DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I do customer service for what was a small, but successful software development company. My company was purchased by a medium-sized software venture, which is making a bid at becoming the next Microsoft within five-ten years.

The new corporate team has made it clear, just like Elon Musk did, that they expect all staff to work in-person five days a week.

For me, the change means I have to do a 90 minute-plus drive each way. One of the biggest reasons I even took this job is because its 98 percent (we had to come in for quarterly all-day meetings) remote working policy gave me and my husband the ability to buy a bigger, newer house further out from the major metropolitan center we were both tired of dealing with.

Now I will be putting in a minimum of three hours a day on the road, for the same money, doing the exact same thing I can do from home. This change messes with our childcare arrangements and will mean other big changes for our family’s lifestyle.

I know this is happening to other people also, but I can’t speak for them, even though this change includes most of my coworkers too. I can only say this is the wrong way to run a company and treat your employees.

I already started looking for another job, nearer home, if not remote. But why do companies think they can treat people like this? I enjoyed my job and was working from home two years before the pandemic. I’m also good at it and have built up excellent customer relations, which have been a key in the company’s success. Now I feel I’m being treated like a child who can’t be trusted to work away from the boss’s view! --- LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB

DEAR LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB: Sudden, radical changes in work conditions under new ownership or management are nothing new. I’ve worked in jobs where long-time staff members recalled a very different work environment, where they felt much more valued and appreciated before big changes at the top.

The new larger company is perhaps simply enforcing what are already their policies and philosophies, not maliciously attempting to insult or undervalue the employees they’ve picked up in the takeover.

Hopefully things will turn out well for you and your family. It’s possible the new company will revise their 100 percent in-person rule, but I can certainly understand how you don’t feel you’re in a position to sit tight and see if that happens in the future.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: After the family who rented the downstairs apartment moved out, we started seeing random roaches in our kitchen and back bathroom. We never had them before and to say they gross me out is an understatement.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been seeing more and more, even after we contacted the landlord and she called in exterminators who sprayed and put out baits, which they said can take some time to work.

I want to move, but we can’t afford to pay rent for the rest of the 8 months we have on this lease and find another, roach-free place to live if we break the lease here.

I want to call in our own exterminators, because I think the last ones didn’t do a very good job. It’s cheaper than breaking the lease, but my boyfriend says we should just let the original guys have a chance to take care of the problem as they were hired to do.

Do you think he’s right, or shouldn’t we take some steps of our own to get rid of this disgusting infestation? --- HATE ROACHES

DEAR HATE ROACHES: They’re ancient, and some say they’ll be here long after humankind is gone, but that doesn’t mean roaches should be tolerated in your home.

From what I’ve experienced in similar situations, roach extermination treatments do take days, if not weeks, to be effective. Gross as it is to live with them, I believe your boyfriend is right to give what’s already been done a chance.

However, I’d certainly keep the landlord in the loop about how successful or not the treatment she paid for is, especially if pest control is included, as I expect it is, among her responsibilities in the lease.

If you do decide to bring in your own exterminator, it might be a good idea to start with a consultation visit first, so they can see what’s been done so far. You may discover there’s nothing they’d do substantially different than the first exterminators, in which case you face the possibility of spending more money for the same results.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Some of my friends think I’m weird, but I really, really love having my kids home from school. Summers and school breaks are the best! I even didn’t mind the COVID virtual school situation, which I know makes me a freak, but I guess I’m a freak then.

Now that my five kids started the new school year, I’m having a hard time adjusting, even more so than the usual start of the school year blues I always get. When the bus picked them up the first day of school, all the other parents were celebrating. I smiled along with them, but really felt like crying.

While the kids are at school I do some freelance medical transcribing a few hours a week for the family practice where I worked before staying home fulltime, so it isn’t like I have nothing to do all day.

I can’t seem to get past missing them so much during the day, after they go off to school. Am I nuts? --- MISS MY KIDS

DEAR MISS MY KIDS: I don’t think missing your kids is a strange or nutsy thing to do, especially after just having them with you throughout the weeks of their summer break.

What I do think is that you need to cultivate more ways to fill in the void they leave when they get on the bus each day, especially if your freelance work is done in your home.

It would probably be better for you if you got out of the too quiet house and had time around other people, which is likely to engage your mind more fully than working alone at home can be expected to do.

Volunteering somewhere in the community is one option you may want to explore. It’d get you out of the house and give you other things to focus on, and volunteers are certainly in short supply these days.

Another tried-and-true remedy to empty nest blues is taking a class offered during your kids’ school hours. Again, it could provide you with a social out, and a physical or academic challenge you might enjoy and be enriched by.