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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

I work for a Fortune 500 company. One of the things a higher up said in discussing getting people back into the office is they need us spending money of food and driving. Food I can kind of understand. We have a ton of food options on campus that are ran by a third party company. I would guess that my company has a contract with them that we will spend $x and if the employees are not spending at least $x, then the company has to make up the difference.

But the driving comment didn't make any sense to us. Is our company getting some sort of kickback from the gasoline stations, car mechanics, or tire shops? Wouldn't the city rather have us not driving to save wear and tear on the roads?

Any my company gives so much lip service to sustainability and the environment. What could be better for the environment than nobody driving into work?

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I used to work for a Fortune 500 company and in my case it was obvious that businesses in and around our campus suffered significantly with more people not coming to the office. My guess is the company had tax incentives in place with the city/state on the condition that their being there was a boost for the local economy. People not coming to work and spending money jeopardized those incentives.

The sunk cost fallacy in full effect, except in some of the big companies that involves actual investment in real estate they want to recoup somehow.

I don't know how long it'll take, but I expect less offices built, and less office floor area being leased in the long term.

Maybe they need you to spend more of your money so you have to keep working to make more money.

One of the problems with paying people more is that they often quit to enjoy the money they’ve made.

You can also think of it this way, if you're not spending money, you're saving it and thus, the company can't hold you hostage in the future because you "need the money".

Jokes on them. I bring my lunch everyday and ride my bike to work. I'm getting exercise and they are losing the time I could have been working if I had stayed home.

Having reliable public transportation with good headways for those who still need to commute to work, getting even more cars off of the roads.

It's the same with people who are paranoid of 15 minute cities as a concept. I don't know whose ends they're useful idiots for, but someone is rioting them.

Maybe they want to get the most use out of their parking garage? If they have one.

There are four parking garages and more surface parking lots than I could possibly count. I think it has more to do with the millions of square feet of office space on campus. But, they should just admit that rather than giving BS excuses.

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