Punished by Proximity: The Home Depot RTO Divide

Leadership at The Home Depot is punishing employees who happen to live within 50 miles of Atlanta.

By no fault of our own, local corporate employees are now required to be in office every day. Every. Single. Day.

Meanwhile, remote employees’ lives have not changed one bit. Remote managers continue managing direct reports who now have to wake up earlier, sit in traffic, burn gas, spend more money, lose time with family, and absorb all the hidden costs of this decision.

Let’s be honest about what local employees are getting the shaft on:

Less sleep.
More money spent on gas.
More money spent on food.
More wear and tear on our cars.
Higher risk of accidents from daily commuting.
Less time with our families.
More money spent on business casual clothes because of the dress code.
More stress before the workday even starts.
Less flexibility.

And now, apparently, no real advantage for being onsite.

For example, people in departments like UX were told, directly or indirectly, that being onsite could come with advantages like visibility, growth, and promotions. But I recently heard from a colleague that remote employees are now eligible for promotions too, when before they supposedly were not.

So what exactly is the advantage now?

Remote employees keep the flexibility, the sleep, the savings, the time, and now the same promotion path too.

Local employees just get the commute.

What leadership has created is not collaboration. Collaboration is down. Morale is down. What they have actually created is a rift between remote employees and local employees. And that rift did not exist like this before. Leadership created it.

The 50-mile blast radius of this bomb they dropped on us last year is completely arbitrary. It punishes people simply for living near Atlanta. Not because they perform worse. Not because their work requires five days in office. Not because the company proved this was necessary. Just because of geography.

And instead of thinking critically about what actually works for The Home Depot, leadership seems too afraid to lead with conviction. They would rather copy other companies with completely different business models because they are scared of looking like they made the wrong call.

If anything became clear during COVID, it is that digital teams can adapt, produce, collaborate, and even thrive remotely. It ushered in a new era for computer-focused jobs. It created innovation. It proved that work is not magically better just because someone sat in traffic to do it from a cubicle.

The saddest part is that The Home Depot used to feel like the place to work. Now, for a lot of corporate employees, it feels like a place that keeps making bad decision after bad decision while pretending morale is fine.

There is so much focus on “doers,” but apparently very little focus on the doers inside your own company.

And yes, I am aware the easy response is “just find another job.”

If only it were that easy these days.