When we got called back to the office at my last job, it cost me about $65 per day to go to work. There was gas of course, but then there were tolls both ways, parking fees, and lunch. It was ridiculous. $10 both ways in tolls, $22 parking $15+ for lunch, plus gas. Before the pandemic there had been an employee shuttle that I used to negate all of those fees, but it wasn’t available after the pandemic. I ended up finding another job and quitting when they wouldn’t entertain letting me stay remote. The stupidest part was that I would commute an hour both ways (because of traffic), and spend all that money, just to sit at a desk by myself and teleconference with my team who was in a different state. The entire team folded a few months after I left since their other two key engineers left too.
There’s about 246 working days (assuming you take up to 3 weeks a year off for sick/vacation, I know may be high for some people). At $31/day that’s $7,600. Use an average of 32% on taxes and you’d have to give a person at least an $11,200 raise to offset that savings…. And companies are still wondering why people are hesitant to come back?
my first reaction was that’s a rediculous amount, but its actually not that far fetched. my commute cost is $17 per day (AUD) which is pretty much half that. all it takes is a cheap lunch and a coffee to meet that total (obviously something you can avoid most days but you won’t everyday because “TeAm BoNdiNg” requires spending money to eat with people you don’t like
I work in the US but at my company, team lunch is always paid for. Not only the food, but the time we eat is paid time (for hourly employees.) Mandatory “fun” should be on the clock and paid for by the company.
Definitely not the case for every company here, of course. But personally, I’d refuse to attend if the company weren’t paying for it.
The only argument I really have much sympathy for is the time/gas expenses. Food is totally on “us.” Buying food too expensive every day? Meal prep on the weekends. I never buy food at work and if I were home I’d be eating the same thing as I am at work so it’s not an extra cost.
That said I’m 100% not against having employers cover food costs lol
Do you have kids? Do you have a live-in maid? Do you spend all day Sunday doing meal prep for the week? People are working longer hours, commuting more, and have less time. I’m all for personal accountability, but man, there’s only so many hours in a day. Imagine you had an emergency on a Sunday night. No lunch for the week?
I don’t have kids or a maid, but I only need 2 hours to make what I would be eating for lunch. If you can’t find 2 hours to make food then I guess you have to buy it, but that fact would remain whether you’re at work or not.
A good lowball figure estimate your daily commute cost if driving would be to use the government reimbursement rate. It tends to be lower than what it actually costs, but it is a figure that can be referenced. Don’t ask me what it is now, because it changes all the time
It’s all personal. But for me I only run the air conditioner for 3 months and normally not every day. I also run the heat for four. But all that plus electricity costs less than gas, tolls , car payment and car maintenance.
Yeah, I think its all relative and depends on where you live. If you live in the south you can probably expect to pay for AC all day, probably 6-8 months of the year. As for car related, this is also all relative. If you have a car and it isnt used much for 15 months then I would expect the car to not start when you try.
I remember as a kid going over a friend’s house and seeing the quarters lined up on the table. His parents were both nurses and had to pay to park at the hospital. I don’t remember the amount at the time, just being in awe at how much they spent just to park where they worked.
They usually worked on different schedules too, so that’s separate parking.
One of the big Boston hospitals tried to recruit me for their transplant team once. They wanted to pay me $15,000/year LESS for the privilege of commuting into Boston five days a week and paying for my own parking. Fuck that noise. I’ll stay at my little community hospital, thanks. Prestige ain’t gonna pay my mortgage.
Although hospitals run 24/7, and the T doesn’t. And even when it’s running, sometimes it isn’t, because there’s a train broken down. Or on fire. Or both.
Why is suggesting making your own lunch a “bad” thing though? I’ve been doing it for years to save money and eat better. Food is absolutely on “us” I would be eating whether I’m home or at work, but then again I’m a US born Stockholm syndrome slavelord that’s just used to the shit system we have here. Do other countries require their companies to pay for lunches?
What’s nice is that when you work from home, you have your whole kitchen at your disposal to make your lunch. As opposed to needing to plan ahead while wasting part of your day on a commute.
On the clock from the moment I leave the driveway and until my commute home. Pay mileage too. Ok to stipulate a reasonable limit on this, of course. Or, you know, let people work from home.
This doesn't include the opportunity costs of not being at home. Since you're not at home, you can't tidy up for a few minutes during a break. You can't prepare a meal for dinner that takes a long time. You can't run a quick errand in the middle of the day without eating up "sick" time. You need to provide childcare for kids after school.
