4 ms·

What I find offensive is the notion that workers consider a 10-25% increase in hours as commensurate with a 5% pay cut. End commuting. It's unpaid labor.

by ouid 5y ago

abecedarius 5y ago
> offensive ... It's unpaid labor. If the extra pay for the extra commute is offensively low, don't take the offer. (That said, I'm happy remote-first is getting more common.)
zerocount 5y ago
Yes, commuting is the number one reason to work from home for me. I don't like to spend 1-2 hours a day driving back and forth just to have my ass in a chair at the office.
nly 5y ago
I've just gone back to an office (I changed jobs) and I'm shocked how maybe 5 out of 8 of my team choose regular office work over hybrid simply because of the free lunches and dinners. Personally I find standing on a train for 45 minutes each way, and not being able to do small household errands on my breaks, like I can when I work from home, means my entire Mon-Fri is a cycle of sleep-eat-commute-work with no time to tend to anything. It's a shock to the system. That said, I switched rolls for twice the money, not 5%, and hybrid work will hopefully be something I can move to in a couple of months.
- decafninja 5y ago
  Are you me? Switched jobs that is 100% back to office but quadrupled my pay (and significant boost in company brand name too), otherwise I’d be disgruntled. The commute into NYC is as miserable of an experience and a huge collective waste of time. But a lot of my coworkers on my new team love the fact that they can eat breakfast lunch and dinner at the office for free. Then again they are all young and single.
- michaelt 5y ago
  > I'm shocked how maybe 5 out of 8 of my team choose regular office work over hybrid simply because of the free lunches and dinners. Some people I know are bachelors who don't cook (weird lifestyle, but it takes all sorts I guess) so employers with canteens are a big attraction for them. Other people, I suspect, have reasons for getting back to the office that they're a bit shy about. Joking that you're just here for the coffee preserves your status and privacy better than saying you're back in the office because your house is tiny / your kids are uncontrollable / you struggled with mental health issues.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, my diet suffered when I went totally WFH. I went from eating a healthy salad 4x a week to 'eating out of the pantry' with grocery runs every two weeks or so. You can't keep salad greens around shopping that infrequently. Granted, shopping that infrequently was a consequence of trying to limit exposure in a global pandemic, but my dietary habits are much less healthy now, lol.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      I’m the opposite. Lost 20lb during WFH eating healthy meals at home with the occasional takeout cheat meal. Gained it all back once I had to return to the office and resort to eating supposedly “healthy” meals provided by the company. No time to prep at home because frankly after being punched kicked and beaten up by the 800lb gorilla that is the miserable commute I’m in no mood to do so.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    There are definitely people for whom having to deal with food seven days a week was a rude awakening. That said, as you note, I see people with significant commutes coming back into offices on a regular basis for reasons that are clearly not cafeteria related. (We don't have free meals or have dinner at all in my local office; I'm remote.)
abyssin 5y ago
If you consider commuting as labour, you’re creating an incentive for many workers to increase the distance between where they work and where they live. Something comparable has happened in Belgium with the system of company cars. A car with fuel card is considered as a standard part of the salary package, which is advantageous from a fiscal perspective. What you get is more traffic, pollution, urban sprawl and more time wasted sitting in cars.
- jalfresi 5y ago
  "you’re creating an incentive for many workers to increase the distance between where they work and where they live" Having commuted for many many years, I literally cannot fathom how this line of thinking is even considered a reasonable counter. Do some poeple get to commute through a utopic wonderland? Have I been living/working in the wrong places all these years?
  - abyssin 5y ago
    The people I know who choose to live outside the city underestimate the impact of commuting on their quality of life, and overestimate the benefits associated to living in the “countryside”. They want a backyard and a dog. Once they’re stuck in their lifestyle, they develop a blindness to alternatives. Their experience of the city is the one of a commuter – a terrible one. They end up really believing that city life has to be terrible too. They have no idea how to manage the amount of stuff sitting in their relatively cheaper house. They forget about parks and alternative means of transportation to cars. People should realize that comfortable car-centric lifestyles are too expensive for them to afford. I’m talking from the perspective of a Western European country.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      Speaking from the perspective of a US commuter, the typical commuter here is probably not living in an urban city core, but rather the outskirts or suburbs due to affordability issues. So they’re not experiencing urban city life anyways to begin with. I live outside Manhattan, NYC, into which I and countless others commute into for work. An astounding amount of collective hours is absolutely wasted on commuting into and out of Manhattan. The public transit system here is arguably the best in the US, but still utterly horrible compared to the systems in place in many Asian cities and probably European ones too.
simonswords82 5y ago
Sounds like a post from r/antiwork but I do understand your point. In fact, when I was working in London it was doing the maths on my "unpaid labour" at the time which made me quit and start my first business. 1.5 hours each way * 5 days a week = 15 hours a week That's 780 hours a year (not including holidays/sick leave etc) That's 32.5 24 hour days! One whole calendar month sat in my car each year. As soon I did that maths it was only a question of time before I quit.
- zamalek 5y ago
  And here's the other side of it: you were ruining the commute for everyone causally tied to their workplace (from baristas to doctors) by adding undue stress to transport infrastructure. Then there's the impact on the environment. Dropping your commute isn't an entirely selfish idea.
- philk10 5y ago
  Snap - I was doing 4 hours each day (combination of car and train) and then add in the frequent train delays and after a year I was looking to move

