I used to work for a company that had the right idea. We brought our work trucks home, and our work day started when we turned the key, and ended when we got home.
Had to be at a job for 8 and it was an hour away? You were paid for that. Only had a job 5 minutes away? Enjoy the extra sleep in time and the short commute home.
Now, this is way different than an office job that is stationary, but there is definitely a conversation to be had about it. If nothing else, it may have more companies going back to taking WFH seriously again instead of needlesslt forcing people back into office spaces in order to prop up the commercial real estate sector.
When I had a 1hr commute through heavy city traffic, I needed a break when I walked in the door. It took me at least an hour to get up the energy to do anything. Most of the time I would sip coffee while pretending to read e-mails or talk to coworkers. My body might be there but I wasn’t doing anything. So the company was paying for my recovery time from the “work” of the commute.
I don’t know why any company would push an employee into a long commute if it’s not necessary. It costs the company a ton of money in productivity.
It’s the problem with companies focusing on time spent, not productivity. I can waste a ton of time and get nothing done if I am so inclined.
I don’t know why any company would push an employee into a long commute if it’s not necessary.
I mean, they aren’t. Unless you are dealing with something like being a housekeeper for a rich neighborhood, most bosses would love it if you lived within 30 minutes of the office.
But the reality of the housing problem is that you MIGHT be able to afford an apartment near the office. But if you want to “put down roots”, you are living on the outskirts of town. And if you look at something like the insanity that is The Bay Area, “the outskirts of town” seems to move by 10-100 miles every few years.
And… it is real shitty, but that is part of the push for hybrid schedules. If you live three hours away from the office then nobody will ever want to call you in. But… sometimes they can’t help it. And now they have the mess of “Well, The V lives 3 hours away so do we have to pay them? We don’t pay Susie who lives 30 minutes away and it isn’t fair to her that she has to spend an extra five hours a day in the office… But we also can’t give The V what is effectively a day off every time they have an in person meeting…” So the “hope” is that people will… sell their houses and go back to getting exploited by a slum lord?
This idea that to be stable or put down roots means buying a single family home in the suburbs is one of the biggest problems in America. Because of this idea, there’s so little high quality medium density housing designed for families in cities, which only reinforces this idea. It causes people spread out, they isolate, they use more energy to live and commute, they don’t have experiences with a diverse group of people.
In many Labor Economic Models, the distinction in Time is measured as Time spent working vs Time spent not working, in which the commute is factored. Many companies deal with people’s reluctance to commute by offering better pay or better benefits (if they’re seeking specific skillsets that are more difficult to find close by), but sometimes you find a gem like your company.
I know it would be difficult to implement for many companies, but I wish more companies did something like that when they could. The company I work for doesn’t pay for commutes from home, but will pay for them if you are temporarily relocated to a different office by calculating the distance between the two offices and average fuel price
From what understand that is following the U.S. tax code. The commute from your home to your assigned work location is considered the employees responsibility. If they are temporarily assigned to another location further away, the difference in mileage is considered a business expense. In some states they are required to pay the employee. In others it’s an allowable wage theft, the company claims the mileage and doesn’t reimburse the employee.
I drive a work vehicle. I have to declare how many personal miles I used the vehicle for yearly. Personal miles are all non-company related miles and the commute to my primary office. This benefit is considered income and taxed.
Currently my primary office is my home so 95% of my miles are business. At my last job they assigned my primary office to one 20 miles away (even though I was only there 1 day every 2 weeks). As such 20% of my miles were personal. A real dick move in my opinion but perfectly legal.
Oh it’s simple. Would you be commuting if you didn’t have the job? No? Then it’s work related and should be compensated.
If you have a two hour daily commute you should be paid for those two hours. Hell the company should probably pay for the cost of commuting and a tax for offsetting the emissions.
They would just not hire people that live two hours away.
And this is a problem because…?
Because that just limits people’s ability to find employment.
I’ve had jobs where I lived 10 minutes away, and took a different job with a further commute because it paid significantly more.
Should an employee have to up and move their house every time they change employers, or should employees be able to decide if a long commute is worth it to them based on the offer?
If everyone commuted two hours daily, we’d fuck our climate even faster, so…
Greater Toronto Area what’s up
Because that just limits people’s ability to find employment.
Not really? In cities with actual functional public transit, you can go way further than you can with a car. In cities with reasonable density, the stuff you need, including job opportunities, aren’t 2 hours away to begin with. The problem isn’t incentivizing short commutes.
Even in my city with mediocre transit, and that’s got way more sprawl than necessary for the population, I can cross the city, a distance of 20 miles/31km, using transit, in 1.5hrs. The problem isn’t incentivizing short commutes.
I’ve had jobs where I lived 10 minutes away, and took a different job with a further commute because it paid significantly more.
How much further? 30 mins? 2 hours? Let me guess, you used a car because transit and density is bad?
Should an employee have to up and move their house every time they change employers, or should employees be able to decide if a long commute is worth it to them based on the offer?
That’s a loaded question, a strawman, and a black or white fallacy. It isn’t an either/or, and you’re reaching for the absolute most unreasonable scenario that’s unlikely to happen to begin with. That’s called arguing in bad faith.
I would argue yours is strawman - you are arguing against a city with quality public transportation which is not always the case and wasn’t the original arguement.
I think the biggest point the other poster is arguing is that personal choice comes into play. It’s not the employers job to tell you how to get to work, nor is it their responsibility if you want to take a job a distance from your house - its their job to find the best candidate who is willing to do the job offered.
You also argue against the argument that people won’t move house every time they change job. It sounds extreme, but it is always an option for the employee and a part of free choice.
you are arguing against a city with quality public transportation which is not always the case and wasn’t the original arguement.
