The Lonely Office Is Bad for America
wsj.com
wsj.com
First - housing. The cost of housing is hugely tied to location and being remote offers a chance to fight back against that. There's not more land in San Francisco and New York and building has become politically untenable. This has and will have tremendous consequences for my financial future. Being remote offers a way to fight against that both because workers can expand their horizons for other locations that are building housing but also because in the future we potentially have an opportunity to re-zone commercial real estate into residential, higher-density real-estate. Rather than needing to provide an individual with two places (house, office), in the future a lot of jobs would only require an individual to have one place (house).
Second - climate change. The environment cost of commuting everyday is high since many cities functionally require a car. Traffic and pollution wreck real, tangible havoc on our habitat. Reducing the need to commute coupled with another opportunity to redesign urban landscapes into greener landscapes offers at least some pushback against climate change.
In my opinion, both of these concerns massively outweigh any intangible benefits such as workplace community.
And so it would have continued, had not certain ideas about the shape of the world turned out to be disastrously wrong.
Definitely "citation needed" on both points.
This is what I think remote work advocates miss -- pure remote makes work 100% work, 0% percent anything else. This is probably fine if you work at a horrible finance firm where this was the case anyway, but for people in creative/tech professions where fun stuff / offsites / happy hours were the norm? Remote is such a massive downgrade in that case.
Anyhow. On food in specific, for the last decades I've dreamed of trying to get people trying & exploring new things. But wow, it felt like folks were absurdly attached to their staples.
That said, in my 20's, I was crazy dollar-conscious. I still ate out for lunch a lot, but the thought of paying $2 or $4 more than any of the abundant quality high-value local shops for something more upscale or just more elaborate was super hard to swallow. $13 buffet at Majer House Kabob was like the pinnacle of richness. So I get some of it. But also, it was still disappointing feeling unable to rally for a good exploration.
That shit never happened to me when I worked onsite.
That being said, and to your point, taking oneself out to a restaurant, especially a new one, is worth trying for anyone that hasn’t.
And I’m showing my age. Not like dining alone means things like SMS stop working. Or whatever people use these days. It can be social.
Assuming the word choice was deliberate, which, no reason to not, if it were about coworkers vs not coworkers a more typical phrasing would have been “with friends from outside of work instead,” or even “with other people you know instead.”
It doesn’t have to be an assumption that those are the only two choices. Enumerating all choices wouldn’t be helpful, as there’s more than three.
Replacing group A with group B is less interesting, more obvious, and potentially not an option, or at least not an easy one. If it were, said lamented would likely be eating at a new restaurant with friends rather than lamenting. Or their friends aren’t brave and hate new restaurants, which functionally is the same as not having a group in that case. If they are all at McDonalds because “going to that little place on the side street that looks dingy and smells amazing” is scary, well…
Going out alone is less universally accepted, some find it weird, some find it uncomfortable. But a lot of us enjoy it. (Literally dozens of us). So sharing that idea will likely lead to more interesting conversation.
The unfortunate reality is that the discourse around the remote vs. ass-in-seat style of work must be all or nothing. Some workplaces take a hybrid approach, but they often don't have a mix of 100% in-person and 100% remote employees. You're usually in the office 80% of the time with the allowance of a day at home. So complaints like yours get heard by middle management types and they use them to justify the "welcome back to the office" bullshit. It is worlds easier to live my life when I don't have a two hour commute and when I have the ability to get mundane responsibilities fulfilled on my breaks, and when I don't have to rely on others to take care of my pets and family. When your need to pursue an ephemeral relationship with your coworkers becomes an imposition on my need to nurture the people I love, that's a serious problem and I'm not going to politely respect your "preferences".
Go play ping-pong with your friends.
Making for a good social environment is a deliberate choice. You can do it online or offline. The best interactions at work I’ve had when we instituted brown bag lunches and made the first and last ten minutes of our weeklies into a space just for idling.
At a bar, you are “going to a bar.” “Going to happy hour.” Something along those lines. Drinking and talking about dogs at happy hour is still happy hour. A zoom meeting with no activity beyond drinking is just drinking on the job.
