Working from home (WfH) is like opening Pandora's box and finding a can of worms. It's fair to say it's a complicated issue then. Particularly now when it has been revealed that WfH, which was controversially forced upon us a few years ago, is the reason the business districts in our cities lie barren and are dying due to the lack of office workers prioritising eating and drinking out over paying their steeply increased rents and mortgages.
A concerted campaign has been launched in our media to force people back into the office. Even the Government has stepped in, making the end of WfH for civil servants a top priority. It appears the Prime Minister wasn't properly briefed on the issue however, as he said ending WfH is about boosting public service performance and not about rescuing Wellington cafés and bars, when the latter is clearly the case, as reported by media in the capital.
In a small way, I did my part and supported the Auckland Heart of the City the other day, at an after work gathering. I'm glad I did it, but I have to apologise that it'll be a while before I do it again. The $14 beers (small size) and $34 fish pie which comprised a few small prawns, precious little piscine comestible goodness hidden under a huge amount of mashed potato, and three thin, withered stalks of broccolini is a feast that's sadly beyond my modest budget.
Nevertheless, the campaign to end WfH is gathering pace. On social media, radical anti-WfH calls are echoing into the digital void:
It is a global campaign too, and it's good to see that New Zealand is coordinating its messaging with the rest of the world. For example, Amazon is fed up to the back teeth and has had a gutsful of WfH and is now forcing people into the offices where they belong.
WfH is just not the Amazon way. The company will no doubt ditch the very extensive and capable Remote Work solutions it sells, as it might be seen as encouraging the opprobrious WfH practice. Update: it appears the entitled worker drones are highly unappreciative of Amazon's RTO move, to the point that the company finds it hard to recruit people.
There is just so much wrong with WfH that it's hard to know where to start even. Our economic recovery plan with roading of national significance and that Wellington mega tunnel being built, depends on people commuting into the office five days a week. No, not on public transport because that's not how we do it in this remote corner of the South Pacific. Don't even think about mentioning that again.
Not to be overlooked, workers setting aside space at home for free to perform the duties they are paid to do undermine the viability of commercial landlords. The IRD should step in and end deductions for WfH spaces, to further discourage the practice. (Update: as commenters point out, the IRD doesn't allow deductions for employees.)
Importantly, it is only in the office where new and inexperienced staff are able to learn from their seniors in an appropriate and acceptable fashion. Face to face is how juniors will pick up on new things, and not in Zoom to Zoom. A few years ago this was not the huge problem it is now, as fast broadband connections were rare and expensive. We would do well to consider limiting access to UFB fibre to the home broadband for that reason.
In light of the above, it matters not an iota that hybrid and WfH staff tend to be happier, and likely to be more loyal and productive as well. Healthier too. Because that's just what science suggests. It doesn't take into account people skiving off to their beach houses that they can't afford to buy for four-day weekends.
If you're ever in doubt as to how pernicious and perilous WfH is, just remember this:
— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) September 23, 2024
129 Comments
Our corporate lizard overlords are tying themselves in knots over WFH.
Surely there are few endeavours more supportive of achieving Net Zero than WFH? Think of all the car trips that don't take place, lost hours stuck on the motorway. Productivity is up, quality of life is up.
It can only be that WFH is now hitting the lizards in the back pocket....
Oh no, the parasites working from home aren't supporting our public transport either. And quality of life means seeing the mortgage refinancing papers your co-workers leave on the company fax machine, buying a coffee that costs as much as a home cooked dinner and sitting next to sick people who smell of BO on a bus that smells of wet humans.
It was a temporary thing, because people were scared, a dumb decision was made, and this was allowed to carry on far too long. It is not being undone. I was wondering how long it would take and how much productivity would need to be lost due to this, but the time has finally come. WFH is over. Hooray for productivity.
It was one of the few positives to come out of a particularly dark period. Zoom/Teams/Amazon meant that buiness performed just as well with staff working remotely.
WFH is not for everyone, or all jobs/roles, so why be anti it? Many perform better when left to themselves, not attending ridiculous team-building exercises or listening to head office drones whittering on about strategic imperitives.
Yes employers can choose the rules that fit. Some see the benefit, others don't. But at the end of the day, these decisions will be made irrelevant of averagejoe @ interest.co's jealous ramblings and compensatory fist pumping.