It should be, and we should be making those changes, so arguing that something is only a problem if the given situation really should be temporary isn’t a very good argument. Arguing that this change is a problem (It still isn’t for the majority of people) if we’re dealing with problems in other areas (So this change itself isn’t even the problem, it just exacerbates another one, that we should be fixing anyway), isn’t a very good argument.
I think the biggest point the other poster is arguing is that personal choice comes into play.
“Personal Choice” is only an argument when it doesn’t affect other people. Having a 2 hour commute by car definitely does. And even if it didn’t, it has a large effect on the person doing it. And we block/disincentivize people from doing other harmful things. Why is this one special?
It’s not the employers job to tell you how to get to work,
Good thing nobody suggested it was.
nor is it their responsibility if you want to take a job a distance from your house
So commutes should be unpaid, despite the only reason you do it is because of work? Why are commutes different from other work? They pay when you’re moving between jobsites, why is this different? “Employers don’t have control over it”? Did you know relocation packages are a thing? Lobbying for loosened zoning, so we can have higher density? Better public transit? They have far from 0 control over it.
its their job to find the best candidate who is willing to do the job offered.
And they need to include a variety of circumstances, one of which is the employee’s proximity to any jobsites, because how long it takes them to get there is very much relevant in many industries. And in the ones it isn’t, remote work is quite often possible.
You also argue against the argument that people won’t move house every time they change job.
I didn’t though. In fact, if you’re planning on a 2 hour commute, you should be considering moving closer, or not taking that job.
It sounds extreme, but it is always an option for the employee and a part of free choice.
We also block people from purchasing food with bleach in it. That’s part of free choice, isn’t it? Why is this choice so important that it should be up to the person to make? The externalities of having a 2 hour commute are massive, and even just the effects on the person themselves are also huge. Since these 2 hour commutes are mostly done by car, that’s a huge mental load on the person doing the commute, and a lot of emissions, which we should be avoiding.
No, people should not be free to choose a 2 hour car commute.
The people who live closer than 2 hours away can afford to work for a better company
That doesn’t even make sense.
Let’s say I have a job right now that I live 10 minutes from. I interview for a different job in the next city over, or across town, because it’s offering 50% more than my current job, but my commute would end up being an hour and a half.
How does that mean that by living closer to my current job I can afford to work for the company an hour and a half away?
But the pool of people living close enough is really small.
In the US, commutes aren’t covered and that’s part of law. However, the FLSA was passed in the 30s and the Portal-to-Portal Act was passed in the 40s so it’s arguably time to reevaluate.
As pro labor as I am, I do think it’s reasonable to put some cap on commute times so that commuters can’t abuse it. The hard part is coming up with a good one. You can’t give a max time without some idea of things like housing, public transportation, commute costs, etc. because then employers could abuse it by setting up offices away from everything or setting the radius too low.
A completely different problem for paid commutes is that suddenly it becomes work time. When I had a shit job doing pool inspections, the city controlled my time in the car from the office to the pools and back. The city did not control my time commuting. If the company is paying me for my commute, I’m on the clock, which means they can reasonably ask me to do things like not listen to my podcasts or take specific routes. If I’m on public transport, they can reasonably ask me to do work because I’m being paid. My solution here is working from home.
I think this conversation is more about office workers than site workers. You need to get on site to do the work but office workers don’t need to actually go in, they are being told they have to come in and the time needed to adhere to an enforced policy should be included in the work day.
Everything I said applies to office work.
As a manager with a limited budget that I want to stretch as much as possible, I need to limit the amount of it I spend paying for commutes. At the same time, I need to make sure my team is protected from the company abusing a commute cap.
Similarly, if I’m paying for an employee’s commute, I’d like to get some value out of that. That’s money out of my budget I’m spending for no appreciable gains unless they’re producing. I can build work that’s doable on a train or a bus.
Of course, all of this is solved by WFH as I said at the end of my previous post.
There should be a reasonable limit of one hour in normal traffic for the commute each way though. Basing it on time would encourage companies to be flexible on start/end times to avoid needing to pay for people to sit in traffic, and there should be some kind of high but not crazy limit on commute time.
Yes I should only have to kiss and lick one boot a day each way maximum.
I would move as far as possible from the job site. 2 hours one way on a train watching Netflix, 4 hours work, 2 hours relax on the train. That would be nice.
…and you just wouldn’t get hired, because the guy who lives next to their office is a more attractive option, even if he’s only 80% as productive as you.
And that’s arguably why it makes some sense; companies would be more likely to hire more locally and be more flexible about remote work - both of which save precious planetary resources ánd people’s time.
Companies would also then be incentivized to invest in and lobby for better affordable housing in the communities their offices are located in/around so that employees at all pay scales have affordable options within a few miles of the office.
I would just move temporarily, and after probation period move far away. Surely they can’t fire me because my living situation changed and had to move…
In this hypothetical scenario this gets implemented it would certainly be standard to have a clause to protect employers against exactly that.
Seems kinda shitty that you basically can’t move without employer’s approval.
Also poorer people living farther away would get discriminated.
It’d be fair to just keep paying the same compensation you received before moving; you could still move, but you’d have to pay the price.
And yeah, there are still a lot of problems with this approach as long as housing is left to market forces. But those problems are inherent to free markets, not to this possible solution to another problem.
They very much can, will, and do for much less. Welcome to an “at-will” employer. The only thing that’s illegal is discrimination
okay but when do chores happen? i can barely keep up on dishes and laundry with a 45 minute commute each way. sleep, too…
Currently you work 8 hours + 1.5 hours commute. With this you’d work 6.5 hours + 1.5 hour commute, so you’d have 1.5 extra hour for chores or whatever.
If you use train/bus for commuting, you can even sleep there :-)
i didn’t realize the commute was implicitly a part of the 8 hours in your scenario. that makes a little more sense.
