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Pandemic is the only thing preventing organized lunch with coworkers. Nothing about wfh prevents it - just agree on a place and time. Internet is a problem, bu

Pandemic is the only thing preventing organized lunch with coworkers. Nothing about wfh prevents it - just agree on a place and time. Internet is a problem, but a solvable one - assuming you are in the US, we need competition for ISPs. I had ATT fiber for a while and it was for all practical purposes as good as office (symmetric gigabit). Cycling has been covered :) Separation - door closed to the space I work in works great for me. When I didn’t have that, putting everything away and leaving the work space for a few hours did the trick - it’s all in mental discipline.

srg0 6y ago
> just agree on a place and time It would require a commute longer than that of going to the office. An average employee has already organized their life around the necessity of commuting to the office. Office is probably a central location. Most workers will be found within a circle of the tolerable commute time (isotropy assumption). Let for simplicity assume that all workers live at the same distance R from the office, and are distributed uniformly along that circle. The angular distance between any two employees is distributed uniformly in [0, pi]. Chord length is R 2 sin (theta/2). Integrating, we calculate the average distance between two employees: 4R/pi > R.
- sologoub 6y ago
  So meet by the original office location? Why is it always being positioned as a choice - it’s completely a false dichotomy.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
But in practice it is will happen less frequently, and will be a longer commute for most. Not least because many people live in the suburbs, but work in places where places to eat are nearby. On the plus, many more lunches with spouse and children.
asdff 6y ago
Before the pandemic it was hard enough to get people to stick around for a few hours after work to grab a beer. I can't imagine having people drop what they are doing for over an hour just to have a half hour lunch in a central spot. Adult coworkers do not drop everything in front of them for a short good time like college friends would have.
- sologoub 6y ago
  Sounds like those coworkers weren’t really looking to socialize and had other priorities. But again, it’s being setup as a false choice - if it’s important to your orgs culture all you need to do is setup pre-arranged times for it, much like you pre-arrange a working schedule and have expectations on when people are in the office. It’s just not every day.

srg0 6y ago

> just agree on a place and time It would require a commute longer than that of going to the office. An average employee has already organized their life around the necessity of commuting to the office. Office is probably a central location. Most workers will be found within a circle of the tolerable commute time (isotropy assumption). Let for simplicity assume that all workers live at the same distance R from the office, and are distributed uniformly along that circle. The angular distance between any two employees is distributed uniformly in [0, pi]. Chord length is R 2 sin (theta/2). Integrating, we calculate the average distance between two employees: 4R/pi > R.

sologoub 6y ago
So meet by the original office location? Why is it always being positioned as a choice - it’s completely a false dichotomy.

jonnycomputer 6y ago

But in practice it is will happen less frequently, and will be a longer commute for most. Not least because many people live in the suburbs, but work in places where places to eat are nearby. On the plus, many more lunches with spouse and children.

asdff 6y ago

Before the pandemic it was hard enough to get people to stick around for a few hours after work to grab a beer. I can't imagine having people drop what they are doing for over an hour just to have a half hour lunch in a central spot. Adult coworkers do not drop everything in front of them for a short good time like college friends would have.

sologoub 6y ago
Sounds like those coworkers weren’t really looking to socialize and had other priorities. But again, it’s being setup as a false choice - if it’s important to your orgs culture all you need to do is setup pre-arranged times for it, much like you pre-arrange a working schedule and have expectations on when people are in the office. It’s just not every day.