AIBU to think if your boss wants you in the office, they should help pay to get you there?

Well yes - people expect companies to pay for them to live; by means of a salary. If the companies choose to keep salaries as low as they can for a very long period of time; eventually people will say ‘hang on, I haven’t got enough money to pay the train ticket / put petrol in my car - can you help more?’

Which is completely justified when the companies have decided to not pay their employees a reasonable wage and have chosen to pay huge huge amounts to the top people. The wealth gap is bigger than ever before - don’t be fooled into thinking ‘it’s a struggle for everyone’ - it absolutely isn’t. The money is there but it’s not going to the people who are working 9-5.

People should work out their costings before taking a job. If contracts change from WFH to having office days then people either accept it and pay their commute or look for work closer to home

I do agree with this. If I could buy my train tickets before tax it would help me out a lot.

Whilst I do think - sadly - it's the employees cost to cover, can I just point out that I don't spend £58.20 a day on heating and electricity....

I am truly too Gen X for this nonsense. Just go to your damn job.

According to HMRC commuting costs to the employee's primary place of work is a non-allowable expense ie the employee cannot be reimbursed.

This is a report from Price Waterhouse Cooper, one of the 'Big 4' who has global oversight of the banking sector. They did a grand job in 2007-2009.

"The 40 banks participating in this year’s study reported taxes borne of £16.0bn and taxes collected of £12.8bn, totalling a UK tax contribution of £28.8bn. Extrapolating from these figures,we estimate that the TTC for the entire UK banking sector is £43.3bn, which represents 4.3% of total UK government tax receipts in the year to 31 March 2025."

So they contribute less than alcohol, tobacco and fuel duties.

Don't really get it. Dr so obviously can't wfh. We get put in London during our training, not out of choice, they changed our reimbursements so we got crow fly mileage a day instead so about 87p towards our nearly 30/day ticket. 3h commute ontop of 13h days. V glad to have finished training.

Wish my partner had to go into the office more so dont have to listen to his teams calls on my days off and would save us a fortune on heating

If your role is home based this will be stated in your offer letter which you agree to when you accept the role. If you are not a homeworker, your office location should be specified. Your annual salary and hours are also detailed. It is up to the employee to ascertain whether the salary meets the demands of the hours/commute required. If it doesn't then the job is not for you. During Covid I would guess that not many companies officially changed their working requirements, so the original contracts still stands. Many companies now offer hybrid working which is a good compromise. Prior to covid, like millions of others, I had to be in the office 5 days a week, on time, and build in my commute and associated costs accordingly.

How are the companies providing these “real jobs” funded? Do they need loans and bank accounts, by any chance, or are those fake too?

The UK banking sector contributed £43.3bn in total taxes for the financial year ending March 2025.

https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/2025-10/Total%20Tax%20Contribution%20of%20the%20UK%20banking%20sector%20and%20international%20tax%20comparison.PDF

But you factor that in when you accept a job. You look at the commute cost and travel time.

My DH can work from home up to two days a week. But at the moment they need him in every day.so thats what he has to do.

Another friend has a WFH job but needs to go into London once a fortnight. Its expensive but she factored that in.

Unless a contract specifically says WFH every day the employees should have to go to the office if required.

Many were given London Weighting or equivalent, which wasn’t taken away when WFH was prevalent.

It’s always been normal that people paid to get themselves to and from the workplace.

who do you think pays NHS staff, teachers, police workers, shop workers etc to get to work? I find it incredibly entitled. I see it the other way - this has all happened since COVID. Effectively, people got a pay rise when working from home. Being expected to go into work is a bare minimum for a job IMO.

Sometimes it does. However:
Work is a social construct;
An awful lot gets done informally at work, quick conversations, connecting, picking up atmosphere;
Informal training is easier, ditto coaching;
As a manager it is challenging to keep whole teams on side and together when everything is done on Teams
A significant minority sit on yellow and do no appear to be available;
A significant minority expect to combine it with collecting DC from school, and it isn't just a question of flexibility - if someone takes a late lunch - 3.15 to 4.15, that cuts out one hour slots from 2.30 to 4.30;

Separately wfh can be isolating; it is not good in home environnents where there is domestic abuse; and it can be difficult uf people live at close quarters.

