The time and expense of commuting is theft, if that job can be done from home.

Comments

• Tedesche@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Can you believe some people like working at an office? COVID taught me I cannot work from home. I need a physical separation between work and home, otherwise I feel like I’m always at work. There are benefits to working from both home and work. There should be options. This notion that working from home is always better than working at work is self-centered drivel.

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  • Ronno@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    For me personally, it’s about balance. Working from home full time during COVID was hell, felt like trapped in my cell really. Going to the office every day feels exhausting due to traffic and open space office design can be very noisy. But meeting in the middle, going to the office once or twice a week is perfect for me. Enough time to work from home, stay focused. But also enough time to connect with colleagues.

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  • Wiz@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This notion that working from an office is always better than working at work is self-centered drivel. You can use your free time to go out and see people!

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• merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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

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  • CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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

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  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Rich fucks wanting skyline views from their desk?

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• avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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 have been won by unioms at one point or another. Most of them a long ago and we’ve been regressing for a few decades.

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• Flames5123@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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

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• HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not to mention the environmental damage.

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• vane@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Image
  Doubt about death

  Source: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919a4.htm

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  • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Great news, traffic deaths are no more because most victims die in the hospital instead of at the site of the accident. Fear hospitals, not traffic.

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    • vane@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Image
      I think that’s transport accidents 2.3%. I approve the OP statement that going to work when you can do it at home is dumb. but doubt about transport death.

      Source: ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death-treemap

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• lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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).

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• WereCat@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve done 30000km in a year by commuting.

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  • PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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• floopus@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I currently travel 2 hours to and from work, making my 9 to 5 a 7 to 7. I hate it so much lmao

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• FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• visnae@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Don’t you include commute in the workday? If you have 30 min to office (1h in total), and have a 7h workday, then you only need to be in office for 6 hours. And 1h of them is probably lunch?

  If company allows work from home, then they will probably maximise the number of “work” hours, as you don’t have a commute and lunch is probably quicker.

  (This is how it should be, but yes I’m joking)

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  • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    .(This is how it should be, but yes I’m joking)

    You had me going there.

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• TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • frank@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • lobut@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• bonsai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I spent 4 hours yesterday commuting 🙃 Fucking hate it here

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• notarobot@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean… It can be. You just have to ask for a raise. That is what I do. If I get a job that is further away, I expect to be paid more. One of the reasons I’m sticking with my current job even though the pay is not great, is that I’m less than 10 minutes away from home. I even get to come home for lunch.

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  • korazail@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Upvoting, but also commenting to say that employees are at a disadvantage in almost all cases: a company can almost certainly absorb your loss but most people cannot absorb the loss of their income.

    Asking for a raise could get you fired (sorry, “let go”), especially if you’re in a position where there’s an eager new applicant just waiting for a position to open up, such as any service-industry job.

    Even niche skilled jobs are not immune. If your cost approaches the value your employer extracts from your labor, then you will be left jobless and you may find it hard to find a comparable position if your skill-set is tightly focused. If you’re the one COBOL programmer at your company, you are underpaid; the moment you demand your actual worth, they will figure out how to pivot that old code-base to something more modern, even if it costs millions of dollars to license and switch to a new ERP platform or similar bullshit.

    I’ve turned this WFH rant into a worker protection rant, so back on topic: Wouldn’t it be nice to just … not have to drive to a place to put your butt in a seat when your butt could be at a seat at home and do the exact same thing? I get that some jobs don’t work that way, but many (probably most) do.

    In 2020, we witnessed most jobs at company headquarters around the world being done at home and nothing exploded. Almost everything done from a cubicle can be done from home. Wouldn’t it be nice to knock down those buildings and make them green spaces instead?

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• qwestjest78@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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

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  • PlexSheep@infosec.pub ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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)

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    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There are people who take Work from Home jobs in high CoL areas and then move to low CoL places to pocket the difference, so that’s not too far off from what already happens.

      Plus, on the other side, incentivizing companies to hire locally could cause companies to be selective in their location to maximize the convenience of commuting from multiple areas for reduced overhead, or increase the desire for increased urban density and lessen suburban sprawl, which is literally choking the life out of places in infrastructure costs alone. Garbage and water services for the wealthy suburbs is subsidized from the taxes of poor people’s apartment buildings.