Meeting in person may be difficult, but if the money is still there, someone isn’t thinking of how to use it creatively.
If it isn’t still there, the company is cutting costs by defunding morale. And hoping nobody noticed because “you can’t meet in person anyway.”
I was one of those people, and I declined every invitation to mandatory fun, offsites, and happy hours. I was there to work, to do the job and get paid, and I wasn't getting paid to do extracurriculars. I left that bullshit behind when I graduated from high school.
> Remote is such a massive downgrade in that case.
Speak for yourself. Remote work has been an upgrade for me.
Money.
Money.
Not to make friends, not to build culture.
Considering how offended everyone is now, work isn't the place to socialize.
I too work for money. I could do a lot of the same things without a job. But some asshole won mega millions when it was my turn.
If office culture sucks, I want it to improve, because that’s where I make money. It means I can make money with less stress. Less stress, more productivity. More productivity, more recognition, more opportunities for money.
You can look at things as cold and calculating as you want. That’s fine. If I try to do that, it sounds like you aren’t being very efficient at how you make your money. Money. Money.
And missing out on other benefits that come from said efficiency. Like potentially socializing, or friends. Or culture.
If you have difficulty making friends then go to concerts or something.
I can't imagine any office culture worth the time I waste commuting.
For the record, I'm still friends with multiple co workers from previous jobs. But that's just not the point of work.
“If you have difficulty making friends…” Who said the office was the only place that’s possible? You’re just missing it as a place that’s possible. You don’t agree. That’s ok.
“I can’t imagine any office culture worth the time I waste commuting.” Sorry you haven’t worked anywhere with anything close to good culture. Bad culture isn’t worth a zoom call.
“For the record, I’m still friends with multiple co workers from previous jobs.” Not sure why you needed this on the record. I didn’t. But now it is on there twice. I’m doing my part.
“But that’s just not the point of work.” Yep, explained that. You’re not making as much money as you could. But that’s your problem.
>“I can’t imagine any office culture worth the time I waste commuting.” Sorry you haven’t worked anywhere with anything close to good culture. Bad culture isn’t worth a zoom call.
Many people have commutes of anywhere from 3 to 4 hours per day, if you buy a home, this can happen very easily.
The highest paid job I've ever had was fully remote, I think I would like if companies had a dual compensation structure.
All of you who love the office so much can get a $20,000 year bonus, and I'll be chilling in my nice paid off home out in suburban Illinois.
To be abundantly clear in a world where remote work is the norm, I'll be able to buy a home very easily. But if we go back to forcing everyone into the office, I'll never buy a home in the United States .
Going to provide a bit of advice. Take it or leave it.
If you don’t want to work in an office, those office lovers are going to need to appreciate your side too. If you’re hoping for a compromise, at least. You may want to alienate them a bit less, or it will be you versus them. And if they win, back you go!
This sounds like being against democracy because you won't always be in the majority.
> Many people have commutes of anywhere from 3 to 4 hours per day
The word "many" is doing a lot of work there. Most people's commutes are way shorter than that.
More junior people, say an entry level employee who still lives at home, will have longer commutes.
I am absolutely not seeing it any sort of majority that wants to go back to the office, it's more like corporate desperately wants it and enough people are like, oh they promised to give us extra bagels, sure.
As long as I'm doing my work, I want the freedom to live wherever I want in the United States.
Sure, but I think you were an outlier, very far from typical.
> More junior people, say an entry level employee who still lives at home, will have longer commutes.
Longer, sure, but I still don't think anywhere near 4 hours.
If everyone but you voted for cake and ice cream on wednesdays, but you’re clocking in at the gates of hell each morning, will you accept defeat and join them?
A bit of hyperbole, for sure, but if it ever isn’t…
This reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1170/ - if everyone but you is voting for that, there's probably something going on other than that you're the only sane one.
So do plenty of adults. But due to several reasons, such as age, they are adults, not kids.
If everyone votes for cake and ice cream in hell except for me, you damn well know they don’t like me and found out I’m lactose intolerant. Fuck that I’m taking my toys and going home.