You’re highlighting that it’s not a great solution, but at least a 2 hours of flat payment per office call would be an acknowledgement of my time considering it’s an hour each way for the majority of people.
Literally happened at a place I worked at. They hired people near to the work, who then within a year bought a cheap house out in the boonies and increased their commute to 3+ hours daily. And they got paid for it. Such a stupid policy (for the company, I don’t blame the workers for taking advantage).
Imagine how much more chill everyone on the road would be if they were getting paid to be there.
Commutes would instantly get 10x slower
There’s no way the pay would be based on real world commute. But reasonable calculated commute based on region and distance.
It’ll never happen anyway, so the really isn’t much point worrying about it I guess.
Realistically they could just pay fuel based on miles driven
It would be better if there was a standard calculation like:
Commute time = time it would take to commute by public transport from the nearest residential area that could house a family on the income of the worker in question
That puts positive pressure on improving cost of housing, and improving speed of public transport
And were they to try to play the system by getting high speed trams linking a poor, cheap area to the CBD, that would quickly no longer be a cheap place to buy
Sure, but that’s overly complicated and not realistic by any means.
Is a worker on the road for their own benefit or for the benefit of their employer? Do people voluntarily choose to drive in godawful rush hour traffic 5 days a week just for shits and giggles, or is it because times are mandated by their employer?
Fuck you. Pay me.
On the other hand, should the distance a employment candidate lives from work be material to the companies employment decision? Should an employees housing options be dictated by the employer?
Maybe employees deserve compansation for commutes, and maybe a company changing their in-office policy should include compensation to make up for the impact to the employees lives.
It’s a nuanced debate. In the military, housing on post is free, and those who chose to live off post receive a housing allowance. You could say this is a comparable arrangement. But the military also dictates where you live, and you don’t have quite the freedom as you do with a private employer. Huh, just something else to think about.
On the other hand, should the distance a employment candidate lives from work be material to the companies employment decision?
This only seems like a difficult question if it’s one worker having the conversation with their employer. The moment it’s one employer vs. all their workers, the answer is obviously yes, with the employer left footing the bill.
Why would the employer have to foot the bill when they could just fire all their workers and hire people who live closer? Because our housing market is hell and nobody lives closer. Either businesses will have to pay for commutes directly by treating them as hours worked, or they’ll have to pay for them indirectly by relocating their offices to places where workers actually live.
Given how sprawled we all are, the latter will be the more expensive option. At least, until sufficiently large businesses lobby governments to subsidize the costs of relocating their offices… ugh.
Maybe employees deserve compansation for commutes,
If companies charge to have their workers commute to work locations to do jobs for them, then yes, they should.
Basically the flip side of the coin of, for example, a plumber coming out to your house to fix a leaky pipe charging you for him to actually come out to the house regardless of any work done when he gets there.
and maybe a company changing their in-office policy should include compensation to make up for the impact to the employees lives.
Well a company should make sure compensation is satisfactory enough for the best talent to do the best work for them.
On the other hand, should the distance a employment candidate lives from work be material to the companies employment decision?
I don’t think a company would want to restrict themselves by using that as a criteria, because someone who is much better for the position but lives farther away may be excluded for the person who lives closer who cannot do the job as well.
Cost to employer is calculated based on many factors, the capability of the worker doing the work is one of them.
Should an employees housing options be dictated by the employer?
Only if employees can dictate where employers have their offices at, to make their commuting life easier.
It’s a nuanced debate.
Actually, I’m big on nuanced conversations, but I really don’t think it is in this case, I think what you been expressing is more strawmanning than actual real world scenarios.
In the military, housing on post is free, and those who chose to live off post receive a housing allowance. You could say this is a comparable arrangement. But the military also dictates where you live, and you don’t have quite the freedom as you do with a private employer.
I don’t think you can use this as a justification for the points you’ve been expressing, as a military and a corporation are two very different things, and the responsibilities of persons to each of them is very different, and not comparable.
Huh, just something else to think about.
Well, real conversations are always better than just attempts to redirect the narrative, that’s for sure.
People don’t choose to commute for “shits and giggles”, but there is choice involved in how long your commute is, if it’s a job that pays well enough that moving is an option. To be clear, if a job is changing from remote to in-office, I think it should absolutely come with a pay increase to compensate for that increased labor of getting to the office. But should you be paid for the time spent commuting as if they’re working hours? That doesn’t seem right to me.
I live in a city with ridiculous urban sprawl. However, I choose to live in a smaller apartment with a higher $/sq ft so that my commute is just a 10 min bike ride. I chose it both because it saves me time and reduces the amount of pollution I’m contributing every day. I have coworkers, though, that choose to live as far as 2 hrs drive each way, outside of the reach of the city’s public transport. I’ve asked, and their reasons are: to be closer to their relatives, to be in a part of town they just like better, for lower cost housing so they can spend more elsewhere, or bc they want their kids to be raised in a suburb instead of the city. They all technically could live closer, but they choose not to because they have other priorities. Which is fine and valid, but still ultimately a choice.
So, should my coworkers be paid up to 50% more than me (4 hrs per day!) because of their choice? Or to say it another way, should I be paid less than them because of my choice that is already costing me more in rent? Wouldn’t that actually incentivize longer commutes and the problems that come with it, like more road congestion and more pollution? Realistically, I think employers would stop employing those who live so far because they’re not actually getting more value from the employee that’s costing them 50% more.
“but there is choice involved in how long your commute is”
I can choose to live half an hour away, or I can choose to be homeless because wages are shit and rents are high.
That’s why that sentence continues…
if it’s a job that pays well enough that moving is an option
The transportation situation in the US is fully the failure of cities, states and the federal government to fund and plan for adequate land use and transport networks.
I could not agree more. The vast majority of American cities seem to have been thrown together ad hoc one development at a time with zero planning for mass transit with a few exceptions like Chicago.
