No c-suite manager I’ve ever known would be so easily convinced by cold, hard facts like that. If they have their mind set on RTO, they’re going to do it no matter how detrimental it would be to worker morale/productivity.
Yeah when they removed wanking in the office it was bad.
Ah yes. At long last, after all these years! It is time for the putting-out system to make a comeback!
The truth underlying that joke is that you are more productive when you are comfortable and people tend to be most comfortable at home.
you are more productive when you are comfortable
I might argue the real productivity gain is coming from the elimination of the commute. Its less strictly comfort of the home office and more the elimination of the need to travel long distances in a car before and after work. You can “show up” early and “stay late” when its a matter of walking in and out of a room in your house, rather than traveling 20 miles on a packed freeway.
Most commutes are under half an hour. Comfort over an 8 hour day will have a far greater impact on productivity than not sitting in a car for 25 minutes before you get to work.
Use to commute 2 hours each way. 1/6 of my day travelling to and from a soulless corporate hellhole, just to be a fucken cog.
I know a guy that still does that.
The average commute in the US is just under 27 minutes or so. So while those commutes do exist, they aren’t typical.
I used to commute that for school and at least I got a lot of reading done. I feel your pain. But I can only do so much reading before losing my mind. Lol
Most commutes are under half an hour.
Not in Houston.
I know it’s hard to believe this but most of the US does exist outside of Texas.
No idea what you’re talking about.
I’ve been in traffic in California and Florida, and it doesn’t get much better.
There are still 47 other states. I know I know, it’s hard to believe but most of the US is not in Texas California and Florida. Most people’s commute is still about 27 minutes.
If only bosses actually cared about productivity and free employee satisfaction.
It has nothing to do with productivity. When you have a lease for 20 years on very expensive downtown property and a whole department that manages that property and sr stakeholders that have investments in the commercial real estate. Then it all makes sense.
If all you have is a lease, then this is the sunk cost fallacy. Your paying the lease whether you use it or not, so that should not be a factor. Not using it is still cheaper as you do not have the overhead of keeping the space usable (electricity, janitors, etc), and eventually the lease will end. And, you might something else to do with the space that, while not worth the lease, still has non 0 value that you wouldn’t get if the space was being used for offices. Besides, at some point the lease would end.
Of course, if your board and executives have investments in commercial real estate, or industries that depend on it (restraunts in commercial areas, supplies of office grade toilet paper, etc), then they have a clear conflict of interest, and may want to sacrifice the interests of the one company to prop up their other investments. In theory, shareholders could sue over this. However, not only would this be very hard to prove, but almost all shareholders have the exact same conflict of interest.
I know commercial real estate contacts are more complicated than just a lease. Plus companies lose tax incentives from local governments that outweigh any any power and building staff costs. The problem is its not the lease that’s required to get those incentives. It’s butts in seats and with commercial real estate contacts they may have to pay a penalty if people are nit using the building because the building owner may have contracts with city to make sure that buildings traffic is supporting other businesses around the office building that may be owned by the same people. Note I think the whole system is stupid but it’s more complicated than just sunk cost.
Also they tend to be control freaks.
I know me, I’m a control freak
It’s called going dark. Most businesses don’t own their property. So if they stop operating at a location, even if they still pay rent, there are consequences.
Say you own a strip mall with a grocery store. A selling point to getting restaurants and retail on around it is that the grocery is there. If the grocery store stops doing business there, all the other stores lose business.
I don’t agree with it, but that’s how it is.
I’m not sure your example tracks as there’d be no reason for a grocery store to pay rent without occupying the space. In this analogy, it would need to be some sort of office which would have some tangential effect on surrounding businesses (like restaurants), but those restaurants could just relocate to where the people are now in their homes.
The Zombie Pharmacies That Are Holding Back New York City Retail
TL;DR
The most common reason is a concept called “dark rent.”
Pharmacy companies are seeking to cut their losses by shuttering unprofitable stores that have high labor costs, Mr. Hill said, but in most cases they are obligated to continue paying the rent long after the store closes, or goes dark.
Most of the pharmacies that have closed in recent years were signed to 10-, 15- or even 20-year leases, at rents that often exceed today’s rates, brokers said.
In these cases, a landlord has almost no incentive to seek a new tenant, allowing the store to sit empty for months or years, said Aric Trakhtenberg, an associate director at Newmark, a real estate firm.
For the landlord, “it doesn’t make sense to make a deal,” Mr. Trakhtenberg said.
Because of zoning laws in a lot of places that’s not possible.
For instance, where I live, restaurants are restricted to commercial zones. Housing is restricted to residential zones.
That also gets into the question of “why” do we have zoning laws, and that gets complicated, because it was most beneficial in separating factories and utilities, and very noisy and polluty things from where people lived.
Unfortunately they also had the idea that any enterprise fell into this idea, and the other businesses didn’t want to mix with other polluters and residents and it became a big mess
You might also not want a bar opening its doors above your apartment because there’s no zoning laws… Or for all arable land to be converted to factories and shopping malls more than they’ve already been.
