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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other dimensions than number of millions ; money might be an universal measure, but people are different. Who is more upper class, a relatively impoverished Prince of the Holy Roman Empire or a billionaire by marriage and luck? Managers like the mentioned bank CEO, or someone who can rent them a house in the Hamptons because they have lived there for generations? An intellectual who has never really worked,…

> Who is more upper class, a relatively impoverished Prince of the Holy Roman Empire or a billionaire by marriage and luck? I think Western society has been undergoing a transition between two different class systems. (Marxists would surely connect this with the economic transitions from feudalism to mercantilism to early capitalism to late capitalism.) In the mediaeval class system, class was determined by social st…

I was just picking two specific old men that you don't know but probably knew each other, one already dead, as an extreme example of old money (and aversion to work) vs. new money (and excessive ambition).

My point is that different people look up (or down) to different people by different criteria: "net worth" interests competitive capitalist adventurers, "who your parents were or where you come from" remains a high priority when someone is wealthy enough for their lifestyle.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#792
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle managers aren't making these decisions to have people go back to working in offices

Their job is to support their staff against higher management. They are failing to do that if their teams are begrudgingly going back to work. They really do have all the leverage here. A business cannot function without labor or else it would just be the c suite as the only people employed.

tell me you've never managed without telling me you've never managed

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I think I used the wrong term. The desks we have are basically not assigned anyone permanently and are available as long as someone else hasn't reserved it for the day. I don't mean literal desks that they have at hotels. The office is rather nice TBH.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but Hotel Desks like this are a worse experience than having assigned desks. You have to adjust your chair and ergonomics every time you go into the office? What a pain in the ass.

Totally. Our company mitigates it by assigning a specific desk to you if you come in often enough.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#794
post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best part is when the employer's advice for an active shooter is hope they don't shoot you while you hide and wait. Most handbooks don't permit weapons. My home's policy is the active shooter gets shot immediately until they are no longer a threat.

Wow. Sounds dystopic over there.

It really is. Leftists want people to live on top of each other, de-fund police, de-enforce safety and criminal laws, and take away your ability to defend yourself, and prosecuting anyone who does so, while parroting how dangerous school and workplace shootings are so we all need gun control.

It really is a weird reality we live in. You can't have all of the above and not be subjecting innocent people to violent criminals.

EDIT: In other words, you want dense cities? Then you need exemplary policing (both in terms of respecting citizens and keeping them safe).

You don't want police? Then people need to defend themselves and protect themselves.

You don't want people defending themselves in urban areas? Then you either have to have exemplary policing or less urban areas.

Don't want endless rural/suburban sprawl of people trying to escape crime? Then let people defend themselves or guarantee their safety through exemplary policing.

You can't have it all.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#795
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the US, 2.4 million people just vanished from the labor force Not certain what you mean by vanished and where the 2.4M number came from. CDC says 1,136,473 died in the pandemic [0], although a significant portion were not likely members of the labor force. As it stands the number labor force members caught up to pre-pandemic numbers in August of 2022. [1] Feb 2020 164M Apr 2020 156M Aug 2022 164M Jul 2023 167M 0…

A lot of people retired or otherwise left the workforce. For example stay at home parents substantially increased and has stayed increased since. They're talking about people who left the workforce as in, no longer working/looking for work, you're talking about death exclusively. The "Civilian Labor Force Level" isn't a relevant statistic because of its definition: > Civilian Labor Force is the sum of civilian employ…

> Specifically the "Not in labor force" column. That's a 4M loss. Out of those it is disproportionately women and older people.

Ok, here is the same data from fred (sourced from BLS). Both the labor force and "not in labor force" increased by ~3M from pandemic to now. Given overall population growth of 8M, it looks like normal numeric growth of any statistical cluster within a growing population.

  Date.    Labor Nonlabor  Pop
  Feb 2020 164M   95M      259M
  Apr 2020 156M  104M      259M
  Aug 2022 164M   99M      264M
  Jul 2023 167M   98M      267M
  Net.       3M    3M        8M
Labor: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV

Nonlabor: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05000000

Population: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CNP16OV

> Out of those it is disproportionately women and older people.

Is the loss disproportionately among women? In terms of people not in the labor force, I don't see strong evidence for that. Stats for both women and men not in the labor force have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Is job loss disproportionately among older people? Given that numbers of people in the labor force are now above pre-pandemic levels, we would have to posit a counterfactual world without a pandemic. I'm not going to do a whole regression with it's own assumptions of biz cycle etc. Eyeballing the chart, the current level could be in the range of alternative futures starting from April 2020. Its hard to say though with the boomers retiring out how many retired early or decided to not retire late.

All, Men, Women Not in Labor Force: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=LNU05000000,LNU0500000...,

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Management stupidity and employee incompetence certainly wasn't a thing before COVID! I really like this new comic from Scott Adams called Dilbert [1] that gets a good laugh from how incompetent things have gotten since COVID! /s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert

I'm not sure why you think what you said is relevant. Also, you seem insufferable. Edit: oh, it's probably the autism.

I'm not sure how you missed OP's joke, and then decided the proper course of action was to insult them rather than refuting them.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think what you said is relevant. Also, you seem insufferable. Edit: oh, it's probably the autism.

I'm not sure how you missed OP's joke, and then decided the proper course of action was to insult them rather than refuting them.

Let me guess, you're autistic too?

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Exactly. I've been working 100% from home since 2017 (3 years before covid). I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office. Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my life when I lived 15 min walk /5 min on a bike, from my job in a city. Before I got tha…

" I'd rather take a 50% paycut than go back to the office." People should stop saying this. Otherwise it will soon be the standard to take a serious paycut for WFH. .

I mean.. -50% would make US competitive with India, and I'd much rather have people in US timezones than the worst timezone imaginable for US-West.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you missed OP's joke, and then decided the proper course of action was to insult them rather than refuting them.

Let me guess, you're autistic too?

Nope, just insufferable (apparently).

Mostly just shocked that this is what the site comes to, but I should have known better.

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