15 Nov Get back in the metal box, lemming!
Excuse me if I refuse to be a lemming packed into a shiny metal box again. Been there, done that, hated it.
But of course if you look at the promoted comments on LI, you’ll see people (or bots? who knows) seal-clapping about how grand the commute is. Give. Me. A. F**king. Break. 😒
LI references an article from theconversation.com, which you can find here: https://theconversation.com/a-journey-from-work-to-home-is-about-more-than-just-getting-there-the-psychological-benefits-of-commuting-that-remote-work-doesnt-provide-195799
Well you know me. I’m gonna look for the source behind the source because there’s no way in hell John & Jane Q. Public are clamoring for a long commute.
–https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/02/21/what-corporate-bunk/ published on February 21, 2023
Here we go again.
“Meet the ultra-commuters who start their day at 5 a.m.: It costs them time and thousands of dollars, but they say it makes them better at their jobs—and happier too”
–https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-ultra-commuters-start-day-100000105.html
🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Get up early. Spend a lot of time and money. Become an ultra-commuter. And then you can be happy!
When COVID hit, some of the biggest businesses in the world promised to go remote—or hybrid—for good.
Some two million people moved away from America’s major cities between 2020 and 2022, banking that their commutes would be less frequent when the world reopened.
A year or so later, however, businesses are calling staff back, and the mandatory commute has returned with a vengeance.
Yet veterans of the ultra-commute say there are silver linings to be found, and they’re tired of the griping from newcomers.
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
Wow. Several things to unpack there.
+ If you don’t own the company, you don’t make the rules about RTO vs WFH. Period. You don’t.
As I said back in January: I have warned you repeated to avoid naivete and normalcy bias. Just because a company publicly touted a WFH/WFA policy and said, “Oh yeah. We’ll never change those rules,” doesn’t make it true forever.
If a CEO or executive told everyone in the past that the company prized remote work THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY WILL FEEL THAT WAY FOREVER!
As the preppers like to say: if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. If you are a W2 employee who does not own the company, you don’t make the rules. The executive team at these companies do not answer to the general public. They answer to the investors, the board of directors, and the shareholders, but not to you and me. If it boils down to honoring a petition or turning a profit, WTH do you think they’re gonna do?
–https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/02/23/imo-a-petition-will-not-stop-whats-coming/ published on February 23, 2023.
+ If you moved away from your job’s office(s) because you believed their hot air, you believed a lie. I am sorry that you did, but let’s be real: you believed a lie.
+ I have warned you many, many times that RTO was coming. I knew the artificially overheated job market was not gonna last forever. Corpo America was going to take its power back.
+ Tired of the griping? When you click on the link there, you’re taken to: “‘I don’t have time for anything’: A Gen Zer’s horror at the 10-hour day required to commute to an office for her first job goes viral” (https://fortune.com/2023/10/29/gen-z-rant-about-10-hour-day-required-to-commute-to-office-goes-viral/) So… someone said they didn’t want to turn an eight hour day into a ten hour day because of the commute and we’re supposed to roll our eyes and get into generational clickbait about that? No thanks. I’ve had long commutes before – more than one hour each way – and it sucks. It totally does eat up your day and most of your night. By the time you get home and eat dinner, all you want to do is go to sleep.
Previously Walters, like millions of other people, saw his commute as a “necessary evil.”
He decided to try and shift his mindset to view the travel time as a positive thing, saying people should “take advantage of that rather than whining about it.”
“It’s not going to change anything by complaining about it,” he said. “You might as well make it something that—if not productive—is at least positive.”
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
Something we all hated before needs to be repackaged as a “great time to collect your thoughts and prepare for the day ahead.” By the way, I tried to look at a long, soul-sucking drive the same way when I had to do it, too. One thing I agree with here is that you’re not gonna change anything. Not with petitions, not with an angry Slack channel, not from griping online. Are John & Jane Q. Public gonna beat the system? Not likely.
By 8 a.m., the PR executive is working—an hour before most of her colleagues in the industry log on—and she’s already set up a plan of action for her day: she says it gives her an “edge.”
“I feel pumped for the day, especially when I’m getting in before everyone else,” Howard said. “It gives me an extra hour to get settled, I get more things done without being distracted by anyone.”
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
All of this could be avoided by working from home and doing away with unnecessary BS meetings that are part of the unnecessary BS corporate pantomime. This person starts work early partially to deal with a long commute and partially to have quiet time to think clearly without the office distractions. Being out on my own there’s never been a single minute of a single day that I’ve missed the “bullpen” environment you get shoved into at third-party staffing agencies. 🤮 As you can probably imagine, in talking to others in HR and TA who’ve left that world, no one says, “I really miss loud environments with everyone watching my every move all day long.”
Every long-distance commuter Fortune spoke to agreed that regular trips to the office are necessary—whether it’s to get in that all-important face time with the boss, or to bounce ideas around with colleagues.
-Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
Listen, peons. If you wanna get ahead, get in the damn car.
Have you noticed the shiny, happy people commuting ads while you’re just trying to watch a football game? ‘Cause I have. And I don’t find it coincidental.
More and more companies in the United States are mandating team members to come back to in-office work which means many drivers are returning to a regular commute – whether they like it or not. With the launch of a 60-second spot titled “Welcome Back to the Commute” Hyundai wants to welcome these consumers back on the road with the all-new Kona and Kona EV.
No thanks. I’d prefer to never be welcomed back to a commute. But it seems to me that the advertisers are making a reasonable bet here. In the absence of another C*v!d outbreak and/or some other justification for lockdowns, most people are goin’ back to an office. I understand this is not a popular or well-liked sentiment. Unfortunately, that’s what I see rolling down the pike. I may have been on the leading edge of predicting it, but I’m certainly not the only one seeing it now.
–https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/09/27/car-commercials-rto/
Stop griping about a long commute. Get in the car or on the train at 5am and just do it. Sell your soul to the company and forget about your personal life and just acquiesce. It’s also worth noting, I think, that when your life is this sedentary and monopolized by sitting activities, it cuts out time for fresh air and exercise. So then what happens? It usually benefits Big Food and Big Pharma.
It’s almost like there’s a whole crony capitalist system at play here . . .
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