In person work should be taxed to pay for the roads, transit, and congestion costs they cause if we really wanna get all ‘let’s measure productivity’ about this.
Your commute is your own problem, I don’t pay my employees for driving to work, they can always move closer to the office or sleep in their cars in the parking lot overnight if driving home and back is such a big deal.
So no, I won’t be paying you to drive home and furthermore, at my businesses I have a swear jar policy; every swear word an employee says I take a dollar/hour off their pay for that day. So watch your potty mouth or you’ll be the one who ends up paying me.
Forcing companies to pay for commute time would also force companies to lobby for more efficient public transport and cycleways, and limit private car access to areas with regular traffic jams. In addition, there are certain job categories where driving time is limited by law: truck drivers, bus drivers, and others. However, these rules only apply when the driver is being compensated for being on the road. So, your bus driver may have driven for two hours to get to work, and now he’s towards the end of his nine-hour shift, bone-tired. If the company was forced to pay him for his commute, his shift would end after seven hours, and possibly five (if he has to drive back home for another two hours). That would improve road safety. I think the two aspects - more public transport and more road safety - should be enough for everyone to support the idea of paid commute.
Would also encourage employers to allow remote working
Absolutely! I’m salaried, so paying for my commute wouldn’t make any difference, but I’m incentivizing my employer to let me work from home by spending my potential commute time at the computer. No big difference for me, but enough that they are happy to let me stay on hybrid.
Even salaried workers get overtime in certain situations. You’d either get a raise or a “travel stipend”
Neither. Instead of overtime, we’re partly on flex time, where we can leave on Friday after lunch, if we reached our 40 hours. However, we always have more projects than people, so the hour or so extra per day when working from home is quite normal. No travel stipend, either - I’m lucky to live in a city where one-way journey is €2, which is negligible. It’s certainly cheaper than replenishing my burned calories when I cycle or run to work…
In my area, public transport will likely never improve, even with tons of support from local voters and business people because racism.
I lived in Atlanta, and was told that this was the reason one of the counties (Cobb) refused metro transport. Had to reject a job offer there before I got a car.
ah, the infamous East Cobb snobs and their NIMBY brigade.
p.s. hello neighbor!
Small world! That’s literally the exact area I’m talking about!
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It would also give employers a shared incentive to address the cost of housing. It would either incentivize the companies to not build all the jobs in a single location (ie. downtown of a major city), or it would give them an incentive to pursue policies that would lower the costs of housing in major metropolitan areas.
Holy shit that made a lot of sense.
It’s easy:
Are you requesting I as a worker dedicate any part of my time, and/or usage of my personal resources to accomplish something for YOUR business? Yes it’s part of the work day.
This would create an issue where they only hire people in close proximity. This is terrible, for a number of reasons.
Nepotism gets exponentially worse and is then excused, poor areas will be effected the most because they lack businesses
I think a better solution is allowing people who have longer commutes to write it off on their taxes. This prevents the issues above
Subsidize based on type of transportation used? Public transit is mostly subsidized, and private transportation is the least subsidized. This would make employers seek out poorer people.
Private transportation is not the least subsidized. The government spends ridiculous sums of money to maintain infrastructure specifically for cars.
I think they’re saying kind of the opposite, they’re proposing that the employer be assisted in payroll by the government to hire folks, and they get more assistance for people with less commute impact?
Idk, most of these solutions boil down to UBI with extra steps imo. Once we get much further up the chain than “workers shouldn’t be burdened by commutes” then the obvious answer is to pay people to not need cars and that’s a lot like UBI, and I’d prefer we just do that than make it more complicated
Why would the employers care?
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When I studied sociology, the common time spent commuting was generally 1 hour each way.
My own commute by public transport or bicycle is 50 minutes to 1 hr
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Also, half the time, I’m literally taking work meetings during my commute because I’m both required to physically be in the office and also start taking meetings before I can even get to work.
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When meetings are scheduled while I’m on my way home (I work 07:00 to 15:00 so it happens regularly), I fill my timesheet to show that as work time. I’m happy to argue if I ever get called on it
I have participated in meetings on the bus, in my car, on my bicycle, and while at the hair dresser, all that was work time
This doesn’t entirely make sense, since commute is only a part of the routine. You could say, you wouldn’t be taking a shower, so the employer has to pay for the water and the time you spend in the shower, etc.
The employer has no influence on where you live, why would they be paying for it?
If the company is paying for your skills, sitting in traffic is not one of them. So it’s up to you to optimise your commute. (I.e. Bike, train, etc.)
ew, who wouldn’t be taking a shower if not for work? 🤮
I prefer taking a shower in the evening. If you’re suggesting people should shower twice I day (instead of just a wash-up), you’re being wasteful.
No, I’m suggesting taking a shower once a day should not be related at all with going to work or not.
Eh, showering every day is bad for your skin and uses a lot of water. I work from home and definitely don’t shower every day especially if I’m only going to be leaving the house to walk my dog.
using a bike or a train in America is the exact opposite of optimizing one’s commute.
now I WFH - thankfully - but looking up my old commute (10 miles)
27 mins by car
110 mins by public transit
105 mins by bike
215 mins walking
Motorcycle? Private helicopter? Teleport?
If i live 3 hours from my workplace my employer should pay me for the six hours to get to and from?
maybe I’m old school…
more reasonably would be something like the first 30 mins of commuting counts as working hours, as an example
Very unrealistic example to use… It would be very unusual for anyone to take a job that’s 3 hours away and make a six hour commute daily, while working an 8 to 10 hour work day… that example is not the norm and would never be the norm for majority. But let’s say for arguments sake you example works… yes the employer should pay you for that extreme commute… absolutely… but maybe I am more new school which was bound to happen as time wore on in society
there are people who took jobs during the pandemic that were not in the neighborhood. this is not as an unreasonable example as it would have been five years ago.