Yes, all silly examples.
Bystander effect may have a shaky origin, replying to you with a quote from boondocks saints would be disingenuous, but it isn’t worth ruling out what has come from that little seed of an idea based upon some erroneous reporting of a horrible event.
Without knowing why everyone voted for cake and ice cream, all I can do is recognize that it was a very peculiar decision. I’m not grabbing my assault rifle type 15 machine gun straight away and shouting 1776, but I won’t be shrugging off that idea and clocking in without a damn fine explanation.
Unlike people jumping off a bridge, it won’t need split-second decision making.
Remote work is a safeguard. There is a record of every Slack interaction, and with minimal equipment, you can keep your own record of every video chat conversation, too.
If someone chooses to take offense at something you've said, then seek vengeance by way of the HR department, you can go back to the record to exonerate yourself.
It's at the very least illegal if any of the parties are in California or several other states.
I definitely understand and feel firsthand the lack of social interaction from our post-pandemic society. A lot of stuff are online now, like grocery shopping, college classes, and of course work. This is a lot more convenient but it leaves out social interaction.
That being said, the social interaction you get from shopping college and work, mandatory interaction with random people, is less than ideal. If we replace it with something like meetups and clubs, where you a) meet with people who actually share common interests and b) are able to not interact with people you don't like, that would be much better.
If we can hold out a little longer, and the corporate landlords go bust, and some office buildings are auctioned off, and we can cheaply convert them to residential… It would be like a huge shot of adrenaline to America, making the cities affordable enough for young adults again. It would be good for America
I don’t work to have fun, I work to have a paycheck. Don’t insult me by pretending the deal is anything more.
There's a reckoning coming forth in these back-to-the-office articles. Short of blowing up the internet, the market is going to do whatever it wants with or without the banks, and it doesn't matter how much avocado toast snark is put forth.
Pretty sure that said people would respond with “ok boomer.”
All evidence I have seen is that the youth are more prepared than ever to navigate these matters with or without lots of close proximity.
Culture changes before our eyes. Change isn’t always bad, even when we struggle to keep up with it.
Can’t say I agree with this. I’ve seen too many cases that lead me to believe we are closer to a society-scale neurosis given the scared shitless attitudes displayed by the younger generation over the past 2 years.
Less and less people can navigate their way out of bed with a clear mind, Nevermind ascend and accomplish the aforementioned matters.
It isn’t just the younger generation that’s afraid, or upset, paralyzed with anger, fear, sadness, etc.
Shit’s on fire, yo.
But the youth is still talking about it together, whether they can leave the house, or the bed, or not.
What a ghoul.
Your average “woman” isn’t a college educated white liberal in a big city. There’s a large number of conservative women who oppose abortion, and the majority are squeamish about it and support making it illegal after 13 weeks. That’s especially true of minority voters. Just 29% of Hispanic households that speak Spanish at home think abortion should be legal. And half of Black people in southern states like Georgia also oppose abortion. But these women, whether they vote democrat or Republican, also tend to support more social programs for mothers and children.
Noonan is absolutely correct that there’s an opportunity for republicans to kneecap democrats looking to keep Arizona and Georgia blue by appealing to socially conservative women who also reject small government orthodoxy. I’m skeptical republicans can do that—I think they’ll fold as soon as the Chamber of Commerce set comes running back now that Biden wants to raise taxes—but she’s correctly identified the path forward for the GOP.
That’s not what these numbers say. Can you list sources?
So I'd like to make abortion illegal after the 13th week is totally compatible with I'd like abortion be legal in most cases.
Edit: honestly, I don’t care. I’m too tired to argue minutiae. Goodnight.
Insofar as the de facto democrat position is elective abortion to 24 weeks, federal funding, no counseling or waiting periods, and tolerance of “celebrate your abortion” messaging, that cedes territory to the GOP. In states like Texas, 20% of Democrats support abortion only in cases of rape or incest or where the mother’s life is threatened. In those states, the GOP could triangulate a winning position through a heartbeat law coupled with more government support for mothers and children.