4 ms·

The point is to keep local economies alive. It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. However, offices ar

The point is to keep local economies alive. It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. However, offices are straight up abelist , if you have mobility issues it's absurdly hard to commute. Commuting isn't really needed here, if I was in a wheelchair I'd take this to court. Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse. Most modern cities would collapse as well. So many industries are based around commuting, or supporting office workers. Hell, normalized remote work might destroy our entire economy.

hexis 4y ago
I’m happy to go to a bagel shop in my neighborhood.
- glouwbug 4y ago
  I just get my own bagels from the grocery store. Society relying on bagel up-sellers is largely a symptom of office life
  - distances 4y ago
    My sandwich café sells sandwiches with such a variety of fillings that me trying to replicate that would lead to a lot of wasted food. Everything from asparagus, pickled carrots and smoked cheese to avocado, broccoli and burrata. Plus, there is something about just going to a breakfast where you can just people-watch the passersby without food preparation or cleanup.
88913527 4y ago
Why can't I have lunch delivered to my house or visit the bagel shop from my house?
- shlurpy 4y ago
  This is location specific, but one reason is because American cities were irreparably ruined by suburbanization.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
- jen20 4y ago
  Mobility issues are not for you to agree with or not. And yes, work the hours you want to work. I typically don’t start until 11 or noon, and thanks to time zones and meetings tend to work until 11pm or so. It works out great since 11 is typically when the good shows start here. Do try to be less disagreeable.
alistairSH 4y ago
It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. Isn’t that just an instance of the broken window parable? There’s nothing to prevent the bagel shop locating adjacent to a residential area instead of an office park - then society sees the benefit of WFH and tasty round breads.
- vwcx 4y ago
  Northern Virginia has seen this with food trucks. Since late 2020, I'm starting to see food trucks posting up in the evenings in various residential neighborhoods (almost like how ice cream trucks trawl the streets in summer). This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago -- not worth it for the truck owner. But now they're moving to where people are, which is the upper-middle-class neighborhoods where everyone still WFH. Incredible to see a line for dinner at a food truck parked in the middle of a residential summer street in the suburbs. All this to say: there are ways to keep evolving how things are usually done.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    Where are these trucks? I’m in Reston, but I imagine the trucks are mostly clustering in Falls Church or Arlington? All I can think of is there’s sometimes a food-truck-event at the local park-and-ride, usually on the weekend, but it doesn’t seem very consistent.
- voisin 4y ago
  Presumably if you had bagel shops in every residential neighbourhood, each would sell less and have largely the same fixed costs and so prices would have to be higher.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    Possibly, but I imagine they could get by with less square footage, and in a less expensive space, so rent would be substantially less. But, yeah, oven and other cooking apparatus is probably the same regardless of scale (up to whatever size starts requiring duplicates). And from a societal perspective, saving on commute time/expenses but with $15 bagels is still better than wasting 2+ hours/day, additional car expensises, and only a $7 bagel.
jjav 4y ago
> Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse. They just need to slightly change focus. People still need a place to work even if remote. Instead of trying to rent out that 20Ksqft building to some corporation, start renting out individual private offices within that building to people nearby who need a place to work remotely that's not their couch. I've been renting out a small office room since the pandemic started, right near my house. Almost zero commute but still a separate work area. I lucked into finding someone who is happy to rent me one office room in their building. But many commercial real estate owners still don't get it and don't want to deal with individuals. There are a few empty office buildings in the area which I know have nice offices, but they keep looking to rent the whole building out, so it continues to sit empty. I know there's demand since most people I talk to who are working from their living room love the idea of a local office when I mention I have one.
- sam_bristow 4y ago
  Just curious, do you pay for this small office out of your pocket or does your employer subsidize it? Or are you self-employed?
  - jjav 4y ago
    I pay for it out of pocket. Yes, it'd be nice if companies also moved towards standardizing paying for remote office space, hopefully that'll become normal. But the office payment is less than what I was spending in fuel having to commute, so in that sense I'm still saving money compared to pre-pandemic commute life.
j7ake 4y ago
People working from home still want their bagels and lunches.
Joeri 4y ago
Most modern cities would collapse as well. Cities have much more to offer than office work. Restaurants, entertainment, shops, museums, sights. People that choose to live in the city often choose for those amenities, not a nearness to the office. Getting rid of offices might actually lead to a city that is denser with those attractive activities and therefore more welcoming for people to move there and enjoy those activities.
dan-robertson 4y ago
For many American cities the CBD/downtown (and sometimes older streetcar suburbs) are the only profitable areas in the sense that they pay more in tax than it costs the no city to provide municipal services. Newer suburbs and exurbs don’t pay their way and are subsidised by the centre and unsustainably financed.
- vajrabum 4y ago
  I've heard that story before, but never seen any data that substantiates it. I'm interested in it. Where did you come by this opinion?
Solim 4y ago
I was born socialist country and since state owned everything, they would keep a factory afloat just so it keeps people employed even if it operates on losses. That is not sustainable. Sooner or later it had to collapse. We don't have classic peasants anymore because society recognized that keeping them in business we had to compromise too much in other areas of society. At some point the mentioned delivery guy and girl with bakery will be in the same situation and this is just prolonging the inevitable.
- rekwah 4y ago
  We do this in the United States as well. We're still building tanks the military doesn't even want.
proc0 4y ago
> The point is to keep local economies alive. What seems to be happening is that local economies in smaller cities are booming, because people no longer commute to the bigger city. So it's more a shift.

hexis 4y ago

I’m happy to go to a bagel shop in my neighborhood.

glouwbug 4y ago
I just get my own bagels from the grocery store. Society relying on bagel up-sellers is largely a symptom of office life
- distances 4y ago
  My sandwich café sells sandwiches with such a variety of fillings that me trying to replicate that would lead to a lot of wasted food. Everything from asparagus, pickled carrots and smoked cheese to avocado, broccoli and burrata. Plus, there is something about just going to a breakfast where you can just people-watch the passersby without food preparation or cleanup.