That’s not what I said… and that’s not what you claimed… and also… no one works in their neighborhood, unless they work from home… most work in theirs, or the neighborhing CITY. Most of us workers (at least 95% of us workers) do not and would not work at a job site for minimal pay, with a 3 hour commute both ways and not be well compensated for that commute or be some type of truck driver who is compensated for that.
lol ok buddy
If you live three hours from your workplace you should work remotely or get another job lol
that’s the point of this outrageous example. How about this: Suppose there are two employees: Alice and Bob, who do the same job at the same factory. Alice has a 10 minute commute, Bob commutes 35 minutes. If you’re the owner of the factory, how would you compensate them for their commutes?
Either:
A: compensate them equally and let Bob leave 20 minutes earlier and arrive 20 minutes later
B: compensate them equally for to traveled, meaning Bob would be compensated for 35 minutes and Alice 10.
C: pass through the tax deduction that I would get if it were company vehicle (xyz a mile) to the employee directly
If they’re putting their time and their equipment to show up for my business they should be compensated. Period.
No, i am expecting you to be at your place of agreed work that you were well aware of, at a time we agreed as stipulated in your agreement that you were open to reject if it was not suitable for you.
Its not the employers job to tell you where to live, how to get to work, or what to spend you time doing outside of work hours. Don’t like the commute - pick a different job or move, you’re an adult who can make these decisions.
Better yet, start a business where you pay your employees this way.
Don’t like the commute - pick a different job or move, you’re an adult who can make these decisions.
Well yeah, that’s what’s happening. That’s what sparked this debate.
People ARE leaving their jobs for other organizations that allow work from home, getting paid more in some instances too.
If a competing business can’t offer more than what the same work from home jobs are offering for the same position, work from home will win every time. Just like you said, it’s business. Supply and demand, in a tidy work offer contract based on what is agreed upon.
Everyone at my work is complaining about the commute with RTO. I have a 15 minute bike ride to work on a secluded trail, I dont care
Aww good for you, here is a cookie… now you can ride off the calories on your way to work and feel more accomplished…
Commutes are part of the work day if the employer does not allow WFH. How else is the employee supposed to show up for work?
There is no reason to debate, it’s clear as day. But the greedy, rich assholes on the reins think everyone should be honored to waste their lives working under them.
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Sounds like commuting is an incredibly stupid and inefficient waste of time. Maybe this hypothetical company would get better performance from their employees if they didn’t have a commute. Maybe letting them work from home?
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That means we’ll just stop hiring people who live far away, even in the person is willing to make the commute.
No change from the status quo. As it stands, employees move next to their workplace because nobody is ok with a 4-hour commute. It’s impossible even if you give up on social life.
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At that point, you could make an argument that they live at work rather than where they want to live lol
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WFH?
Work from home
The solution is working from home.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all jobs could be done from home?
The amazing part is lots can, and that would instantly decongest infrastructure so that those who did have to go in would have an easier time about it.
Only people who work in the relatively few jobs that cam be done from home believe most jobs can be done from home. Y’all are in a white collar bubble.
Seriously this only works for like white collar office work and even then not really. Anyone working with inventory or warehouse and all the jobs that are food service and other onsite management go where?
They don’t want to admit it but it really does not work for more than a specific group of office jobs.
I looked into it and there’s a LOT more of those useless office jobs than I thought. Something like at least a third of all jobs can be done fully remote. I’m jealous as fuck.
I would be jealous, if sitting at a desk didn’t make me wanna hang myself with an ethernet cable. I’m a process engineer in a steel mill and holy sweet fuck did I wanna die when I was WFH as a desk engineer. Bored out of my mind and feeling like I’ll never progress because I couldn’t even network well with managers/engineers like you can in a mill/in person office.
That’s when I learned at this point in my career, heavily WFH is not for me. I need challenged and I need hands on, 1 of those I very much cannot get at home
A lot of jobs can be done from home.
Return to office mandates would be a lot more palatable if we didn’t have to live an hour and a half away in rush hour bumper to bumper traffic because the average person can’t afford to live anywhere near the central business district anymore.
Or if we could take nonexistent public transit.
Or if we could ride a bike or walk without getting run over by a moron in their suv.
We have so many issues I don’t know where to start. Personally I want to RTO. I’m sick of working from home. But with issues like that…fuck…
Why on earth would you want to return to the office? Social vampires exist there.
I like working in the office because I have a way better setup there and don’t have room at home to do the same thing. I also like the mental separation my commute gives between work life and home life (usually, sometimes people piss me off so much I can’t shake it before I get home). That being said the more people who WFH the better. Traffic during Covid was great and the office was never quieter.
Because I want to work at work and be home at home. It never stops when I’m working from home because I’m expected to always be on. I find it more efficient to pull up a chair and sit down next to someone going over things line by line. I miss learning through osmosis which is what I call it when you hear people talking about something you’re vaguely aware of but never really saw in real life but maybe read an article on once. So you go and look over their shoulder and learn something new. (Someone on lemmy called me a horrible person because of this once so hopefully you’re not a toxic SOB like average lemming.) Mostly though I just find it like herding cats, trying to get work done when everyone is in a different time zone and may or may not be online…it’s just incoherent. It’s fine to work from home here and there if you have a few hours of technical work that you just need to knock out. But overall I find it much more effective to be in office. IMHO
Because I want to work at work and be home at home. It never stops when I’m working from home because I’m expected to always be on. This is a problem with you setting proper boundaries with your employer. This is not the natural result from working remotely.
Someone on lemmy called me a horrible person… I don’t think that was me, but I understand where they were coming from. From my experience of decades of working in the office, shoulder surfers, as we call them, are a huge drain on your time because of the questions they keep asking, while at the same time, aren’t doing anything productive themselves… but are still considered to be working. Personally, I hate that. If someone requests specific training, that is awesome, but just shoulder surfing? I see it as skimming the system to look productive when the person really isn’t. Part of the social vampirism vibe, too.
