• mPony@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    this still smells of propaganda, like it’s woven through the whole thing. “The American worker is making peace with a longer ride”.
    and yet the very first example they provide is someone who works from home twice a week.

    I’ll tell you this: the commute is even better when you work from home. WFH means less carbon emissions, less time wasted in traffic, and less time literally putting your life at risk from vehicle collisions.

    • worldwidewave@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      As someone that loves going into an office, I wish they let people who didn’t stay at home.

      I miss the aspect of the pandemic where people were freer to stay home if they chose, and the roads were so much emptier. It’s better for people to work how they’d like to, it’s better for me trying not to spend an hour commuting, and it’s better for the Earth to have fewer people burning carbon twice a day.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I almost got into a pileup on the way to work this morning. I hate commuting

    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      WFH means less carbon emissions, less time wasted in traffic, and less time literally putting your life at risk from vehicle collisions.

      It speaks volumes that all of these problems are car-related. The whole push for WFH is a massive condemnation of how badly people actually feel about the effects of the car-oriented development that the U.S has been spending so much time championing.

      • mPony@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        a) what you say is true b) these car-related issues affect other countries just as much : I’m Canadian. c) there are other things that WFH improves as well, but they are far enough behind the car-related problems that they can seem petty by comparison. They aren’t petty at all, but they do make a convenient foil for those who argue against WFH.

      • RippleEffect@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Even if I lived across the street from my office, I would still prefer to work from my home.

    • Plopp@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Hey! That sounds like pure communism! You go to work where the overseer can keep an eye on you and your productivity!

  • xmunk
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    7 months ago

    Trains, bitches - and WFH for people who have no business being in an office.

    • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Lol I have no reason to be in the office for my job. My company started forcing people back in January. I take the train in. It takes me 2.5 one way, 5 hours total. Doesn’t make any fucking sense that I have to make the journey, and it makes no fucking sense that the train ride takes an hour and 45 minutes

        • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Not to mention it’s just exhausting spending 5 hours of your day in commute

          That’s about 15 hours a week I could use to work and to go out with my dog, work out, actually do work more efficiently with two screens, and just idk spend some time with friends

          • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Do you only work 3 days a week or are you subtracting your hour long fault commutes?

            OP spend over one full day a week commuting. Gag worthy

            • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              I work 5 days a week but have to go in 3 now so just counted those

              The other two I still wfh

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      If there only were trains, or trams, or busses. In many areas, public transport consists of “the morning bus” and “the afternoon bus”.

      And not everyone can WFH. Actually, most people with lower pay grades can’t, so they still have to be present whereever they work.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        but it’s kinda hard to mop the floors where I work from home.

        Yeah, the “everyone should work from home” factions seems to forget those of us whose work requires us being able to touch the things we’re working on.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      7 months ago

      And while we’re at it, everyone gets a pony.

      I’d love more trains and I’d love more WFH jobs, but that’s not the reality in 2024 and just declaring “trains, bitches” is not helpful or particularly cordial to all of the people who have no choice but to make long commutes to their jobs.

      • shikitohno@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        I would wager most people don’t actually have no choice but to make a massive commute. Often it just comes down to policy choices. As a country, we’ve made deliberate decisions to ignore developing mass transit, just as we’ve decided homes should be treated as investment vehicles. If we built out and maintained more trains, buses and light rail, congestion could be cut down and more people could travel much more rapidly and efficiently. If we didn’t obsess over the idea that property values must go up without fail and encouraged building affordable housing, people could actually afford to live closer to where they work, rather than being pushed ever farther into the suburbs and countryside in search of a place they could afford to live in. Some people make insane commutes chasing higher pay in a neighboring region. I knew of people at one company who commuted from Philadelphia to Brooklyn every day, because NYC pay was higher and Philly rents lower. That said, that’s absolutely a conscious choice those people make.

        Likewise, not every job is capable of being done from home, but many are, yet workers are still forced to come into the office anyway. This is a choice by company execs, not an inevitable fact of life.

        I’m sure there are some jobs that are relatively remote, yet need to be done in person despite the long commutes. Let the people doing them be compensated accordingly, but this is absolutely not something that should be normalized for the population at large.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          7 months ago

          Ah yes, “find a cheaper place to live or get another job.” What a ‘choice’ you’re saying people have.

          • shikitohno@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            Individually, no, but this is the decision people have been making in aggregate for decades with the people they vote into government to represent them. You can still see it happening when people oppose any attempts to build out public transportation when they believe it would either personally bother them in some way, or give poor people an easier way to access their communities.

