An hour spent commuting is 1/16th of your daily life, and that hour is by far the biggest risk to your life every day. You should be getting triple pay to ameliorate the hazard risk it represents.
If your boss decides where you have to live, then sure. But, when you choose where to live, and you choose where to work, and you choose to work for a company that requires you to work in person, and you choose to live far away from that job, then… these are your choices.
Now, if a company wants to make it much more attractive to come into the office, paying a 20% bonus that people get if they choose to come into the office, that’s great. They’ll probably attract a lot more applicants.
Fundamentally, the issue here is the concentration of wealth. If wealth were more evenly distributed, workers would feel like they had more choices. If a company offered a shitty employment contract requiring that the person be in the office 5 days a week for a job that was easily done remotely, the worker could just say “nah” and choose a different job. It’s the same for all the other things that Americans complain about: vacation days, parental leave, sick days, etc. All of those could be things that are up for negotiation, or that employers could offer as a competitive advantage if the power balance were more even.
Even if you think these are things that should be fixed by laws, that’s also down to concentration of wealth. The wealthy control the government, and so the government passes laws that are friendly to them. If the difference between the richest and poorest were more reasonable, regular people’s votes and opinions would matter.
You should be getting triple pay to ameliorate the hazard risk it represents.
That’s something a union can help with. Most compensation above poverty wages has been won by unions at one point or another. Most of them a long ago and we’ve been regressing for a few decades.
Less congestion for people that do need to travel.
Less pollution.
More free time.
Cheaper housing because we won’t all need to be clustered in the places with decent paying jobs.
But no, fuck it all because the mega rich might have to make do with very slightly less.
I just don’t understand why developers don’t jump on the opprtunity to build commercial offices outside of the main downtown areas, closer to where people live, this will eliminate the long and taxing commute that everyone hates and get people back in office like they want, is there some tax or zoning reason why all the office space is located downtown in the US, with hybrid work these days it would be so much better if I could just go to some co-working space close to my home
Office parks in the middle of nowhere suck. You’re never going to be close to everyone, employees can’t walk somewhere for a change of scenery or to take a break, and being away from downtown means public transit is less likely to reach the area.
I’m all for letting people pick a coworking space if they want, but making people commute to the suburbs is a different kind of hell.
The lack of scenery and being in the middle of nowhere with poor public transportation options is a failure of suburban design caused by segregation of commercial and residential areas and too much dependency on personal cars. I’ve never liked those rows up rows of identical single family homes, they feel empty and soulless, which is why I prefer staying on the outer neighborhoods of downtown so there’s plenty of walkable places and public transportation options
Rich fucks wanting skyline views from their desk?
it’s unpaid labor either way, it’s a bit arbitrary to say owning a car and commuting for a job isn’t time and money spent for the employer in your capacity as an employee
Not to mention the environmental damage.
Absolutely. I’ve been working from home for ~3 years and I’ll never go back. I have so much more time for myself (and also, no one is annoying me with smalltalk or stupid questions).
I’m lucky enough that when my company started enforcing 5 days a week, they don’t enforce hours. I usually wake up for my first meeting then shower/get ready after, then commute. They give me free public transit, so I take the bus every time too. Plus I can bring my dog in, and I get a free nice coffee (lattes, tea, matcha, etc). Then I’ll leave the office about 3/4pm and WFH if needed.
Agreed.
I’m lucky in several respects, being on a public transit line and only 10 minutes from work, but we have a guy on my team who drives, in his own car, 90 miles each way for our one day a week in the office. It’s dumb.
I currently travel 2 hours to and from work, making my 9 to 5 a 7 to 7. I hate it so much lmao
There is a study that showed workers don’t mind commuting so long as the route is full of greenery and nature. That explains a lot because in my hometown, I was happy enough to commute in public transport and people are nice enough that you can chat with them. Then I moved to a bigger city, which is a concrete jungle. I hate the commute. And mind you, the public transport in my home town is about ten to twenty minutes more depending on the traffic, but I didn’t mind for some reason. Then, after moving to a bigger city, travelling only for one hour feels like a long trek.