But overall I find it much more effective to be in office. Effective in what respect? In actually doing tasks and completing them on your own? Because the shoulder surfing makes me wonder if you really would be, or just appear to be.
One particular serial shoulder surfer really took it to extremes. I so regretted hiring the guy, he was all talk and was incapable of completing most projects on his own. Come to find out he also lied about having been a Marine, which also further cast shoulder surfers in a bad light to me forever. And if you’re out there reading this (Mark was his name), I am so glad don’t work with us anymore! He could only do his job from the office, too. Covid hit, and surprise! He didn’t know how to do anything.
I never knew people consider “shoulder surfing” to be “social vampirism.” Goddamn what an unpleasant person you sound like right now. I like learning. I like teaching. I love when someone shows interest and wants to learn. I love when people take time to teach me. Nobody knows everything, and formal training in my experience is usually pretty useless. Nothing like real life examples to see how stuff works. You can stay the fuck at home too. Bunch of social pariahs on lemmy, what a cold dark world you must live in.
PS: do you think Spock would call me a shoulder surfing social vampire for wanting to learn and teach? Or would he embrace learning for its own sake. “Pseudo” Spock indeed.
Just like all social vampires… “How could my being around be draining on people?” People are being nice to you because they have to. There is an HR dept. and rules. News flash, not everyone likes you. Some, likely many, simply tolerate you. But that is true for everyone, not just you. We come to work to pay the mortgage, to buy our groceries, to buy the kid braces. Not to be everyone’s friend.
I said requesting training is awesome. Asking for a spot on my calendar to train you on something is perfectly fine. Interrupting my own work to get me to do something for you is not that. Casually watching me work without first asking me to be “on” for you is also not ok. I would want time to prepare to teach you. I could have prepared examples, and a workflow diagram, and most importantly, be prepped to be in “on” mode to socialize with you. It’s an effort to mask, just walking up and being an interruption provides no time to mask up for you, and you get an adhoc half annoyed and possibly unprepared lesson. Teaching someone properly is like taking the stage, or preparing a TEDtalk… Many of us need time to get into the role, because everything around other people is some form of act to best interact with the target audience.
- What outfit do I wear?
- What accent and pentameter have I discovered makes you most at ease and least aggressive?
- What slang terms have I observed you use safely, vs which bother you?
- Do I know which programming language you prefer, so I can show you in that language and prepare examples?
- Will you smell like cigarettes, and if so, make sure I have measures to deal with that smell?
- Have I scheduled it around the right time after we’ve both eaten to make sure neither of us is “hangry”?
- Are you a loud person, in which case, some examples or even jokes I may cut out to prevent a loud outburst or comment that draws even more people?
- Do I know what soda to offer you?
Doing all that for a real public presentation is actually far easier than doing it for an individual you barely know.
Don’t you see? This is an entire performance we have to put on for you. Watching someone adhoc is just cruel and invasive to that person. They have their own job to do and focus on, not worry about chit chatting with someone while making a dead line.
Spock - “May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.”
Do not confuse coworkers with friends. Some can be friends, but most are not. Most are just coworkers… people forced to be in a room or building working together. Those are mostly acquaintances at best. They aren’t all asking you to go have beers with them. We have our real friends who we picked organically to be around. You know where they aren’t usually? At our work.
What is a Workplace Energy Vampire?
Workplace ‘energy vampires’ can drain your life force. Stop them with these tips
So what is the link between osmosis and delegation? It’s very simple. Take your busiest employee and — assuming you hired smart people — physically put this superstar with one to two team members who are intelligent but possess minimum skills to complete a task or their job. I’ve seen that at the end of one day, the employees who started with few skills will have learned something new that they can likely do again independently. The idea is dependent on your employees being motivated to try, rather than sitting and watching someone work while they create no additional value.
I guess that definitely rules you out! Hope you know everything because with your attitude idk how you can possibly build professional relationships. I know there’s toxic people online but goddamn you’re one of the worst I’ve ever encountered. I’m done here, just wanted to point out the technical value of, you know, not being a fucking asshole to colleagues by calling them friggin vampires.
Not at all. That falls under scheduled training. In this example, the boss has told us that I am to train them. That means I can come into the office or work with them over zoom, depending on the situation, prepared with a lesson plan. I would have interviewed these people and have copious notes about them, as well, as I do the hiring. This allows me also to be prepared for the social interaction that most likely works the best with them. I could do this for a day, a week, or even a month, as that would be my assigned job role for that period of time. Acting and putting on the show for them would be the gig. While emotionally taxing, preparation makes it possible to do, and once having assumed the role, the persona, the mask, I am excellent at it.
…wow man. Just wow. Holy fucking shit.
makes you most at ease and least aggressive?
Said the lunatic posting multiple thousand word rants.
programming language
I’m not a programmer and it’s funny you assume I am, but I’m not the least bit surprised you are.
Stay the fuck at home and get some therapy, jfc
More than social vampire, you are giving off sociopath vibes. Wanting to put you at ease upsets you. I didn’t assume you were a programmer, that was just an example from my world / daily life. If I had to assume your work, I would expect it would be some job high on the toxic masculinity scale.
Eat garlic
Or if we could take nonexistent public transit.
This makes the whole debate so much easier. I work in the train and bike for three minutes. My whole transit is billable and is billed.
If only! My commute is about a half hour and really isn’t that bad all things considered. Any more than that though and I’d be grumpy about it.
Australia followed America’s lead for quite a while so our cities are set up with a commercial zone surrounded (connected by road) to suburban zones
Fortunately now they’re starting to build residential towers right in town, but I really want them to let people build out workplaces in suburbia
Set minimum wage for any in-office position to match the amount required to purchase a house within 15 minutes average transit to the office.