            Heck, you saw it earlier this year where municipalities around NY have fought and ignored the mandate to build up more dense housing, or the congestion pricing being walked back now. Housing costs being unaffordable is a serious issue when it impacts them or their acquaintances, but that’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make if it keeps poor people and minorities from also being able to afford to live in their town. Something needs to be done about traffic and air quality in Manhattan, right up until it means they would either need to pay up or take the train.

            The governor is taking most of the heat for these policies, bud meanwhile, people keep reelecting the same local and state officials that aggravate the problems that the public is chronically complaining of. They’ll shoot themselves in the foot if it means they can hurt others too.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              7 months ago

              This still sounds like victim blaming to me. It should be the job of the opposition to these candidates to educate the public about what they’re voting for. Blaming the public for voting against their best interest when no one’s telling them that’s what they’re doing is a little silly.

              • shikitohno@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                I would have more sympathy for them if these were new issues, but they’ve been perennial problems for more than three decades at this point. There comes a point where it’s either willful ignorance, or being so woefully stupid you probably ought to be declared a ward of the state and get a minder to make sure you don’t get caught off guard by your own saliva and drown in it.

                Like, it’s utterly stupid on its face. If you have the right to vote, you’re struggling to afford to keep a roof over your head, yet you keep voting for the politicians who block the very affordable housing that your continued ability to live in your community depends on because it’ll let the “wrong kind of people” move in, or “dilute the character of the neighborhood” and bring down property values, yet you cannot understand how this is voting against your own interests without someone breaking it down for you, you make a very compelling case for the shortcoming of democracy with universal suffrage. Even then, these are topics that have been gone over to death

                Blaming the public for voting against their best interest when no one’s telling them that’s what they’re doing is a little silly.

                Emphasis mine, but the public has been told over, and over, and over again. At what point does it stop being everyone else’s responsibility that they just don’t want to hear it, or are willing to ignore it if it hurts someone else?

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          As a country, we’ve made deliberate decisions to ignore developing mass transit,

          But as an individual, I need to have an income, and I need a place to live that my income will support sustainably.

          I don’t get a say in where the affordable homes are in relation to where my work needs to be done. And I don’t get a say in the transportation infrastructure between those locations.

  • Magister@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Same in Canada, and I have not moved, I live ~12 miles (~20km) of my working place, 90% highway. Early 2000s it took 30 minutes or less, early 10s ~40 minutes, 2019 before pandemic it was already a good 45+ minutes. 2023+ it is more than one hour (forth, and 1h back).

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I worked in Manhattan and had coworkers who lived in Pennsylvania. Two hours each way. A story I heard was that a bus company recruited drivers who would get up at 4am, pick up passengers, drive to the city, and then go to another job. 6 pm they get in the bush and drive home.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      That doesn’t make much sense. What happened to the bus in the middle of the day?

      Parking in Downtown Manhattan can be rented out for $30 - $50 per hour, maybe $80 all day. And that’s a car-sized space. Since a bus is two or three of those, it would make no sense to just waste $240+ on an unused bus.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Before Hudson Yards went up that space was mostly empty. I’ve also seen lines of buses parked under the FDR downtown.

    • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      If it’s two minutes do you need to be driving? That seems like a walk or bike

        • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          I drop off kids and pick them up every day. By bike. There’s really no excuse for driving in a city.

          • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I mean there are plenty of reasons. Some seasons it rains everyday here. Get off your high bike.

            • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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              7 months ago

              I bike every day, rain or snow. It gets to -20C in Montreal during the winter. You just need to dress right.

              • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                Ok but you said “there’s no excuse for driving in a city”. There are a million excuses. You’re obviously not disabled, but many people are. You’re obviously younger, but many people are older. You are obviously okay with the cold. Many people are not.

                Why don’t you try imagining biking to work in 50°C heat, with a bad knee and a migraine? Plus asthma or anxiety, your choice. Also, put your kid and some groceries on the bike and see how easy it is.

                • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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                  7 months ago

                  It’s a figure of speech. Obviously if you have a physical disability or a mental block that is hard to overcome, I don’t fault them for it.

                  However if they are able but choose to be stuck in traffic instead while I zip by with my children singing in the chariot, that’s on them.

                  OP was saying they have a horrible two minute drive to their work while they also have a walk into the opposite direction for their kid. Sounds like they can do it.