I know how to get the workers back. Make office workdays 6 hours long. And home workdays 8 hours long.
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Citation needed?
The workers have spoken: They're staying home
131–140 of 263 posts
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#132I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…
The company I work for took the pandemic to cancel the vending machines and coffee service that we had. They re-established the coffee service after about a month after their RTO mandate because people were refusing to come in. The vending machines are still gone. If I want to get a snack, I have to end up walking fifteen minutes to a cafeteria in another building, get it, and then walk back. That cafeteria is also t…
We had a coffee machine on our side of the building, now only the machine on the other side is left. To be replaced with two miniscule nespresso machines. I don’t understand why anyone would try to save money on such a critical piece of equipment…
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#133I work in manufacturing, there is no wfh
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#134By staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots.
Note that a 'remote worker' is increasingly used as an analogy for bot performance.
(edit: I should clarify that I don't mean it in absolutes, if you got a task at hand, wfh by all means, but I won't do zoom meetings, if you wanna talk, come to the place)
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#135We'll be writing about why this is for years. COVID gave people or in many cases made people re-evaluate what's important to them and many people concluded that their work-life balance placed too much importance on work. People had been thinking, what parts of their life were they willing to give up for work, but now the question of what parts of work are they willing to give up for their life is considered a valid,…
I feel like a lot of this could be solved with a month long holiday like they do in Europe. US workers are lucky to get a few days off in a row without interruption.
Open office is also just horrendous.
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is incredibly short sighted not to provide a dedicated desk.
If I don't have a dedicated desk where I can leave stuff, I won't be coming to the office. Simple as that. Wasting time commuting is bad enough, but if I'm not even worth 2 square metres, why would I want to work for those people?
Because you are worth $250k per year? I won’t claim it makes any sense.
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
A period of rampant corporate profits
Never forget this - if this were "real" inflation and not corporate fuckery then their profits would be down.
In a real inflation, why would profits be down? If the company has any pricing power, they just increase the price. In fact, the definition of inflation is prices increases.
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or get this, a bike (in case you live under ~10 km away). Just rolls the gym hours into the commute for double efficiency, and you can be always on time since traffic can't really affect you.
I bike every day to work because I finally live in a place where there's bike paths/roads almost everywhere there's car roads. I would never dare to do so where I lived before: I'd almost certainly be a blob of blood and guts splattered on the road by now. It's infuriating how little thought is given to anything that is not a road for The Car. Billions of taxpayer money spent on massive road construction and repair b…
The majority of people can't rely on biking. They're too old, too fat, the weather is bad, or too hot, or too cold, they're going too far, or they have to take two kids somewhere and pick up groceries, etc.
If biking works for you, where you are, great. But it's at best a pretty small part of the solution.
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#139I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…
So much relates to commute. I'd probably meander in for a halfway decent office arrangement if it were less than a 30 minute walk and there were actually people I worked with there. But that hasn't been the case so I don't.
But commute can change.
For example, if you lived in Mountain View in walking distance of Google, would you turn down an offer from Facebook because your home in Mountain View is no longer walking distance to Facebook HQ?
Also, life situations. If your partner has a job at a school or hospital that requires physical presence whose commute do you prioritize?
Making jobs that can be remote, remote gives workers massive flexibility in work arrangements with partners as well as being able to change jobs.
Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home
#140I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…
This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse If you're required to hot desk you might as well do it someplace more pleasant.
Few things indicate a company's extreme antipathy towards its workers as much as hot-desking does.