I struggled to make it to the office due to day care drop-off, so my boss lets me work from home. I sometimes feel guilty about it.

Georg Loewen struggled to get to the office on time due to his daughter's day care drop-off. His manager approved a more flexible schedule than the company's policy typically allowed. Loewen shared the challenges of his commute - and how others might secure similar flexibility . This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Georg Loewen, a 35-year-old senior director of digital marketing at SourceCode Communications, a public relations agency. He lives in West Orange, New Jersey. Business Insider has verified Loewen's employment with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity. When I joined my current employer in November 2024, I made it clear that my first job was being a dad. My wife and I both work, and our daughter was barely a year old. I'd always been fortunate to work for flexible employers , but like many new parents, I was still figuring out what fatherhood meant - and how it collided with the reality of work. Since 2022, my company has had a three-day-a-week office policy for employees based in New York and New Jersey. My one-hour door-to-door commute to our Manhattan office proved challenging over time. Missing the train would delay my arrival at the office I handle day care drop-off most mornings, which is at 8 a.m. The timing makes it hard for me to catch the ideal 8:20 a.m. train, which gets me to the office just after 9 a.m. - when everything runs on time. The day care is 4.5 miles away from the train station, where parking is first-come, first-served, and finding a spot can sometimes turn into its own adventure. Taking the train at 8:46 a.m. gets me into the office after 10 a.m., but I sometimes would miss that one, too. When I did catch it, I often had to jump on client calls during the commute, which wasn't ideal, since the service wasn't always reliable and I had to change trains in Newark. At some point, figuring out the best approach each day - balancing my availability and time in the office - started to feel like a math equation. A conversation with my manager led to work-from-home flexibility Early this year, my daughter was going through a rough patch at day care. My manager noticed that I was struggling to make it into the office consistently and proactively brought it up. Initially, we had a discussion about reducing my in-office time and maybe setting up a hot desk, but we quickly agreed to keep things flexible for the time being; if day care drop-off ran long or parking didn't work out, I'd just work from home . It seemed like what mattered wasn't where I logged in from, but that the work got done. Following this conversation, I began working from the office between zero and two days a week. I sometimes feel guilty about the flexibility I've been provided When I first started commuting less frequently to the office, I felt a bit...

Preview: ~500 words