But how will you make sure their every waking moment is devoted to work? Gotta invest in some ridiculous office space and middle managers to crack the whip.

There is a guy in our group who had a special arrangement because his wife was sick so they allowed him to WFH regularly as long as he came in for certain things.

After Covid, they decided everyone needed to be back in the office NOW and didn’t want to have to deal with people whining because some people got a special pass that was in place before Covid, so they took it away from him.

Instead of answering the hard (obvious) questions and being irritated for a finite amount of time, they made this guy upend his whole life (he lives many hours away) and that of his family - to return to work on a regular basis.

Failure of fucking leadership right there.

That's a really small bubble. My employer has a 125km range before we can request an exemption to the 2-day-a-week policy.

Hopefully things don't change for your wife!

if that happens, she’s gone, and they lose someone with almost 19 years of experience who literally writes their training manuals on how to do what she does, lol.

She openly told her boss that if they tell her to come into the office she will willingly quit the job and forfeit unemployment so they can downsize that headcount and spread around the work to other employees?

Gotta play 3D chess, don't show them your hand. They now have an easy way to fire her on demand without cause and without having a mark on their employment numbers.

Have to go with the angle of: if you make me move you need to pay my relocation costs because you have asked me to move. After all, this isn't new and they have known your home address for 10 years. Make them cover the increased cost or they get to pay unemployment for laying you off. That's the only real angle you probably have anyway that gives them a cost.

*sheer fyi

Shear is a verb