Leadership saying it’s “policy” that part-time HAS to work 5-days a week regardless of hours worked??

This seems to be something that is going on in our region, but I am unaware of it happening elsewhere. But recently, our management, district managers, and regional managers are claiming that it is required for part-time workers to work five days a week, regardless of school schedules or the hours worked in the day.

For instance, one of the part-timers in my store, because of this semester‘s school schedule needs to have three days off for the week, but is still willing to work the same total number of hours throughout the remaining days of the week. However, because of this new supposed policy that they are trying to enact, they are saying that this part-timer is still expected to make their way all the way across town during rush-hour to work only a couple of hours (literally would be 2.5 hrs worked and only 2 of those hours would be during business hours for a chance to make sales) just so they can get that fifth day of work. Which especially for a part-time schedule makes absolutely zero sense.

We have gone through T-Mobile‘s employee, handbook, and availability guidelines and see nowhere that it says that part timers have to work at least five days in a week, but leadership is doubling down.

Information was found in regards to initiating a work accommodation request, but they don’t really seem to be helpful so none of us are really sure where to go and how to get this resolved.

Any advice on how else to handle this?