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Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

cnn.com

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Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#271

Post by ryandrake »

kasey_junk wrote: post #228
gloosx wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia has no military advantage against ours Recent battle experience is kind of an advantage. Russia is running a full-scale war against US and NATO weaponry in Ukraine for three years, studying it and refining its tactics. What was the last battle for USA? Houthis in Yemen? Few airstrikes and limited engagements. It is very naive to believe Putin doesn’t want to cripple the US economy or that war is not a real th…

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years. At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness. I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy…

The US military might be battle-hardened and ready for war, but the US public is not. The public is soft and fragile and totally unready for the sacrifices and losses that come from a serious war where we're not an overwhelming force against a tiny Middle Eastern country. The public will not work together collectively to get through a war. We're not going to put up with rationing programs, collecting scrap metal, Victory Gardens, buying war bonds, and take a detour from our careers to work in factories producing ammunition. Hell, half the public couldn't even deal with stay-at-home during COVID and went out protesting when they couldn't eat at the Olive Garden and buy their khakis for a few weeks. Ain't no way we have the intestinal fortitude to put up with a sustained hot war.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#272

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #117
piva00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be only attributed to ignorance, you see many comments here on Hacker News defending it with vitriol I had never experienced on this forum even during Trump's 1st presidency. Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatso…

We know that Russia has run a very long, very extensive disinformation campaign against the west. It might be expected that that extends to HN. Not everything posted here is someone's actual opinion. Some of it is deliberate propaganda and attempts to manipulate. That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this…

[deleted]

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#273

Post by pjmorris »

pyronik19 wrote: post #170
pjmorris wrote: post #88

"Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad." - Thomas Frank

We have like 100 years of bad government by people who love government to dispel this nonsense.

Maybe if we'd stuck it out with Hoover... "given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation." (campaign trail, 1928) He only got four of those years.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#274

Post by soupfordummies »

There's not even enough parking at a lot of offices. Despite an up to 50 mile commute, some are being told "well, you could take the bus. Or uber. Or walk."

The whole point of it is to be miserable. The decision makers literally said that!

Meanwhile traffic around the city has gotten WAY worse too. So it's not just the feds that are affected either.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#275

Post by dartos »

realo wrote: post #197
dartos wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be what people want now, but it is what people voted for. People voted for tariff and massive day 1 changes and federal cuts. People wanted a loud strong man president who makes deals. These actions ARE what people (who voted) wanted… people just didn’t think about the outcome

Which people? I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him. The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all. Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost. So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.

> Which people?

The 51% of voters that voted for him… (correction: 49.8%)

> I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.

This is wrong. There were more republican voters this time around than last time.

> The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all. Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.

This is a constant issue in the US. Low voter turnout causes seemingly unpopular candidates to win.

Go out and vote, people. Please.

> So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.

Never said it did. But if you don’t voice your opinion when it matters, then your opinion literally doesn’t count.

So, the American people voted for trump and this administration. Either through their vote or their inaction.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#276

Post by ryandrake »

CivBase wrote: post #229
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #2

The disruption is (part of) the point. Degrading the ability of government employees to do their jobs leads to greater inefficiency and more failure, which can then be pointed at to validate assertions that government isn't efficient and produces bad outcomes.

This is too conspiratorial for me. If the point was to make the government less efficient to justify political platforms, why have private companies been doing the same thing for the last 3 years when there's no political upside for them? I'm not saying the RTO policy is good. I'm very skeptical of it myself. But this explanation doesn't seem to hold water - especially when better explanations are out there. They cou…

They could just be doing it to be petty and cruel to "government workers" in general. There doesn't always have to be a genius 5D-chess play. It's very possible the administration simply believes the federal workforce is full of their political opponents and just wants to grief them. A major component of the campaign and their base of support is rooted in cruelty to out-groups, so they're technically delivering a campaign promise to their base by just making people miserable.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#277

Post by relaxing »

ryandrake wrote: post #271
kasey_junk wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years. At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness. I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy…

The US military might be battle-hardened and ready for war, but the US public is not. The public is soft and fragile and totally unready for the sacrifices and losses that come from a serious war where we're not an overwhelming force against a tiny Middle Eastern country. The public will not work together collectively to get through a war. We're not going to put up with rationing programs, collecting scrap metal, Vic…

We acted quickly post-9/11, buying duct tape and trash bags and taking off our belts at the airport.

You may be surprised how the public can be united against a human enemy. The success of the Right during COVID was turning the outrage away from the invisible virus and onto the humans forcing them to wear a mask.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#278

Post by SSLy »

danaris wrote: post #91
Aurornis wrote: post #35

> “The only thing a return to the office has given me is an hour of traffic while driving and a loss in efficiency,” said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of job reprisals. RTO in a nutshell. As someone who chose my living location based on where my family wants to live first and jobs second, this sudden turn to RTO mandates is infinitely depressing. Most of my work involves talking to people in different…

It's insane that anyone actually believes that it's being done for efficiency. It's not, and never was. It's being done a) to drive people to quit, so they don't have to lay them off, and b) to restore the power dynamic to the status quo ante , where your manager could just look over at your cubicle and see you in your seat, and know that whether or not you were working , you were still there to bow to them. (And man…

At my former job the (then) CEO said outright that forced WFH mandated in 2020 actually brought some minuscule improvement in general process efficiency.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#279

Post by bananapub »

hedora wrote: post #214
bananapub wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is surely involved, but it's pushing on an open door - there's a huge streak of the American right that actually wants this massive catastrophe to befall the US and for the US to become ungovernable and largely ungoverned.

Those people get their news from Russian propaganda outlets.

no, they don't, this is a very dumb thing to think.

there's a medium sized chunk the American Right, which has now won, who unrelated to Russia or China or whatever actually want the US to become sci-fi dystopia of authoritarian christo-white-nationalism.

Re: Federal workers ordered to return to offices without desks, Wi-Fi and lights

#280

Post by kasey_junk »

gloosx wrote: post #238
kasey_junk wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years. At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness. I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy…

You assume that continuous combat deployments automatically translate to full-scale war readiness, but there's a big difference between counterinsurgency operations and peer-to-peer warfare. The US military has been engaged in conflicts for decades, but most of them involved fighting non-state actors or weaker conventional forces, not a high-intensity war against an advanced military.

Russia has proven it’s not a peer is the issue.

Prior to invading Ukraine one might have thought so, but the experience there shows the challenge in thinking that.

Meanwhile the last time the US military deployed to a traditional battlefield the opponent army lasted a matter of months.

Lord willing we’ll never know about these hypotheticals.

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