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Comment by martin_a | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is limited to America or healthcare.

We're seeing these effects in corporate life, too: A charging station for EVs has been put up for the company and client EVs. I'm the first employee to have received "free access" to the charger as a benefit instead of more money. (to be fair: I'm the only one with a pure EV until now, too).

Now people are voting against putting up more chargers and enabling employees to charge for a smaller fee than normal, because "there's no normal gas pump being installed".

Nobody will lose anything with two more charging stations. But before somebody with another car gets "something nice", people prefer getting nothing at all now.

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But this isn't so much a foot shoot. The gas-guzzling employees are voting (why is there voting anyway?) for "I get nothing, you get nothing" over "I get nothing, you get something" - perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere.

The described action would be more like "remove all parking lots instead of letting martin_a charge his car in a space" - which would harm the guzzlers to own the EVs.

> perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere.

This is exactly what’s going on. People know that these expenditures ultimately come out of the company’s operating budget, which diminishes the funds available for other things. Installing EV chargers is a great environmental move in my personal opinion, but we can’t pretend it’s unrelated to discussions come raise/bonus time when people are told that their raises are smaller than expected because budgets are stretched this year.

The EV chargers may be a tiny contributor, but they’re still an unbalanced distribution of the company’s funds based on something completely unrelated to performance. People are keenly aware of these things.

You've brought up good points here. Our "corporate climate" often isn't the best, that's probably why this leads to lots of upset people.

Amusingly if it were proposed to put the EV charging stations in the worst part of the parking lot, people would probably be happier; as it is they're often right next to the handicap stalls and so you have the double whammy of someone getting the best parking space AND free "gas".

> (why is there voting anyway?)

Meh, it's not the best word, I'm no native speaker. There are some very vocal people pushing against this initiative which are "inciting" (DeepL) others to stand up against this.

> But this isn't so much a foot shoot.

Not sure about it.

We've got some money left from a good business year, so the CEOs wanted to make some "small projects" for the production site, with some kind of "longer impact" than one-time payments. With payments, taxes will eat most it and the holding corporation would probably step in and mess it up, as other companies from the group are struggling a little bit.

So they've built a barbecue area for example. A handful of people wanted that (it hasn't been used more than two times up till now) and some people have said that they'd like their next car to be an EV/hybrid and that it would be great if there were more charging stations. So they thought it would be a good idea to invest some of the money in chargers.

As there's this "inciting" now, it seems like that plan will be cancelled and the money will find its way into the holding group and be lost to the employees right here.

Not sure if that isn't a foot shoot in the end after all.

Yeah, that's an inter-family squabble about what to do with a "windfall" - the leaders should have collected various ideas and "combined" them in some way, a barbecue area that includes EV parking and (I have no idea what office workers see as perks, tbh).

> the leaders should have collected various ideas

Oh, that happened, but only a quarter of people took part in it because of "meh"... Now they are complaining...

We also got bicycle leasing now and some other stuff, not all is bad...

>"The gas-guzzling employees"

Contrary to EV driving nature saving unicorns? Ever heard that many simply can not afford EV. Or healthy food. Or many other things.

When you account for opportunity costs, i.e. no such thing as a free lunch, then your opponents' position is rational. People see installing chargers as depleting the pool of funds for employee benefits for which they receive no benefit.

> Nobody will lose anything with two more charging stations

Money doesn't grow on trees.

It's not limited to the US or healthcare, but it is extremely evident there. Look at how many politicians get elected solely on the platform of "We won't help a certain group," regardless of who that hurts.

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