You remind me of my colleagues in "people facing" roles that jealously yearn for a remote based position like a few of us have, however lack the skills to move up. Your comments remind me of the envious, low witted snipes when we turn up to the office once every couple of months, reinforcing their inferiority complex.
Haha. Why would I be jealous. I can work from home whenever I feel like it. I just feel it’s a waste of time, and that has now been widely proven. If I feel the need, I’d work at home but I don’t, and I won’t. I love how all these numpties jump up and down and think they are in charge for whatever reason. It hilarious. If it were me, I’d disestablish all WFH roles for people that complain about having to come back to the office and re-hire.
The reality is here, as per the article, WFH is destroying economies, cities, businesses, and the fabric of society….and it has to stop. No matter what the moaners have to say about it.
It’s kind of ironic that all the WFH types were all Over it yesterday justifying their unproductive lives claiming everything was rosy, and then interest.co.nz publishes an article confirming that you were all wrong.
Love it. Thanks Interest for stating the obvious.
Who cares about Wellington City? It's one decent earthquake event away from obsolescence anyway.. There are regional towns that benefit massively from the inflated take home pays and discretionary spending that is afforded from skilled people that work from home.
So you could work from home, but see it as a waste of time and would rather spend valuable time commuting to a place of work? Do you see how that logic plays out? But hey, you do you. You don't have what it takes to work productively from home.
Well, whatever you say, obviously. But, I actually live close to work, so there is basically no commute. I’ve worked in business class, airports, hotels, twains, buses, remote offices with clients (when travelling obviously)…wherever. The office is just better. It’s face to face and it works. But, your the expert.
PS: sitting at home with your cat on the table while you do a zone out on a zoom meeting is not work. It’s called being unproductive at home….and if our live so far away From work that the commute is an issue, that’s a you problem, and the solutions are either get with the program and get back to work, or get another job. Simple really.
But, your the expert.
I am, non sarcastically. I've worked about 30% of the last 20 years remotely, much of that pre-covid, about half of that invoicing by the hour. By far the most productive has been the time working out of the office.
I wouldn't try and argue it's automatically better, or better in every case: that would be stupid. About as stupid as "It's just better", that's not a coherent position, it's on the level of a playground claim of "Fords are faster" .
….and I’m sure you will continue to do so, and are suited to it. However, 90% of those complaining aren’t, and for them it’s back to the office. The good thing is that this will be over in a couple of months. All the complaining will be forgotten, and things will be back to normal.
back to normal
The vain hope of the retrograde, trying to hold onto the past.
Some centuries ago you'd be arguing that information should only be exchanged verbally, and that reading and writing makes your head soft (it isn't good for your vision though).
More recently in my lifetime was that computers were just for playing games and that I should go outside.
Lack of reading comprehension aside, there's nothing to support your assumptions of going back to a less economically efficient past is better.
"...that has now been widely proven". I would suggest this is a case of smoke and mirrors AJ. Dig a little deeper and you will find it is really a failure of the team leaders, not the WFH concept.
The issue here is the 'deliverables' requirements of any job, regardless of industry. Team leaders, who have negotiated and largely BS'd their way into a higher paying role should be capable of knowing their staff and knowing how to get the best out of them. As Te Kooti indicates, some people will work better under that arrangement others won't. Team leaders also must absolutely understand and know what their team's 'deliverables' are. What the team exists to deliver. they also must know what the plan is for the team to deliver those, or be able to create that plan.
In any team there will be some people who will need to be at the office because they will slack off if not under some degree of scrutiny, need the collegial support of others, or just work better with others around. There will also be others on the team who just work best in isolation, and a bunch who sit in between. Team leaders should have the skills to determine this, but sadly most do not and resort to micromanagement to try to compensate for their own failings.
This whole kerfluffle over WFH is clouding the real failing - promoting people into roles they simply are not capable of stepping up to.
Yes and no AJ. I've actually done this. when you're a team leader you're always looking at your deliverables. If they are falling then you need to understand why. It shouldn't take any more time than usual. You need to be up to date on what your team is doing and if some lag sneaks in, it must be addressed before it becomes a problem otherwise you're not doing your job.
It's really a Quality problem on being able to get the best out of people.
Do you really think if employers were seeing major benefits that they'd requesting their employees to return to the office?
More than likely they're seeing sinking productivity, lack of team cohesion and the death of any sort of company culture. I really don't get people who want to hole themselves up in their homes for rest of their working careers, quite sad really.