If they want me in an office they need a good goddamn reason to do one of the most dangerous things I do all day - driving - and to pay me for all the things I'm missing out on. Not just for the commute, but a cleaning service, child care, and takeout for dinner.
Yeah when I’ve been allowed to work from home I’ve either done chores or talked to my wife during breaks. And I’ve been more comfortable doing the things that make me more effective in my work that bosses don’t like like listening to books during repetitive work
You need to provide childcare for kids after school.
My boss’s boss is the type to say you need to have adequate child care even if you’re working from home so as to be undisturbed the same as if you were in the office. Luckily I had a migraine when he said it or I would have said something that would have gotten me fired.
It depends on circumstances. We have two children, one is four and a half, the other is 9 months old. My wife and I both work from home (well my wife will be, she’s still on maternity leave with our baby). We have to have daycare, we’d personally go nuts otherwise. So I never factor in daycare in my analysis, it’s a sunk cost for me, at the moment. But even disregarding that, I worked out what it really cost me in time, wear and tear on my vehicles, additional insurance, fuel, parking, lunch, etc, and I came out to about $40k.
A higher up at my company recently derisively said one of the major reasons people didn’t want to return to office was because they saved money working from home… as if that’s a ridiculous reason. Some of these executives are so out of touch with their inflated salaries.
I think this is what people mean when they say "people don't work as hard from home" are talking about. Having a little extra spending money makes you not worry as much about appeasing your boss.
It really means the bosses can’t preside over a culture of fear quite so well if people aren’t cowering outside their offices seeking their attention. They like to be the centre of attention and work being done remotely makes them feel just as meaningless as the rank and file workers.
Yet the same douchebag will cut costs in the company at every turn. And is probably cheap as fuck in personal budgeting. These people need to fuck right the hell off.
People are more productive at home. We know this. It works and has worked. These companies that refuse to acknowledge it will continue to destroy themselves.
Companies that adapt to remote work will have access to better workers who can afford to be choosey about jobs. And since remote workers concentrate better and work longer hours they’re even more productive.
Companies which force workers to come into the office will languish and become less profitable and they won’t even know why.
I agree with the premise, but this rub me the wrong way:
“$16 on lunch, $13 on breakfast and coffee.”
It sounds like entitlement if you think someone should be paying for something you already do at home (eat), but choose to do it in the most expensive way possible.
Make food and coffee at home and bring it to work. And if you’re already buying expensive shop meals to eat at home, why complain about spending that outrageous amount of money when you’re outside the home?
The status quo shouldn’t mean that you are forced to spend time outside of work time preparing for work time. Unless they want to pay for that time, or your lunch.
I am happy to make this concession provided I can either start making my lunch on company time, and then commute after I have finished making my lunch, or be allowed to fully go home, make and prepare lunch, dine, and commute back to work.
Oh, is that unproductive, a waste of time, money and energy, and massively impairs my ability to get work done?
Someone should draw some kind of conclusion from that, it seems.
I suspect people are not spending as much on nonessentials and businesses are seeing this as their workplaces being empty and not spending. But something tells me it’s a nationwide thing, people are thinking twice due to inflation and I doubt bringing people back is gonna make them want to spend money the way they used to. My claim is based on layoffs and stocking issues.
I feel this has to be pointed out to young people: it used to be possible to eat out every day, go to the movies, drink in a bar after work, see a live band on the weekend, and still buy a home and save for the future. This was possible in major cities around the country. This was taken from you.
It is not outrageous for single people living in a city to buy food outside the house. I believe prices have clearly skyrocketed because fewer people know how to make their own food. In the 50s everyone had grown up during the depression, so if something was even a little expensive you made it yourself.
P.S. Not only did many workplaces provide free or discounted cafeterias to eat in, they paid you during your lunch hour! That’s where the phrase " working 9:00 to 5:00" comes from.
that is the entire point of the commercial real estate excuse: that was your labor and money that was supporting it not the bosses.
the bosses don’t care about commercial real estate, either. They care about being able to use their status to bully people in person in front of others.
the bosses don’t care about commercial real estate, either.
That depends on how high up you go, the upper bosses certainly do care about real estate. There’s a reason that all of the leases are expiring and everyone is being required to come in at the same time.
In order to update these spreadsheets and email some fuckers, society must allow for 200lbs of meat to be moved fifty miles per day. Because someone has to stare at me. The meat.
