Its been a while since i tinkered around but i think firstly you can try directly booting into twrp recovery and see if that’s working.
For some phones overwriting the recovery straight away doesn’t work they will just let you temporarily run custom recoveries.
If that’s the case then you can figure out for your specific phone how to overwrite the stock recovery permanently.
Again i could be completely wrong but you can give this flow a try.
Fully remote is the only way. In my experience hybrid workplaces are just as toxic. It could turn into full time office out of the blue like mentioned here or generally the ones showing up to the office get a bit of a preferential treatment if the boss also regularly shows up at the office.