I agree. Imagine going most of your life without seeing another human being on a regular basis. Except the courier. It was bad enough during the Covid lockdowns, being forced to live on your own and be isolated from people. Who on earth would choose that as a lifestyle? On the other end of the spectrum, how many married people want to spend 24 hours a day with their significant other? That would equally drive you nuts.
Getting together with people with whom you share common interests and goals is one of life's pleasures. Not something to be avoided.
That’s the thing with many of these types, except it is the work they are avoiding, not the people. Someone I know who did allow WFH was trying to monitor WFH people in the early days and was monitoring VPN traffic, and wondering why certain people appeared very busy, but did not answer their phones. They organised to remote access the laptops/pcs concerned and found them with text editors on the desktops with auto-key press software typing stuff into it from files. They monitored for a while and when confronted, the WFH staff admitted they had really been at the beach…..so not avoiding people, just avoiding work.
Sounds like people with very immeasurable duties or tasks. Try getting away with that in an organization where tasks (quotes, orders, meetings etc) are all logged in a CRM/ERP and you're a Power BI report away from being found out.
But it's no different than external Sales Reps. We've had some, one even recently, who claimed they were doing work at home, but I.T. found out there were days their laptop wasn't even opened. So you put GPS trackers on their cars and keyloggers on the laptops?
Boy,working from home must be a real perk, WFH'ers are more feral than a landlord losing his mortgage interest deductions.If you question a WFH'er,they are like a lioness protecting their young.Remember,it's only a rort if your not involved.They are like crims on home D with a bracelet,they think it's great,the rest think they should be locked up.I can feel the tension behind thousans of keyboards as we speak.Just think of how much commentary is made in here on the company dime.LOL
People working in knowledge / expert roles know that they are far more productive when they can flex between home and work. The idea that everyone should come into the office all the time is therefore treated with contempt. It's akin to deciding that graphic designers should work on tiny screens. It makes no sense.
Hahaha.
Workers setting aside space at home for free to perform the duties they are paid to do undermine the viability of commercial landlords. The IRD should step in and end tax deductions for WfH spaces, to further discourage the practice
Yes, tax people's permanent behaviour change into oblivion because
CRE built it decades ago, they should come. Please 🥺
Correct.
I have a home office for a part time gig which I claim expenses for, and have f2f meetings at an excellent cafe down the road.
I also do some work for an employer. That employer benefits from the space that I set aside at home for wfh, but they have no tax advantage for me being able to work from home. Only a productivity and flexibility advantage
Hybrid is definitely the most productive of all types.
However even if all jobs required 'attendance' you still lose a lot of skilled employees who simply need flexibility for their other responsibilities and life priorities. Unless we went the way of Switzerland where there's a huge ability to simply ask your employer to continue in your role but in a 80%/60%/40% capacity. In NZ unfortunately this is more an exception than the rule, and most who want some more time other than in the work place have to take up lower skilled part time work wasting their productive ability.
Ridiculous. I work in IT, every single person I know who WFH is so much more productive doing so. I literally get all my work done from home, when I am forced into the office, I organise all the meetings to be on that day as its going to be unproductive as all hell. The constant noise, interruptions from colleagues, less sleep from adding almost 3h of useless commuting... all for what? To sit in teams meetings which could be done from anywhere and make small talk with people I have a passing interest in?
You can monitor peoples output when working from home, quite easily. My workplace did exactly that and noticed output went up between 20-60% when people worked from home, depending on the person and type of work they did. The ones that did the worst were the extrovert front facing managers or comms/HR people. All the actual engineers and coders did ridiculously better and required less management, so much so they took out a layer of management. Thats mostly because we hire adults with self-discipline.
I partiularly enjoyed this bit-
"Our economic recovery plan with roading of national significance and that Wellington mega tunnel being built, depends on people commuting into the office five days a week."
Based on this mentality we need daily protests to properly clog up our motorways so we get improved infrastructure!
Imagine how screwed the traffic in WTG, and more so AKL would be if everyone was forced to work in the office 5 days per week.
Imagine how screwed the traffic in WTG, and more so AKL would be if everyone was forced to work in the office 5 days per week
Infrastructure capital is a scarce resource in this country. More meaningful places we can put the few pennies to spare such as water and energy instead of enabling people to better commute to and from work 5 days a week.
