What RTO personality type are you?

As RTO mandates have solidified, employees have developed routines for their in-office days.Nick Lachance/Toronto Star via Getty ImagesWe spoke to half a dozen workers about their RTO routines — whether they love or loathe the office.One manager said he likes to go in every day and that anything else creates confusion.What kind of RTO-er are you? A 5-day faithful, an office recluse, or a remote-work convert? Let us know.Every office has them.The employee who treats work like a second home. The one who arrives before sunrise and disappears by lunch. The midweek warrior. The stealth drop-in.As the return-to-office wars have subsided, they've left behind a workplace ecosystem populated by distinct species whose routines are shaped by a mix of company policy and personal preference.Business Insider spoke with a half-dozen office workers about how they navigate workplace expectations around office attendance — and why they've landed on the routines they have:The 5-day faithfulShaohua Zhou is unapologetically pro-office.The engineering manager, based in San Francisco, spent years working remotely until he joined an agentic software development startup about a year ago. The company's guidance was to come into the office as often as possible. Zhou interpreted that as five days a week.While many coworkers came in three days a week and worked from home in the mornings, Zhou was in the office from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every weekday. The schedule made picking up his kids more difficult, but as a manager overseeing 15 people, he wanted to make sure no one came into the office expecting to find him and discovered he wasn't there."You want to set the example that you value the office," Zhou said.For Zhou, though, it wasn't just about optics. He said working from his living room left him feeling "very trapped," while the office offered more space, better coffee and food, and even a commute he enjoyed. The 30- to 40-minute drive helped him "quiet" his mind and think through priorities before the workday."For managers, there's a lot of planning that you have in your mind," Zhou said. "You think about, 'Should I focus on this project? Should I focus on these people?'"Zhou left his last company about two months ago for an AI lab where he works over 60 hours a week. Even so, he said he believes anything short of a five-day office expectation creates confusion, with some employees showing up twice a week while managers feel pressure to be there every day.The early birdBefore leaving her job in July to start business school, Gricelda Ramos got to try an experiment most office workers never do: choosing her own workday.Her employer offered four eight-hour shifts, with start times ranging from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Ramos didn't hesitate."When I was looking at the time slots and understanding Miami traffic patterns, I really wanted to indulge in the luxury of time," she said.Choosing a 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. schedule cut her morning commute to 15 or 20 minutes. Had she picked a traditional 9-to-5, she said, the drive could have stretched to 45 minutes or an hour."It was a very minor change," Ramos said. "But it made a huge impact on my quality of life."Ramos said she's learned that flexibility matters more than any single schedule."I don't think we're all the same kind of worker," Ramos said.The midweek warriorIan Antonoff's team plans to go in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He opts to go in on Wednesdays, too.The PR staffer works from a shared coworking space in New York's Flatiron district Tuesday through Thursday, building his day around the commute to Manhattan. He starts with a workout class at Barry's, SoulCycle, or Y7, then settles in from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m."I think there's so much good that comes in a PR world from collaborating and being able to bounce ideas off of people," Antonoff said.He said his team often grabs lunch together, where conversations drift from client work to the latest season of "Euphoria.""You just turn to the left or fold your laptop down and talk to the person across from you," Antonoff said. "Versus Slack, or 'Hey, can you jump on a huddle?'"While he said he enjoys separating the space between where he lives and where he works, three days is still his sweet spot. Antonoff, who lives in Long Island City, values the flexibility of working remotely on Mondays and Fridays. That lets him go on runs after work with his local run club on Fridays, work from coffee shops, and visit his family and in-laws in the summer.The office touristStephen Napolitano's employer asks workers to come into the office between two and eight days a month. The accountant, based in Massachusetts, keeps it simple: every other Wednesday, when the rest of his team comes in.The schedule is predictable enough that he doesn't have to waste time worrying about it. The in-office days are reserved for meetings, catching up with colleagues, and anything that's easier to do face-to-face.Napolitano arrives around 7 a.m. and leaves by 4 p.m. to beat traffic. Leav

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