point where it just wasn't working for me," she continued. "And I walked away from over a $100,000-per-year salary to seek positions that have hybrid options so that I can have that work-life balance."
Felicia said that she is now looking for new roles that will offer her more flexibility and is even open to taking a pay cut - as long as the job offers a hybrid working model.
"The payoff is the driving and the traffic and the stress of being on the road five days per week versus being able to do the very same work and more from the convenience of the hybrid option," she said.