Not sure I fully agree with this. Some jobs are far more suitable for WFH. For example, let's say I work for a business that operates globally but has a head office in Israel and / or S'pore (or even BVI). The business wants someone based in NZ to work on projects from Asia to Europe to Africa. It makes complete sense for that person to work from home.
New research (now available after several years of seeing how the covid WFH experiment has had time to play out) indicates that WFH is LESS productive. Hence why Govts and Employers globally are recalling their staff back to their offices. They clearly didnt need a research study to prove this to them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2023/08/02/working-from-home…
More up to date research:
https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statisti…
What happened to the promise of a data-driven and informed government that Bill wanted?
So far we've got a petrolhead managing transport, a gun lobbyist as a firearms minister, a health minister eradicting the changes needed to make health more efficient, a finance minister spreading economic blame to the people that WTH and a government defunding Wellington by firing 6500 workers.
Judith has Space and Technology so perhaps it's all in balance. (Government to have its own spy satellite)
Slacking from home is definitely less productive but more time efficient than slacking at work.
But if we go back to the problem (quiet Wellington CBD ...
- first it was the lockdowns
- then it was the protestors
- then it was the roadworks
- then it was the rents
- then it was the job cuts
- then it was the WFHers ...
We can clutch at all sorts of straws, but Actshually we are just witnessing the last phase of the debt pOnzi. There is ultimately no free lunch to be had by directing a bit of discretionary spending in a certain direction...
Correction.
- First was the earthquakes and the condemmed office space/overpriced remediation that lead lots of companies either moving out of CBD or offering WFH long before covid - Covid just expanded and cemented it.
- Then the shambles of a train service has stopped many in the Hutt/Kapiti getting into town.
- Followed by the extreme pricing of Housing and Hospitality,
- Finished off with a chonic amount of anti-social behaviour/homelessness.
Is it any wonder the CBD is a wasteland that few dare to enter.
Should also add for me personally, it is the ever present surcharges/payment fees and soliticing for tips/donations on the eftpos terminal that have driven me to reduce my outings.
Why do I want to pay to pay, then pay you more because you did the bare minimum regardless?
Being a teacher I don't have WfH, though the 'flexible' aspect of my work is honestly what keeps me in the job a lot of the time. Being able to manage myself independently outside of school hours (8:30-3:30) meaningfully enhances my life. It's great being able to get out early, go for a ride and sort out dinner, then finish marking or planning later at night.
All these reserachers with their important findings...
" Despite what some pundits might have you believe, there's limited evidence that whether you work from home has any impact on your productivity. Jarrod Haar, a professor at Massey University, said his research had consistently shown that hybrid workers - those going into the office and working from home - were most productive."
And yet i have been involved in many work situations. I just found this it has not stacked up
- I have tried milking cows at home
- i have tried driving a digger at home
- i have tried working on the factory floor from home
- i have also tried building, but the clients were unimpressed
Perhaps if you are actually doing something, it just doesnt seem to work ?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/528854/the-pros-and-cons-of-working…
Depends if you believe you need to;
- Be on the farm to sell the milk
- Be on site to plan the new road
- Be at the factory to plan logistics and distribution
- Be at the house to draw up the blueprint
A lot of jobs can be successfully done remotely, if people muck around at home, they muck around in the office. If a company can't tell whether or not people are productive at home, perhaps the real problem is they have no visibility of their productivity and calling everyone in to the office is a bandaid fix.
There are jobs that cannot be done from home, but that shouldn't be used as an argument against WFH in general.
I've tried printing off design drawings and performing comprehensive take offs in both my work and home office. Reading through 200+ page specification documents, obtaining material and freight quotes from overseas suppliers in various countries.
What I found is at home I didn't have people barging in, disrupting my train of thought because they wanted to gossip or were curious as to why I had 20 pages of A3 drawings sellotaped together at the match lines.
Interesting isn't it? Apparently people who leave their house in the morning and walk across the garden to work in a shed are lazy do nothings who are a drain on the economy. But that's only if the garden is in the suburbs and the shed has a computer in it. If the garden is in fact a paddock and the shed has cows in it, then they are salt of the earth real New Zealanders who are the backbone of the economy.
With the rapidly rising cost of living low income staff should start Homing From Work (HFW.)
Just live in the office! No rent/mortgage payments, no utility bills, no rates, centrally located so there is probably a gym and coffee shop nearby, off-street parking, quiet on weekends, cleaned every day etc.