I recall furlough paid 80% of salary, takung into account that it costs money to go to work.

Commuting - often to secure bigger houses and is a compromise, an employee choice. I always capped it at 45 minutes and when the DC were small, it was time v money, so I worked locally.

Where I worked problems arose when managers didn't lead from the front. Our pattern was 3 days in, 2 wfh. I had depts where hardly anyone was in because managers weren't. They became poorly performing services.

Hybrid is often non contractual and employees can legitimately be expected to go back to work.

What really pisses me off is that commuting costs are taxable. It’s bad enough having to pay commuting costs, but the fact that there are no tax breaks really annoys me. I have a remote contract right now, but to work from an office, I would need to earn another £10k to financially break even. £5k for the train pass, and another £5k for tax etc that I would need to pay for earning that extra £5k

Haven't rtft so this has probably been pointed out already but - if a company had to pay commuting fees then they would only hire people who live centrally. The central homes closer to work would become even more sought after and expensive. It would distort the housing market even further.

Or alternatively, they would base salaries on how close you live to work! offsetting any commuting costs. Either way I don't think it would be the employees winning.

Wfh works for some days but in a lot of jobs some working together with colleagues in the office is needed. It’s also so much harder to train new people up if fully at home.we complain about the attitude of Gen Z but their workplace training has suffered badly as a result of wfh.

Because it is better I most cases to have some in person collaboration with colleagues. Sitting in an office together normally means things get sorted out quicker

OH had this. During Covid he had lots of folk moving away hours away. When it was time to return with a hybrid model they all demanded he stump up for their travel costs. How he laughed and how they laughed when presented with their contracts and told to shift it. He much prefers people in the office as it’s better for team working and he not having to spend hours sorting out petty shit.

He now works on the other side of the country. Our choice so we pay his commute costs. Having been through redundancy twice in a shit job market I just think suck it up and be grateful.

Its the opposite in teaching. Supply is often at the lower pay bands. They get away with it because loads of teachers with younger kids want to be able to just work here and there for a bit of extra money and in supply you can walk out at 3.30pm with no planning/marking etc and not get draggd into ofsted crap.

Its really difficult.
I was hired by an organisation in 2023 on the basis of 2 days office. They claimed they couldnt put this in contracts becaus pre covid staff had office in their contracts & they had to be consistent, but job was advertised 2/5 in office etc.
They had also moved around a third of jobs to a low cost location on the basis that remote working/teams meant they no longer needed to be in the original location. The lower cost location jobs paid considerably less.

Now they want 4-5 days office. Its not what i signed up for, and will cost me about £500 a month after tax. im a high performer whos been promoted twice so im confident its not they want to keep tabs on me its pure presenteeism across the whole organisation.

No one is offering me a 10k payrise to cover the cost after tax....

Lock down was 6 years ago…. If you have been home based since then with occasional travel to the office and have moved home, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be pissed off if all of sudden the routine you had for 5/6 years is now totally interrupted without warning.

Even if you haven’t moved home and live a commutable distance, you’re probably not budgeting for the travel anymore, so the cost for a lot of people will be a major inconvenience given how expensive public transport is, not to mention the cost to park in cities (it’s £20 a day at the cheapest car park to my place of work, I pay it but I am only realy in the office a couple times a month.)

In UK, it is absolutely the responsibility of the employee to pay to get to work. In some countries, a season ticket (or mileage) is paid for by the employer as a tax free benefit. My employer pays for my yearly train ticket but where I live has crazy income tax so it’s a small benefit. It is in everyone’s contract.

Lets say employers agree to this, they will just shave it off annual salary increases thus penalizing those with low or no commuting costs.

The whole thing is silly, wfh more makes so much sense and is often better for mental wellbeing and the environment. I can't wfh in my job, but I think getting people off the roads when it isn't needed makes far more sense. I wonder what Barclay's motivations are for this.