Min 250k salary in Seattle lol.
Yeah. That’s exactly what it should be, and would like up correctly with what C level people have given themselves in pay raises over the past decade.
nonono, if all the lowly peasants get a comfortable wage, how would execs be able to afford their second summer homes? Won’t someone think of them?
Seattle should build more walkable neighborhoods with a metro, lol.
God yes please
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Some people just want to watch the world burn. I love it haha
Sometimes the old has to be burned down to prepare the ground for new growth.
I say it, knowing that there’s no possibility of it happening in the current day but, really, it’s the only way that’s fair for both sides and removes most potential discriminatory policies. If a business can’t afford to pay its workers enough to have a decent life, they can’t afford to be in business.
Or reform land and housing so the landlord grifters stop fucking everyone over simply for having their name in a registry of who owns what.
Porque no los dos?
So that’s, what, $1,500,000 per hour?
I’m not sure what area has average cost of houses around $2.8B but, if that’s the cost, sure. That is, of you’re not trying to imply that the “Wage-Price Spiral” exists, despite all evidence contrary.
Do I have to perform the commute to be employed at Job X? If so, sure as hell sounds like a part of Job X to me.
I don’t think you want to work at X…
Especially as a moderator
In general, bosses want white collar workers to work 24/7 — at home, on the train, in the car, etc. etc. It’s ridiculous. Push to keep your work and home life separate. And if your boss expects you to work on your commute, count those hours towards your “40 a week”.
I actually wouldn’t mind counting the commute towards my workday if we had reliable public transit with secure wifi around here. I could get set up, go through emails, square my head for the workday, etc. on the way in and wind down, answer emails, finish up small tasks on the way back. All while actually committing 8 hours a day to my employer rather than 8 plus commute time. Could allow more flexibility for folks living further away from their office as well.
I feel like the argument against is always going to be the same though. Work outside the office isn’t Real Work because Real Work can only happen in a cubicle under surveillance. It’s the same reason they don’t want us to work from home
When I remote in on the bus to/from work, that’s work hours. It’s slightly cheating on the maximum 40% WFH but I haven’t had complaints. I share network from my phone
This is easy: would I be going there daily if I didn’t have to per the employers requirements?
If yes: then it’s my problem not the employer If no: it’s the emplpyer’s problem not mine
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Lots of bickering about how it works now vs how it should work. Meanwhile I’m going crazy that nobody is pointing out how much of the burden of the commute is placed on the worker. It’s literally thousands of dollars a year in being licensed to drive, vehicle registration, insurance costs, variable and ever increasing gas prices, repair and maintenance. Every single aspect of the commute is a burden on the worker, and corporations take it for granted. It’s not factored into most people’s pay rate or compensation. Whether or not the employer should be held responsible for relieving some of the burden, we should recognize that workers need to lessen this burden one way or another. Increasing tax deductibles to include commute time isn’t an unreasonable first step. Treat it just like travel for any other work related reason.
Here in Alberta if you work in oil, they’ll pay for your hour(s) driving to the site and back.
(Not saying those jobs have fair wages or oil execs divide it fairly or anything of that substance)
I’ve been lucky enough to have one job that did pay for transit. Specifically, they would pay for a weekly bus pass for any employer that wanted one, plus monthly bikeshare membership for any employee that wanted that. It was solid.
You americans propably see this differently, but in europe it’s very simple:
The employer need you to come to work. He doesn’t care where you live and how long your commute is.
The worker can chose an employer close to his home, or relocate and live close to the employer. Generally, if it’s a priority, the worker can live within walking distance of the employer. If other priorities overrule proximity, there’s likely still public transport to get to work.
That is NOT the case in all of Europe. Stop making the rest of us look bad because your country mistreats workers.
At least I got the answer to my “sarcastic or bootlicking moron” question from earlier 🤦
So you are saying it ought to be this way or it already is?
In the Netherlands it’s quite common to receive €0.21 per km tax free (which doesn’t cover the cost of the commute unless you ride a bicycle). I have a job that comes with an EV as a perk, including all charging expenses for company and private use both. I only have to pay for charging outside of the Netherlands. I do pay an extra tax for private use, but since it’s an EV that’s not a big amount at the moment. Some people receive a country wide public transit pass as a perk.
So if your claim is that there is no commute compensation anywhere in Europe, you’re wrong. If you say it ought not to exist, well then I simply disagree.
As a government subsidy it’s quite different from an employer benefit.
A public transport ticket as a perk is also very different. That’s the same for all employees.the way k read the headline, it’s about paying for the time spent commuting.
Commenting in your first remark first:
Yes it is different. But in this case it is both. The company pays that €0.21, which the tax office should normally see as an income for the employee. So the subsidy is in not taxing this income.
The public transit pass (which can be used privately) is not taxed at all.
Tl;dr for paragraph below: EV company cars that are driving privately get big tax benefits
Same goes for the car. Normally a lease car lease is quite expensive and if the employer pays for it, it is seen as an income for the employee IF the employee uses the car privately. This is taxed yearly as if you would have received 22% of the new value of the car per year. So a €100,000 car is taxed as if you’ve received €22,000 in extra income. Depending on what tax bracket you’re in you pay quite a bit of tax on that. Now for EV’s it depends on the year in which the car was registered. I have a car that cost €43,000 from 2020 which is taxed at 8%, so it is taxed only as if I made €3,440 more. This tax comes down to roughly €150 per month which is very roughly €250 less than I’d have paid for a gas car. So a subsidy in essence. This is why you see so many EVs in the Netherlands, though tax benefits are much lower these days.
Now for the part about paying for time rather than travel expenses. Yes, that’s indeed far less common unfortunately. But such measures do lessen the burden somewhat.