Why is a government so intent on deregulation and decentralization so dogmatic about dictating how everything thing will be run from Wellington. Did the communists stage a coup d'etat while I wasn't looking.
Even seems that the right leaning posters on here are all for this communist thinking while the left seem pretty chill about personal freedom .
This is not how it's supposed to be.
this is how it's always been - Big C Conservatives are nothing more than rent seeking busy-bodies, sticking their noses into everyone's business to ensure their status-quo as lord baron wannabes is not threatened. It gets really tiresome telling them to eff off and mind their own business all the time. And before you all tar me with your woke mantra as a leftie, I have no problem with small c conservatism nor free enterprise.
My view is government can have anything it wants - but not everything it wants. If it wants full RTO it'll have to cough up the money to compensate people for their time or they'll move to private industry which offers those incentives.
As it happens I work for a company that never pursued WFH so there was no RTO mandate anyway. Having seen the issues it's causing I don't thing we'll ever pursue it.
I think his handle suits him..... and I'm still not sure he's realised the article was satire.
I love how all these numpties jump up and down and think they are in charge for whatever reason. It hilarious. If it were me, I’d disestablish all WFH roles for people that complain about having to come back to the office and re-hire.
The reality is here, as per the article, WFH is destroying economies, cities, businesses, and the fabric of society….and it has to stop. No matter what the moaners have to say about it.
It’s kind of ironic that all the WFH types were all Over it yesterday justifying their unproductive lives claiming everything was rosy, and then interest.co.nz publishes an article confirming that you were all wrong.
Love it. Thanks Interest for stating the obvious.
sitting at home with your cat on the table while you do a zone out on a zoom meeting is not work. It’s called being unproductive at home….and if our live so far away From work that the commute is an issue, that’s a you problem, and the solutions are either get with the program and get back to work, or get another job. Simple really.
However, 90% of those complaining aren’t, and for them it’s back to the office. The good thing is that this will be over in a couple of months. All the complaining will be forgotten, and things will be back to normal.
Haha. Sure did trigger a lot of people with zero comprehension though. I have enjoyed reading all the complaining WFH on stuff etc during the day (when they are supposed to be working). It been enlightening. Really has.
His flex comes from jealousy that he's required to come into the office. Probably a customer facing role. He'll try rationalize it by saying that "face to face just works" but he's deeply envious of people that do WFH, which is why he's so quick to criticize something that shouldn't really impact him at all.
….I had many people come through for interviews and tell me that should their application be successful they will be working from home. I tell them their application failed. It’s very common these days. Now, I will admit that we have a couple of WFH people but there are either located in countries where we do not have offices or it is for medical reasons.
I try to WFH where I have a lot of confidential conversations to have. Also do a lot of technical change after work... from home. My team lives 50% out of Auckland, these people rarely come in, a few days a quarter, yet have 20 years experience running there core platform.
Trust me productivity is a managers responsibility, not something that can be summed up in a BS report.
WFH is the best preparation for BCP as well.
The managerial class in WGTN must be crapping themselves, once all back in CBD their worthlessness will be on display, these are the lists of lists people, accessing and testing risk controls every week, grooming backlogs, but rarely having decent conversations about transformative change.
I remember reading an article on Interest last year about how helpful flexible hours were for Sealord in attracting good staff. Parents were able to take up shifts that lined up with school hours.
It strikes me as a similar concept where flexible hours can help you get higher-quality and more loyal staff at a lower cost compared to imposing strict blanket rules like the government now seems intent on doing.
Importantly, it is only in the office where new and inexperienced staff are able to learn from their seniors in an appropriate and acceptable fashion. Face to face is how juniors will pick up on new things, and not in Zoom to Zoom. A few years ago this was not the huge problem it is now, as fast broadband connections were rare and expensive. We would do well to consider limiting access to UFB fibre to the home broadband for that reason.
At work we still operate mostly from home, but not entirely. It's so easy to pick up on slow performers and address the problem if needed. Similarly, there are so many people I can think of that started at their current position working mostly from home and have been top performers who were recognized.
It's absurd and cynical to go to the office to spend your whole day on Teams/Zoom meetings just so you can be seen.
Great post WFH is not the end of the world but it is a very polarizing topic.
Especially for those that took it as an opportunity to move to a lifestyle/semi retirement destination away from their job. It is no doubt very convenient for those that want to avoid a commute, walk kids to school, walk the dog etc and on and on. It is inconvenient for employers wanting to train new staff when there is no one there to teach, lead, influence. Very inconvenient if staff go mia and are un-contactable during the working day, as happens...