Something like 4 minutes of my 25 minute commute is through trees, and it still makes a big difference. I think you’re on to something.
Oh my yes. My big nastalgia thing is when I lived in a neighborhood just outside city center and my commute was three miles. I would walk it, go four miles out of my way to bike the lakefront, or if weather was bad enough take transit. Most of the time I was getting nice exercise with the commute and I could pick up some things on my way home. I mean a lot of that is just not being in a car really and of course that outside of work most everything I needed day to day was walkable.
I used to have a drive to work, and it suckkkkkkkkkked. I moved, and can now cycle to work or take a nice train. I suddenly do not mind my 30 minute commute at all. I look forward to my bike ride most of the time, and I love the feeling after having done it.
I take a bus and then walk … half hour or so on the bus and half hour or so of walking. If I drive it’s like 35-45 minutes?
However, I’m always more tired when I arrive there. Also, I’m not a fan of finding parking and stuff around the office.
Yeah honestly I don’t get the hate, maybe this is why.
I could never live in the city. That place is dark, full of tall buildings that block out the sky and covered in trash over concrete that blocks out the ground.
Out here in the country I have a ten minute commute and would go insane if I had to work from home. I’m quite happy to go to the office five days a week.
I think cities are the problem, not commuting.
On top of my suspicion that your mental image of “cities” is just downtown Manhattan, which not all cities and certainly not all parts of any city are like, the fact that you mentioned having a 10 minute commute says to me that you definitely don’t live in a rural location. Simply living in a suburb does not mean you are living in the country, and there has been research done that people are much more likely to think they live in a rural location when they very much don’t if they live in a suburb of a much more dense city.
Suburbs is actually which I hate the worst but ironically live in. It lacks the convenience of the city with no real significant increase in nature. It just has more lawns over the city and lacks a lot of plant diversity as the city is more likely to throw some trees and bushes and various greenery in the public space or require buildings to have it over the burbs which is just house and lawns. Problem is the burbs are a bit cheaper mostly and have some public transit that connects up with the city system.
Cities don’t need to be trash covered concrete. This is a random street in Brooklyn.
Cities have a large number of other benefits as well.
I don’t think many people would complain about a 10 minute commute. My mom has a 45 minute drive to and from work each day, and works 10 hour days (4 days a week). I would go insane.
I’ve done 30000km in a year by commuting.
In one single year, I commuted about 50000 km in my own car before I could move closer to my workplace. People have a hard time believing me until I point it out on a map.
I have always felt that you should be paid for travel time for a job. If it takes 30 mins to drive to work then the company should be paying you that time.
Look at how many bosses/CEOs bill their daily travel expenses to the company
That would be good except that you could literally get a job far away for “was” money, or you would disadvantage people living farther away from jobs (cities)
Also I have seen many office location decisions seem to be about the ceo’s commute.
I wonder if this would make it harder for people to find jobs. I imagine companies would be less inclined to hire people an hour away if they had to pay for it.
Or they might allow more work from home if it means saving on those commutes.
Which CEO downvoted this?
When I was renting (most of my life), I would find an apartment that was close to my job. I hated commuting with a furious passion.
If you do the math, its just horrible. If you have one hour to work, its 2 hours every day just getting to and back from work, which is 10 hours per week.
So you are spending more than an entire work day every week in traffic! Every year, you are spending 41 full working days in traffic!!
Isnt that just insane? If you are working from home, you have 10 hours of free time every week. The value of that is insane. You could go to gym, spend time with family, learn how to cook, whatever. Its a lot of time.
On a related note, you should get off big tech social media because that will suck up so much time you could use to improve yourself instead.
Yeah in most cases if a job gave you a 25% increase for always in office and you are wfh you would be better off staying work from home unless your wage was inadequate to begin with (which unfortunately it often is).
Small tech social media is just as bad at sucking all that time up. Ask me how I know :(
At least it’s your own brain exploiting you instead of some shadowy cabal of advertising execs and astroturf campaign strategists?
