You spend an hour travelling to the office, then put on headphones to speak to colleagues working elsewhere.
You have a report to finish. You know you would concentrate better at home, but today is an office day, so you search for a quiet meeting room.
You would gladly come in tomorrow to work through a problem with a colleague. Your required days are today and Friday.
Each experience might end with the same sentence: “I do not feel like going into the office.”
But that sentence can contain several problems. The journey. The interruptions. The uncertainty. The feeling that someone made a decision about your life without understanding what it costs.
Research by Michael Clinton, Tara Reich, Amanda Jones and Huiyu Wu at King’s Business School draws a useful distinction between control—being able to choose where you work—and volition—working from the location you prefer.
Their 2026 paper examined return-to-office policies through two time-lagged survey studies and interviews. Office time itself was unrelated to the work-related vitality and meaningfulness measured in those studies. The findings instead highlighted the importance of workers’ experiences of choice and preferred working arrangements. They do not establish that office attendance never matters or that one arrangement suits everyone. Read the research.
Consider someone who can technically choose any two office days. If the people they need are never there together, that freedom may offer little practical benefit.
Someone else might welcome agreed team days. A predictable arrangement could make collaboration easier and leave fewer decisions to negotiate each week.
Having a say can mean participating in a workable agreement. It need not mean deciding everything alone.
Find the cost inside the complaint
Imagine two ordinary Tuesdays.
On the first, you commute to finish a report that needs uninterrupted concentration. Your morning fills with conversations. You leave with the report unfinished.
On the second, you make the same journey for a workshop that resolves a difficult problem. You leave tired but pleased you went.
What made the journey feel worthwhile?
Your answer might concern the work itself. Or it might be the cost of getting there, the predictability of the arrangement, or whether you were consulted.
Try completing this sentence:
“The hardest part of this arrangement is…”
Be specific enough that someone could understand the problem without already sharing your opinion.
“The office drains me” becomes “I struggle to finish detailed work when I am interrupted throughout the morning.”
“They do not respect my time” becomes “Changes announced the evening before leave me rearranging commitments I have already made.”
The second version does not erase your reaction. It gives the reaction a concrete explanation.
Check the interpretation as well as the event
A sudden attendance change can feel like a statement: “We do not trust you.”
That interpretation may be accurate. It may also be incomplete. A manager could be responding to missed handovers, struggling to support new colleagues, or implementing a decision they did not make.
You do not have to accept their reasoning to find out what it is.
“What problem are these extra days intended to solve?” creates an opening for a more specific conversation. So does: “How will we know whether the arrangement is helping?”
King’s College London’s account of the research describes how unclear expectations and poorly coordinated attendance can undermine hybrid work. That points to a useful subject for discussion: how the team will actually use its time together. Read the university’s explanation.
An explanation may leave you unconvinced. It still gives you something more definite to assess than an assumed motive.
Make the request small enough to evaluate
A few brief notes across different workdays may help you bring examples to the conversation. Include the good days too. They can reveal conditions you want more of.
Suppose you notice that collaboration works well on Tuesdays, while Thursday office days repeatedly disrupt concentrated work.
A request might sound like this:
“Tuesday works well because the project team is together. On Thursdays, I have struggled to finish the analysis work around interruptions. Could we try keeping Tuesday for collaboration and Thursday at home for the next month, then review deadlines and team availability?”
Or perhaps predictability matters most:
“I can plan around regular office days. Changes the evening before are difficult for me. Could we agree the following week’s schedule by Thursday?”
A specific request can help you discover what is negotiable. If a reasonable request is repeatedly dismissed, that is also information about the arrangement and your longer-term fit.
Give your frustration a useful next step
You may discover that you dislike the commute, need quieter working conditions, miss your colleagues, or want greater influence over decisions affecting your week. More than one answer can be true.
You do not need to argue for an entire philosophy of work before describing what would help you do your own work well.
DeepMirror’s daily check-ins can give you a place to record those experiences. Its values and communication-reflection tools can help you explore what matters and prepare your next conversation.
Start a private check-in with one sentence:
“The part of my working week I most want to change is… because…”
Sources
- Clinton, Reich, Jones and Wu. Enforced but not Enacted, first published 7 June 2026. Human Resource Management.
- King’s College London. Return-to-office rules risk creating “worst of both worlds” for hybrid workers, 10 June 2026. Research explanation.