This guy was commuting three hours per day?! Yeah, no wonder his quality of life improved after he stopped doing that. Unfortunately, I don’t think his experience is going to be very generalizable because most people don’t have a commute length that extreme.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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I have a 12-15 minute commute and it made a huge difference to me.
I have an extra 90 minutes each day because at lunch time I'm already where I want to be.
Hrm, mine was already two hours. Sadly rather common tbh.
I have a personal theory that a lot of complaints about working in-person go away when you remove very long commutes, in particular by car.
A bit like how most complaints about pull requests go away if you make it a priority to get them done as fast as possible.
A 5 minute commute still necessitates putting on pants. Can't win there.
You can also put on a cute skirt if you want.
I've been wfh since covid hit, I still put on pants every workday to keep myself from treating it like an eternal Saturday. I know if I start slipping I'll become one of the laziest people on the planet
My personal theory is that a lot of advocacy for working in-person goes away when you remove:
- People that financially benefit from office culture (office land lords, restaurants near office buildings, janitorial services, etc.)
- Social vampires that view the office as the best place to gossip and share their boring personal lives with a captive audience
- Managers and executives with poor leadership skills and low self esteem
I had a 20-30 minute commute each way on transit or a 1 hour walk. Still love working from home more.
Commute time of an hour each way is pretty common in London and also for those commuting to London. Hour and a half each way not uncommon also.
There are other aspects of working remote that go beyond the extra time gained from not commuting. Like not getting interrupted with useless conversations, or distracted by the noise when you need to concentrate or being more comfortable in your own space.
Also what's the point of going to work in the office if you are just going to have a bunch of meetings online anyway?
Yeah, my commute was 10 minutes by car or 15 by bike. Working from home saves me very little time and money. I even have to wake up earlier to make sure I get coffee, since I can no longer get a cup at work.
It takes you more than 10 minutes to make a cup of shitty office coffee at home?
Your job is so strict that you can't afford to step away from your computer for the 10 minutes it takes you to start a coffee pot, go back to work, and then step away again to get the coffee when it's ready?
Yes, and yes.
Takes about 15 to brew a pot. And my employer requires me to "punch out" for even bathroom brakes. (Not unpaid, but status: restroom)
So it takes you 15 minutes to put water in tank, put grounds and filter into the coffee pot, and brew it? And you can't do anything else productive with your time while the coffee is brewing like take a shower, login to work a few minutes early and read and answer emails, brush your teeth, do some dishes, take out the trash, walk your dog, or anything?
And your work doesn't allow you to get up out of your chair for the 30 seconds it would take you to walk from your computer to coffee pot and fill your cup and walk back? Or even better, bring the entire carafe back to your desk with you? Are you working for the FSB and they have surveillance cameras in your house or something?
It really sounds like you're trying your absolute hardest to turn making coffee into such an onerous chore that it negates all the other benefits of not having to schlep to an office.
It sounds like they are working in a standard contact center, to me. It's sad how much control/surveillance contact center managers wield over the agents. There are good companies out there, but for contact centers, they are unicorns, not the norm. The norm is "track every second, scrutinize any time waste".
It sounds to me like they are working in a job that for some reason requires constant presence when marked as available. Like an air traffic controller (though that job can probably not be performed from home) or a callcenter, depending on the system used to distribute calls to operators.
Just use a timer for you coffee