88913527 4y ago

Why can't I have lunch delivered to my house or visit the bagel shop from my house?

shlurpy 4y ago
This is location specific, but one reason is because American cities were irreparably ruined by suburbanization.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

jen20 4y ago
Mobility issues are not for you to agree with or not. And yes, work the hours you want to work. I typically don’t start until 11 or noon, and thanks to time zones and meetings tend to work until 11pm or so. It works out great since 11 is typically when the good shows start here. Do try to be less disagreeable.

alistairSH 4y ago

It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. Isn’t that just an instance of the broken window parable? There’s nothing to prevent the bagel shop locating adjacent to a residential area instead of an office park - then society sees the benefit of WFH and tasty round breads.

vwcx 4y ago
Northern Virginia has seen this with food trucks. Since late 2020, I'm starting to see food trucks posting up in the evenings in various residential neighborhoods (almost like how ice cream trucks trawl the streets in summer). This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago -- not worth it for the truck owner. But now they're moving to where people are, which is the upper-middle-class neighborhoods where everyone still WFH. Incredible to see a line for dinner at a food truck parked in the middle of a residential summer street in the suburbs. All this to say: there are ways to keep evolving how things are usually done.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Where are these trucks? I’m in Reston, but I imagine the trucks are mostly clustering in Falls Church or Arlington? All I can think of is there’s sometimes a food-truck-event at the local park-and-ride, usually on the weekend, but it doesn’t seem very consistent.
voisin 4y ago
Presumably if you had bagel shops in every residential neighbourhood, each would sell less and have largely the same fixed costs and so prices would have to be higher.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Possibly, but I imagine they could get by with less square footage, and in a less expensive space, so rent would be substantially less. But, yeah, oven and other cooking apparatus is probably the same regardless of scale (up to whatever size starts requiring duplicates). And from a societal perspective, saving on commute time/expenses but with $15 bagels is still better than wasting 2+ hours/day, additional car expensises, and only a $7 bagel.

jjav 4y ago

> Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse. They just need to slightly change focus. People still need a place to work even if remote. Instead of trying to rent out that 20Ksqft building to some corporation, start renting out individual private offices within that building to people nearby who need a place to work remotely that's not their couch. I've been renting out a small office room since the pandemic started, right near my house. Almost zero commute but still a separate work area. I lucked into finding someone who is happy to rent me one office room in their building. But many commercial real estate owners still don't get it and don't want to deal with individuals. There are a few empty office buildings in the area which I know have nice offices, but they keep looking to rent the whole building out, so it continues to sit empty. I know there's demand since most people I talk to who are working from their living room love the idea of a local office when I mention I have one.

sam_bristow 4y ago
Just curious, do you pay for this small office out of your pocket or does your employer subsidize it? Or are you self-employed?
- jjav 4y ago
  I pay for it out of pocket. Yes, it'd be nice if companies also moved towards standardizing paying for remote office space, hopefully that'll become normal. But the office payment is less than what I was spending in fuel having to commute, so in that sense I'm still saving money compared to pre-pandemic commute life.

j7ake 4y ago

People working from home still want their bagels and lunches.

Joeri 4y ago

Most modern cities would collapse as well. Cities have much more to offer than office work. Restaurants, entertainment, shops, museums, sights. People that choose to live in the city often choose for those amenities, not a nearness to the office. Getting rid of offices might actually lead to a city that is denser with those attractive activities and therefore more welcoming for people to move there and enjoy those activities.

dan-robertson 4y ago

For many American cities the CBD/downtown (and sometimes older streetcar suburbs) are the only profitable areas in the sense that they pay more in tax than it costs the no city to provide municipal services. Newer suburbs and exurbs don’t pay their way and are subsidised by the centre and unsustainably financed.

vajrabum 4y ago
I've heard that story before, but never seen any data that substantiates it. I'm interested in it. Where did you come by this opinion?

Solim 4y ago

I was born socialist country and since state owned everything, they would keep a factory afloat just so it keeps people employed even if it operates on losses. That is not sustainable. Sooner or later it had to collapse. We don't have classic peasants anymore because society recognized that keeping them in business we had to compromise too much in other areas of society. At some point the mentioned delivery guy and girl with bakery will be in the same situation and this is just prolonging the inevitable.

rekwah 4y ago
We do this in the United States as well. We're still building tanks the military doesn't even want.

proc0 4y ago

> The point is to keep local economies alive. What seems to be happening is that local economies in smaller cities are booming, because people no longer commute to the bigger city. So it's more a shift.