The problem, to me, is more that the people managing zoning aren’t doing it logically and, in some cases, don’t have enough control over what commercial zoning means.
Example from around here: Having two Best Buy a couple hundred meters from one another in a location where there’s no groceries makes no sense, but because it’s all commercial the city can’t prevent it? That’s bullshit.
I work in commercial real estate. That was a real example. They continue to pay rent so they don’t have to pay termination fees.
And yes, personally I agree they should fail or relocate but that’s not what investors in the property think.
As long as your are doing your job it shouldn’t matter what the fuck you are doing.
Exactly why drug testing (with exception of stuff like people operating heavy machinery) is bullshit.
If you are working an office job and you want to go into the bathroom and shoot up at lunch but you can still do your job, why should anyone give a shit?
The worst part is you can get stinking drunk before you piss in that cup and that wouldn’t make a difference.
Exactly why drug testing (with exception of stuff like people operating heavy machinery) is bullshit.
Can’t find the context, but there’s a one-off line about a small company being bought up by a bigger corporate entity. The CEO was asked about his drug testing policy. He responded, “if we tested our staff then we’d lose half our workforce… and it would be our better half”.
On the flip side, I think a lot of the drug culture in the tech, law, and finance sectors is legit horrifyingly toxic. The boozing and bumping and microdosing becomes a way of squeezing extra effort out of your workers, while blunting the immediate consequences of accumulated stress and overwork.
A large population of professions that feel compelled to self-medicate on a regular basis is covering up some deeper chronic physical and psychological problems. Same with the huge swaths of gulf coast and industrial midwest that rolled from oxy to heroin to fent over the last twenty years. Heavy drug use often operates as a whipping boy for more pervasive and insidious social problems - lead poisoning, extreme social anxiety, treatment for PTSD.
The theory is that if you have time to jack off and still get your work done they must not be giving you enough work.
Doesn’t matter. If I’m doing my job and doing it well and making the quotas then management can mind their own damn business.
I hear you, but they take that as proof that their quotas aren’t high enough.
That’s not how ‘human’ works.
Post nut clarity applied to business decisions is like cheating
The CEO was asked about his drug testing policy. He responded, “if we tested our staff then we’d lose half our workforce… and it would be our better half”.
Look up ‘Post-nut clarity is synonymous with Royce du Pont’ I’d link but they’re mostly on instagram reel, youtube shorts or tiktok. I don’t know which one you want to check out via.
Every day I have to make so many decisions that by Lunch I’d be like “The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised”
Having a % increase associated with masturbation (vs undefined/infinite) means that there was a non-0 number of office masturbations prior to remote work.
Duh
The interesting part really is that it’s RECORDED non-zero amount. Someone’s been keeping track
I work in cybersecurity. One of our common issues is people getting malware while surfing for porn. I’m willing to bet that it’s not all looking and no touching.
I don’t think that’s impossible
Of course there is a non-zero amount of in-office wanking. But how many get measured?
Story time !
I has living in flat share with 2 friends while studying master. We all had a 4 month internship in different companies during the summer break (mandatory). The week back to university after the internships we also also provided temporary shelter to a younger student while she was looking for a new flat. For context, this young lady was raised in a very strict Christian family. As we were all friends in this flat, we use to cook and eat most meals together. One evening the topic came up, about how boring the internships were. One friend confessed he was so bored he went to the toilet to masturbate on the job, using his phone for porn. I was like “no way you did !” and the second friend said, “yeah me too, I also had a wank on the job”. Out of 3 guys, 2 had a wank on the job in the course of 4 month. Our lady friend was more like “You guys MASTURBATE!?!”.
You’re missing out brah.
Going from 1 a month in the office to 120 at home is a 12,000% increase.
Sounds reasonable for a decent sized workforce. Or that one person doing it 5 times a day every day. Which is probably easier for one half of the population than the other half.
Metrics are also measured. The statistics referenced have to come from recording activity.
If you mean the stats in the cartoon, those were probably pulled out of the cartoonist’s ass cuz it’s a cartoon.
Obviously, but the cartoon has a contextual canon, and in that canon management has established a baseline, and continues to take measurement.
Yup.
What, you don’t remember the Dave incident?
Boss makes a dollar, I make a penny, that’s why I’m drunk on “Jack” and Henny.
Boss makes a dollar
I make a dime
Sadly, what I do
Doesn’t really rhymeBoss makes a dollar
I make a dime
That’s why I’m jerkin
On company time.
I like it!
In that case, I have another for you:
I drive a Volvo
Boss drives Lamborghini
That’s why we need
more people like Luigi
Honest lyrics, the best kind.
I make a dollar, boss makes thousands and banks it, that’s why my monkey waits for work until I spank it
Wait, I was supposed to record how often I jerk it when I was in the office? Because I may have underreported. 💁
RTO: Return To Orgasm
The product increase is not solely a commercially viable one
You had me at bathrobe.