I think its an opportunity to make change. Employer's have the opportunity to downsize rent. Or perhaps offer full time wfh contracts at a lower salary, or on a very focused contract rate tied directly to productivity. Something like charge an hour, get paid for and hour, or a rate per call taken on a virtual call center. You would of course have to cover your own sick leave, holiday pay and acc etc.
Or perhaps offer full time wfh contracts at a lower salary, or on a very focused contract rate tied directly to productivity
Why isnt every worker paid based on Productivity - whether in office or not. If you work from home, but are more productive - why should you be paid less?
Employers could do more to cover the costs of coming into the office, by providing paid carparks or public transport options, that is fair. But you are essentially saying we should punish people for working remotely, which is just garbage. If you are a controlling micro-manager of a boss, who thinks productivity is how many hours you sit in front of a screen where they can see you - they would love this idea. But as we know just sitting in front of a screen supervised by your boss does not make you productive.
I guess the question is - are government workers there to subsidise small businesses in Wellington, or are they there to get the job done?
Wellington really needs get diversify its economy. Being whole reliant on the government is leading it to become the shabby, expensive but slowing dying place we see today.
There is no reason why the govenment even needs a large amount of people physically based in wellington anymore. They could be spread out around the country either in offices or individually. Modern tech makes it easy and possible.
I am not sure i'm happy to have my taxes essentially be corporate welfare for small cafes in central Wellington, i would rather those workers being paid where they are most productive. For some that will be in office, others a mix and others fully remote.
Forcing them all to come back for nothing other than because the Government is facing bad PR due to their job cuts, just seems like the dumbest of all outcomes here.
This is an article about control and nothing more... productive people are productive wherever they work... I've seen people cranking out emails and presentations on a plane and taxi while 99% of others watch movies, listen to something or engage in conversations... this has little to do with the work environment and primarily about the people within it
There will always be people who take advantage of rules, benefits and increased flexibility - people can act entitled and want to squeeze every benefit possible, that's why performance reviews and management exist...! as the check and balance to those people who take advantage
Often mis-behaviour has a time limit as to how long they can continue to be non-productive, I believe that such benefits should come with set expectations, and if they can't be met - they get removed... simple.
What a one-sided emotive load of bollocks. I expect better, more balanced pieces at this site.
WFH can work well for some poeple and organisiations.
"There is just so much wrong with WfH that it's hard to know where to start even" for e.g.
Lots of "but this is what works for me, so everyone else should do the same" comments. Good for you.
Meanwhile, forward thinking companies are now offering flexible working in their job descriptions where appropriate, as it does ultimately benefit both the the company and employees.
I have WFH flexibility, I'm in the office when I need to be, not in the office when I don't. I very much appreciate the level of trust placed in me to do my job in the best way for both the company I work for and myself. But that's just me...
Thankfully my work will never force work from the office everyday. Generally expected to be in once a week which is fair, even 2-3 would be fair.
In my situation I do daycare drop off at 8.30 and work till 5. Mum works from 8.30 and does daycare pick up at 3.30. If we both need to commute on the same day we'd need longer hours for day care or one us just doesn't work. It would be an extra $100 a week plus an extra $150 in fuel and transport.
We won't spend as much time with our child just so we can sit in traffic. Teams, Zoom work perfectly well. Not to mention there isn't enough desks if everyone was in at once. We had people working in reception when we had the christmas party when the office was full.
It's just not workable, not wanted and provides no additional benefits to the business.
Oh did I mention all the businesses in the suburbs that are supported by WFH?
While I agree we shouldn't work in the city to keep cafes alive, the media have not really been pushing at as a good idea, they have just announced that the government is mandating it.
This https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/09/24/the-pros-and-cons-of-working-from-ho… is quite balance, a rarity in modern media, where they go over both sides.
and of course you there are examples both, but even the tweets in the article of them seems to be pro working from home:
Wellington just needs to stop allowing eating and sleeping at home and the CBD will be humming
Sure you can read it literally but the statements are so ludicrous to me it's clearly sarcastic. And so is the other tweet.
I know its hard to tell sarcasm in written text, but banning kitchens, or preventing eating at home really how much clearer can you get?
Is this why people get so worked up about social media, they read sarcastic comments like this and think that is what they really think?
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