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Comment by HeyZuess | Hacker News Reader

> What would be a good line to draw?

Parking is a convenience, a benefit as such. Your responsibility is to arrive at the entrance, ready for work on time (or clock in). When someone from the company prohibits you from entry to clock in or leave on time, that is on the company.

Another aligned argument here, could be that the closet food restaurant is 20 minutes away and you have 60 minutes for lunch. It is not the companies responsibility to make sure you make it there and back in 60 minutes, you account for traffic, ordering time, eating time etc. But if the company stops you at the door with a security guard for 10 minutes, before you can go get your lunch, and when you enter back from lunch then it's their problem.

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> Your responsibility is to arrive at the entrance, ready for work on time (or clock in).

This seems circular, like saying you shouldn't get paid for working on a project at home because you agreed to be responsible for completing the project at home. In both cases it is a task that requires time and effort, which you are doing for the company's benefit, not your own.

Ultimately these factors are included in the employee's mind when they seek and negotiate for jobs. All things being equal, you take the job with shorter commute and same pay because the commute is part of the job in your mental calculation. You can also negotiate for more pay to offset a long commute.

> Ultimately these factors are included in the employee's mind when they seek and negotiate for jobs. All things being equal, you take the job with shorter commute and same pay because the commute is part of the job in your mental calculation. You can also negotiate for more pay to offset a long commute.

There are many choices at play here, some may even may live further away to offset the cost of living or have a bigger back yard etc. I am sure that many do this in the cities.

But all things being equal if you are wage earner, you generally get paid by the hour and thus time spent at work at the companies need or request, should be paid for. If you cannot leave your job on time, then you should be paid for that time.

Some things are just inflexible in any workplace, both from an employee's and an employer's perspective, and a legal one.

Now those fortunate people who are salary earners, they get to negotiate a little more. However generally (unless they have a flexible agreement), there is still hours of work which are committed to.

All others like contractors etc fall into a different pile.

> Some things are just inflexible in any workplace, both from an employee's and an employer's perspective, and a legal one.

They're just shifted from official numbers to some form of hidden cost. The economic situation is the same. I'm presuming no one at the apple store actually makes minimum wage, so ultimately Apple will counter an increase in hours clocked by a reduction in hourly pay. Though I'd expect them to be sneaky about it.

The cutoff for reporting hourly wage is something like $47k. Everyone either negotiates directly or else affects the wage indirectly by not competing for the job (requiring the company to offer more to attract employees). Companies give regular raises to their wage workers for completely rational self-serving reasons. And obviously a business wants to employ from a larger (and therefore better) pool of potential employees beyond those who live on the same block. Common sense says people are going to consider the cost of the commute (both in time and money) when considering the gross income they would get from the job. So for everyone apart from minimum wage workers, there's still some overall average component of pay based on how much people think the commuting part is worth.

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