      Of course, we all know that what would really happen is that we’d see the return of company towns where you sleep in the same bed as 2 other guys on 8 hour shifts so the bed has 100% occupancy 24 hours a day.

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  • HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Also I have seen many office location decisions seem to be about the ceo's commute.

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  • Nelots@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Chivera@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Or they might allow more work from home if it means saving on those commutes.

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  • korazail@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Which CEO downvoted this?

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• 1984@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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!

  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.

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  • HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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).

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    • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You would need more, because also paying for fuel or public transport, expensive lunch, maybe coffee…

      Its scary how bad it is for us to go to an office. Sure, if you single and you need coworkers to not feel lonely, it may be worth it. But im super happy not going.

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  • Illecors@lemmy.cafe ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Small tech social media is just as bad at sucking all that time up. Ask me how I know :(

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    • cravl@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      At least it’s your own brain exploiting you instead of some shadowy cabal of advertising execs?

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• MalReynolds@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Historically unpaid commute originated before urban sprawl, car culture and a massive spike in population, it's been grandfathered in, but it's absolutely theft in the current environment, whether the job can be done at home or not. Posit 1 hr commute either way, that's 10hrs a week, and should probably get hazard loading as well. When unpaid commute originated it was more like 10-15 minutes walk per day.

  One of the most significant and efficient policy changes to combat CO2 and other pollutants would be to legislate paid commuting (with just protection against discrimination for both employee and employer). Just watch every employer WFH everyone who can be, not to mention improved quality of life, local services and being hugely popular.

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  • HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I would like to add a rider to pay at least minimum wage for interview time.

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• razorcandy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My employer gives everyone an annual public transport ticket for commuting.

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    • Admetus@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Taking into account expenses, and no need to financially budget for travel and stress about it, this is a fairly low cost way to satisfy your employees. Is the work not possibly WFH or employer would rather have people in office?

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  • princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This fails to take into account unemployment rates or any other factors that apply pressure to such decision-making. We need legislation that enshrines payment for commute time universally, as it would encourage WFH mandates rather than RTO ones. As well as compensate other workers for their commute. Or perhaps a flat rate of one hour each way’s pay no matter the distance, to stop certain workers finding it harder to get a job.

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  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The rich and poor alike are prohibited from sleeping under bridges. Just choose a better job! Easy! Why didn’t everyone else think of that?

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    • razorcandy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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• psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You wouldn’t say that when a plummer or any physical trade suddenly charge you triple for commute.

  Not that i mind, really, would be sweet if us tradesman get a salary/commission hike.

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  • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You dont get charged a “callout fee” when you call a tradesman? thats basically what that is

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  • AndyMFK@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve never had a plumber not charge a callout fee. Same applies for any trade. Idk where you live that you don’t, but in my experience, any kind of tradesperson will always charge a fee for their commute

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Don’t know about household plumbers, but in a B2B setting you totally do charge for mobilization. Usually, the site is like 500-2000 km away from the specialist you happen to need today. Those service engineers need to travel everywhere in the EMEA region anyway, so a distance like that is just another Thursday for them.

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  • Trimatrix@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not trying to be a capitalist shill or anything. But in that case, wouldn’t need for a more local plumber spring up? Supply and demand eventually meeting the mentality of someone in the local community to say, “Well being a plumber wasn’t my first choice but the money makes it hard to ignore.” or the demand being so great that a plumber in a more saturated supply area decides its too good of an opportunity to not move.

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    • psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The issue now would be there isn’t possible to have plumbers in all corner of the city/town, especially when some place the rent is so high it’s not gonna worth it. Commute is still gonna be around 40min to 60min round trip, more in rural area. Not to mention people also tend to have their trusted or recommended tradesman for the job, as it’s a skilled profession, everyone gonna have different level of skill, ware, price, and attitude toward customer, which mean the trusted one might be further away than the unknown company closer to you.