2,000Lbs is a low estimate. 2,500Lbs assumes they drive a subcompact, 4,100Lbs is the current average weight (and 2004 was already at 4K so I'm not sure if this statistic counts SUVs/trucks or not). Even Kei cars are 1500-2500Lbs (ICE versions being lighter, though there are smaller and lighter cars including 2-person EVs that are under 1K*.
I would also add the time spent in a car (particularly in slow/jammed traffic) is also sedentary time (which an office job also likely is) and thus a health issue. So some people buy gym memberships which they must also drive to. If they even have the time/money/energy.
Also lots of bad things to be said about roads(/stroads) and parking lots etc. But the short of it is, they aren't places hospitable for living. Particularly on a hot day.
*=Though this lower-size vehicle may be legally classified as something else, such a a "covered motorcycle"/autocycle (or from what I'm seeing, some other close-enough category) which may be an issue or a boon with laws, and may even depend on local laws.
From the collective consciousness I pulled the 2004 Toyota Corolla weighing in at 2,502 to 2,590 lbs. Because certainly there's no other way I would guess The the most average car so on-the-nose. And I have seen the videos about the Honda Insight being good for gas mileage (even back in 1999, it's a hybrid).
I guess actual price, availability, perception, mantenence etc. molds it for most people though.
4,100Lbs is the current average weight (and 2004 was already at 4K so I’m not sure if this statistic counts SUVs/trucks or not)
CAFE standards required proportionally greater economy improvements in compact cars than in medium and large vehicles. Rather than attempt to meet those standards, manufacturers just stopped producing their smallest cars.
Fuel economy has worsened, because the average car on the road is bigger and heavier now than 30 years ago.
In most of the US that’s a crazy amount to spend on lunch, but this hypothetical also included public transit so we’re not talking about most of the US
Just a fast food hamburger and fries is $9-something where I live. The yellow curry at my favorite Thai restaurant is $12-something, plus a tip. Add a soda to either one and it's another $2-3.
just make sure it doesn’t smell, stain, is difficult to eat, is easy to prepare, easy to clean and you’ve measured out the right amount to prevent wastage.
or just let me work from home?! which is better in every way?! for everyone involved?!
And all of this is why the lunch meat sandwich is the king and standard of packed lunches. I normally swap between packing a lunch meat sandwich or a pb&j for lunch or I’ll go broke grabbing takeout
I agree WFH is good but I feel like people exaggerate how hard it is to bring your own lunch. I ate an apple with nut butter today because I was too lazy to meal prep. Yeah, I have low standards, yeah it’s not exactly filling but whatever. I’ve saved hundreds by just sucking it up having a shitty lunch when I’m too lazy to meal prep.
TO BE CLEAR: I 100% support WFH. Fuck greedy, lazy employers who refuse it for no reason, we should all continue to fight for WFH. Acting like there is no alternative to buying lunch every day is a cop out.
It’s not that it’s super hard to bring your own lunch, but it’s definitely hard-er. People just get mad when their employers won’t recognize that there’s a difference between wfh and commuting.
Yea 25-30 is a sit down meal somewhere, in reality most office drones are picking up something quick from fast food or a convenience store for >$15 a day.
You’d be surprised. I was busy at work one day and starving. Almost doordashed a burrito and chips from Chipotle till I saw it’d be almost $25 before tip.
I would be surprised but you said DoorDash, that adds like 40% after you count in DoorDash fees, the raise in price from the restaurant trying to get their fees back, plus the tip.
I’d say it’s about $15-20 for an average lunch here, in Seattle. transit is fairly cheap, $5.50 to and from work unless you live far enough to go through a couple zones, at which point I think it’s still under $8 round trip.
I guess this is going to depend heavily on the kind of job you have.
My workplace provides coffee of the highest quality, breakfast, snacks and all kinds of drinks. I also get access to ~$10 per day to spend on lunch - which to be fair doesn’t really cover the whole cost any more - but still, it helps. I also bike to work, so there’s not really any cost there to speak of.
Depending on how creatively you decide to do your accounting, I arguably gain from going to the office. Then again, I could spend 5 days at home if I wanted without any problems. I’m choosing to go in anyways though
The last time I was in an office regularly they gave us a free buffet lunch every day. Then we got bought by a big company and it turned into soup and salad. Then we got sandwiches. Then they stopped it entirely. Then I quit.
