In March of 2020, I received word from PNC that my team and I could no longer come into the office. The FinTech company who employed me at the time was re-badging a group of about 30 employees from PNC’s imaging center in Dayton, OH as they prepared to automate imaging and retire this group of individuals. As a way to transfer reputational risk, PNC left it to my company to lay them off later in the year…an election was coming, so you know.

I was living in corporate housing in Dayton, Ohio, but had kept my apartment adjacent to a mixed-use corporate office park in Pittsburgh called Southpointe because no one knew how long I needed to be in Dayton. I had chosen the location when I first moved to Pittsburgh to join the above-mentioned FinTech company because it was close to the main N/S corridor, and they were building an airport connector nearby (which although completed, no one uses as it is a pricey toll road and the main corridor is just as fast). Additionally, I assumed that these were my people as it was a travel-to-work oasis with hotels and a little Main Street with plenty of restaurants and services. Away from tunnel traffic, nestled in the hills of PA, replete with all the amenities and watering holes you would need after a tough day, Southpointe seemed like the perfect spot for someone like me….someone who never lived where they slept, but “hoteled”, always close to work.