      Tradesman that work on site already factor in commute into the pricing anyway, but in no way that commute is 3 times of anything. My counter argument to OP is really just that 3 times is stupidly high, while agreeing that people should be compensated for the time spend commuting, maybe with a bit higher in salary per day they spend in workplace.

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  • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No, but I would be nice if they charged for mileage separately. That would give a discount to more local businesses. Of course they may also have to bid based on your distance to the hardware store.

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    • Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Quite some businesses in my area do that. I was quite surprised the first time I saw it, but it makes sense. They usually have distance bands and some extra cost if you are further than a 15-20 minute drive.

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• spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The implication of this is that if that job can’t be done from home, it’s not theft. So the guy making pretty decent money in an office job that could be done at home should get compensated for their commute, but the sandwich artist making far less should not because that can’t be done at home?

  And before we start saying that everyone should have their commute compensated, that has a lot of baggage to it too. I live in the suburbs. I chose to live there knowing there was a trade-off between having more house for the money, but also spending more time in my car to get anywhere. If I were searching for a job, I wouldn’t want to be passed over for it because of the longer commute time I was expecting to have from my own choice in where to live. And let’s say I decided to move 3 hours away to be closer to my in-laws or something. But don’t worry boss, I’ll keep working here! I just won’t be in the office for more than 2 hours a day unless you want to pay me overtime. That’s… A little ridiculous.

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  • HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I disagree here. I get your mister moneybags being able to live anywhere and your preference is the only deciding factor but some are taking cost into consideration. Paying for commute would cause businesses to take location into account for profitability in terms of employee time. It would make sense then for a company to even provide a benefit like a subsidized loan for property closer to the work.

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    • spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Coming in hot with my personal financial situation, eh? Nice. For what it’s worth a major reason I was able to buy the home I have is because we’ve been here over a decade - bought just as the crash started to recover. The last thing I want to do is take a “fuck you, I’ve got mine” attitude but that doesn’t mean I can’t point out giant issues with ideas people are coming up with. You’re welcome to pick apart those arguments, but if you feel the need to go after me personally instead, maybe you should think about why that is.

      Like when you bring up taking location into account for an office location. I live on one side of the metro area, many of my coworkers live elsewhere. Take a company with enough people working somewhere, and their “average” location will probably end up near the middle of the city - more than likely a downtown area. Which brings us right back to where we started.

      What’s more, everything you say may theoretically work for one person going to one workplace from one home. What about a married couple who work in entirely different places? If one person has a job in (for example) Omaha, NE and the other in Lincoln, that couple could conceivably live in between those two cities and each have a sorta long but doable commute. If a company were to “provide a benefit like a subsidized loan for property closer to the work” (you mean like a mortgage?) that would not only be insane for that random shop with 3 employees (not all business owners are automatically in the <1%) but it would put that employee’s partner at a disadvantage by making them have a longer commute.

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  • november@lemmy.vg ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Then how about the employer gets to pick one of two options: Either compensate for a reasonable commute, or pay a wage that allows the employee to live within walking distance?

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    • spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Arguably there is an average commute time baked into the wage already along with other expenses people have in life. I’m not sure it needs to be itemized out as its own thing.

      And this also assumes an IMO flawed assumption that working from home is entirely expense-free. I have a decent work area in my home. If I didn’t, that space could be used for another kid’s bedroom. Or a craft room for the wife. Or a dedicated Lego room. Or a sex dungeon. Maybe some of those things can be paired up with an office easily enough, but that’s my choice, not my employer’s. Plus there are other day to day costs, like the electricity to run my equipment, the Internet connection I probably would have had in the 21st century but technically don’t have to, heating/cooling costs… You get the idea.

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• shittydwarf@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Plus unnecessary damaging the environment which is already in critical condition

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  • Flames5123@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m lucky enough o be able to take the bus to work, plus they give me a free transit card.

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• foggy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  When they started pushing for $15 federal minimum, it should have been $50.

  Today, it should be about $150.

  At $150/hr, you could afford to buy a an average home with a years pay.

  People don’t realize how insanely bad it’s been getting.

  I disagree that we should be paid triple to travel. We should just be paid appropriately. That’s all.

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• Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I would kill for 1/16th. I’m at 1/8th trying not to go into the office more than three times a week.

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