What I find offensive is the notion that workers consider a 10-25% increase in hours as commensurate with a 5% pay cut. End commuting. It's unpaid labor.

by ouid 5y ago

What I find offensive is the notion that workers consider a 10-25% increase in hours as commensurate with a 5% pay cut. End commuting. It's unpaid labor.

abecedarius 5y ago

> offensive ... It's unpaid labor. If the extra pay for the extra commute is offensively low, don't take the offer. (That said, I'm happy remote-first is getting more common.)

zerocount 5y ago

Yes, commuting is the number one reason to work from home for me. I don't like to spend 1-2 hours a day driving back and forth just to have my ass in a chair at the office.

nly 5y ago

I've just gone back to an office (I changed jobs) and I'm shocked how maybe 5 out of 8 of my team choose regular office work over hybrid simply because of the free lunches and dinners. Personally I find standing on a train for 45 minutes each way, and not being able to do small household errands on my breaks, like I can when I work from home, means my entire Mon-Fri is a cycle of sleep-eat-commute-work with no time to tend to anything. It's a shock to the system. That said, I switched rolls for twice the money, not 5%, and hybrid work will hopefully be something I can move to in a couple of months.

decafninja 5y ago
Are you me? Switched jobs that is 100% back to office but quadrupled my pay (and significant boost in company brand name too), otherwise I’d be disgruntled. The commute into NYC is as miserable of an experience and a huge collective waste of time. But a lot of my coworkers on my new team love the fact that they can eat breakfast lunch and dinner at the office for free. Then again they are all young and single.
michaelt 5y ago
> I'm shocked how maybe 5 out of 8 of my team choose regular office work over hybrid simply because of the free lunches and dinners. Some people I know are bachelors who don't cook (weird lifestyle, but it takes all sorts I guess) so employers with canteens are a big attraction for them. Other people, I suspect, have reasons for getting back to the office that they're a bit shy about. Joking that you're just here for the coffee preserves your status and privacy better than saying you're back in the office because your house is tiny / your kids are uncontrollable / you struggled with mental health issues.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, my diet suffered when I went totally WFH. I went from eating a healthy salad 4x a week to 'eating out of the pantry' with grocery runs every two weeks or so. You can't keep salad greens around shopping that infrequently. Granted, shopping that infrequently was a consequence of trying to limit exposure in a global pandemic, but my dietary habits are much less healthy now, lol.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    I’m the opposite. Lost 20lb during WFH eating healthy meals at home with the occasional takeout cheat meal. Gained it all back once I had to return to the office and resort to eating supposedly “healthy” meals provided by the company. No time to prep at home because frankly after being punched kicked and beaten up by the 800lb gorilla that is the miserable commute I’m in no mood to do so.
- ghaff 5y ago
  There are definitely people for whom having to deal with food seven days a week was a rude awakening. That said, as you note, I see people with significant commutes coming back into offices on a regular basis for reasons that are clearly not cafeteria related. (We don't have free meals or have dinner at all in my local office; I'm remote.)

abyssin 5y ago

If you consider commuting as labour, you’re creating an incentive for many workers to increase the distance between where they work and where they live. Something comparable has happened in Belgium with the system of company cars. A car with fuel card is considered as a standard part of the salary package, which is advantageous from a fiscal perspective. What you get is more traffic, pollution, urban sprawl and more time wasted sitting in cars.

jalfresi 5y ago
"you’re creating an incentive for many workers to increase the distance between where they work and where they live" Having commuted for many many years, I literally cannot fathom how this line of thinking is even considered a reasonable counter. Do some poeple get to commute through a utopic wonderland? Have I been living/working in the wrong places all these years?
- abyssin 5y ago
  The people I know who choose to live outside the city underestimate the impact of commuting on their quality of life, and overestimate the benefits associated to living in the “countryside”. They want a backyard and a dog. Once they’re stuck in their lifestyle, they develop a blindness to alternatives. Their experience of the city is the one of a commuter – a terrible one. They end up really believing that city life has to be terrible too. They have no idea how to manage the amount of stuff sitting in their relatively cheaper house. They forget about parks and alternative means of transportation to cars. People should realize that comfortable car-centric lifestyles are too expensive for them to afford. I’m talking from the perspective of a Western European country.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    Speaking from the perspective of a US commuter, the typical commuter here is probably not living in an urban city core, but rather the outskirts or suburbs due to affordability issues. So they’re not experiencing urban city life anyways to begin with. I live outside Manhattan, NYC, into which I and countless others commute into for work. An astounding amount of collective hours is absolutely wasted on commuting into and out of Manhattan. The public transit system here is arguably the best in the US, but still utterly horrible compared to the systems in place in many Asian cities and probably European ones too.

simonswords82 5y ago

Sounds like a post from r/antiwork but I do understand your point. In fact, when I was working in London it was doing the maths on my "unpaid labour" at the time which made me quit and start my first business. 1.5 hours each way * 5 days a week = 15 hours a week That's 780 hours a year (not including holidays/sick leave etc) That's 32.5 24 hour days! One whole calendar month sat in my car each year. As soon I did that maths it was only a question of time before I quit.

zamalek 5y ago
And here's the other side of it: you were ruining the commute for everyone causally tied to their workplace (from baristas to doctors) by adding undue stress to transport infrastructure. Then there's the impact on the environment. Dropping your commute isn't an entirely selfish idea.
philk10 5y ago
Snap - I was doing 4 hours each day (combination of car and train) and then add in the frequent train delays and after a year I was looking to move