I just spent a couple weeks in Germany and Spain. The weather was nice, not too hot not humid even in September. Cities are walkable with clear defined pedestrian paths and bike lanes. Rent was affordable (I looked at a few places for fun and everything was cheaper than the dump I live in far from city center). Seems like it’s way easier to live close to work and commute on foot or by bike than it is here.
Take a look at this video about North American stroads. It’s really enlightening about how awful commuting is in the US (and maybe Canada but idk).
I live in Europe, and while I own a car, i’m within walking distance of several supermarkets, restaurants, doctors schools and whatnot.
I watched the first half, and it started getting repetitive. But I don’t recall suburbs being mentioned. The way I see it, single family homes are the main reason for your american urban planning. low density makes area consumption big, and thus travel distances. With them comes traffic, and with that big roads.
The point is that America stroads are designed for cars, not for walking. It’s about our urban design in general which effects everything, including commuting.
this is exactly the logic in the US as well. except we’re more tethered to jobs because of our malignant healthcare system and general lack of a social safety net. and most of us barely, barely have public transport as an option
I think this makes the most sense. Increasing mobility makes Capitalism more efficient. Public transportation should also be free because of the benefits they have on society. People should also be taxed on miles driven with an additional cost based on weight of the vehicle. Then subtract work commute mileage from salary and tax the remainder.
Everything about American cities, car culture, corporate culture, and so on is proving to be a failing model. What a mess.
Although I agree with what everyone is saying “that it make sense to compensate workers for the commute in time and money”, I’d like to nuance a little, because I think it is a bit more complicated from a moral standpoint: Imagine employer were paying for your commute and you were on the clock during it, what happen when you move to another appartment/house further from work ? Should the employer continue to pay and clock your longer commute ? It seems weird that my decision to move to another part of the city would affect my employer. The consequence would be that employer will mandate that you cannot move without their appoval or that their cost for your commute is fixed in the contract and need to be renegociable. In the end what it boils down to is not that commute should be paid for and part of the work day. What people want is better salaries and smaller hours. Then the commute doesn’t matter anymore, and stays at the expense of the worker who can therefore move wherever they want.
Paying for commute expense is already a solved problem.
Some examples, a fixed amount based on data provided every month for commute. (200 dollars a month or whatever)
Or if a company wants to be both stingy and generous at the same time, make you expense your gas or public transportation every month up to a certain limit.
It doesn’t matter if you move to a different part of town. The cost is negligible to a business.
what happen when you move to another appartment/house further from work ?
Because employers have never forced indirect layoff by changing a person’s office location without agreement to make them quit instead of being fired.
exactly, this is a non issue. if someone wants to go through the immense hassle and expense of moving just to get like 30mins more pay daily, ok
What people also want is to work from home if possible.
To stay out of the adult kindergarten managers desperately want to put people into for reasons entirely unrelated to productivity.
Paying for the commute would be the boss paying the cost of the unnecessary demand for repeated physical presence.
The programmers especially on my team agree with you 200%
My team works from four locations in three states, two time zones. We work on the computer, we meet on Teams, we chat on Teams. Occasionally we phone reach other
The other IT people are happy to be in the office occasionally to catch up with others in the office, the programmers overall don’t
So they commute typically about an hour each way on days they must be in the office to work exactly as they do at home and have about as much social contact
Some of them are quite unhappy with the situation
To add a totally contrary point here, imptomptu in person conversations I’ve had with other teams I wouldn’t interact with a lot has given me a tonne more perspective as a software developer. Especially with people working in sales and support but also from other engineering teams. I think it comes down to office culture. Yeah if everyone just comes in, never interacts with anyone and sits there coding all day then goes home, then yeah that’s going to be a worse experience but if you actually embrace office culture I think it’s super rewarding and beneficial to career development.
Impromptu in person conversations.
Impromptu
in personconversations.I like the latter.
In my experience most people are really bad at jumping out of their team and silo remotely, especially software developers. Some people might make it work, but that’s not my experience with the majority of coders. Also as good as zoom/teams/slack is, it really doesn’t compare to an in person conversation. It’s a more formal and often friction filled experience. Conversations remotely are mostly done with purpose, you call someone for a reason. This makes relationships really transactional. The in person aspect drives a lot more potential for organic conversation. Remotely I might see two of my colleagues in a huddle on slack, if I happen to be looking at their profiles at the right time, but I would never join them. Conversely however I’ve commented and jumped in on conversations between the ML engineers sitting behind me all the time, and vice versa when I’m discussing python programming.
You don’t seem like you have even a toe in casual online culture, are you treating this lemmy conversation as a transactional relationship, too?
Those problems are optional, treating it formally is optional.
Just don’t force people into the office just because you can’t manage to chill out online.
Most of my hobbies are online actually, in fact as an expat they’re the only way I stay connected to friends around the world. The majority of my really deep friendships are these days virtual.
I don’t mean the conversations are formal, but the format is. As an example, a group conversation in person can have smaller side conversations going on. On video chat one at a time. Yeah you can still have good conversations, but the only one speaking limitation introduces a level of formality to the conversation. I can’t lean to a friend and whisper an in joke, or comment something.
No forcing at all, if you don’t want to go in, don’t, I just don’t think it actually does your career or relationships any favours.
Where I live, I have to calculate (and show the process of calculation) the cheapest cost of getting to and back from work from my house. My boss simply pays me that much each workday. If I move, I have to do this calculation again. It doesn’t matter how long it takes me to get to work (i.e. I’m not “on the clock”), they are simply imbursing me for that part.
Ironically, sometimes moving further away is both cheaper and faster.
See that’s the problem, in America this needs to be solved without asking people to do math.
It is for most companies. You put the drive into a mileage calculator for your company and they reimburse you a certain amount per mile. You don’t do napkin math, they need legitimate records for accountants, audits, etc.
