Minneapolis Mayor calls remote workers ‘losers’ who sit at home with a ‘nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop’

Rofl... he's right.

NAILED IT!

He could get it.

He can insult all he wants.

I would still LICK his BALLS.

Wouldn’t a cat blanket be for a cat?

I do more work at home in a day than this fool does in a week.

Oh please, R5.

We all know you're just diddling yourself at your computer, underneath that smelly cat blanket on your lap.

Get back to the office. LOSER!

Minneapolis = urban doom loop

It's so weird how pervasive the "oddball loner loser cat person" trope has become.

So basically, the massive amounts of commercial real estate that investment funds hold, are about to stop being profitable because many companies are downsizing thanks to remote work. Moreover, sociopathic CEOs feel that power is slipping away from them because they cannot breathe down anybody's neck and relentlessly bully their employees. Thus, this nitwit is being pressurized by his donors to publicly demonize people who work from home, in an effort to try and justify the fact that soon enough, many local governments will start demanding that people go back to completely waste their times in oppressive, unpleasant and unnatural office environments, to save the uppermost 1% investments. Well, they can go and fuck themselves - including this shameless prestidigitator, who will promote the interests of anyone who makes significant donations to his campaign fund.

If this pig wanted to ensure that downtown areas recover, he ought to turn office spaces into affordable housing and offer better support services to ALL citizens, not just interest groups controlled by corporate donors. Of course, he won't do that because A) it requires a modicum of intelligence and imagination and B) his donors haven't ordered him to do so, and going against him would jeopardize his future political career.

I may be a loser but I am not a cat person.

The serious flaw in his argument is that just as many losers are sitting in their offices with their nasty cat blankets diddling at their computers. His brain is no longer working, not even remotely...

W&W for R9.

The last time I worked in an office I couldn’t keep the assholes away from me. They can’t wait their turn or understand that no means no and they need to figure something else out if I deny their request. People who don’t like working from home are not self-sufficient and, like R9 mentioned, aren’t able to bully people into doing all of their work for them anymore. You really see who makes the cut once the bullying / intimidation are out of the picture.

He needs to go further. All these people in offices have destroyed the hunter gatherer social structure. We need to get people out if their work from home jobs and into the forests and fields.

That’s very true, r12. My one useless AF coworker, who was never able to do this job and got by constantly pestering others, is now completely exposed as the idiot he is since we started working from home.

He can’t simply go to someone’s desk and loom over them, demanding help, like he has for the past ten years.

Now, he has to call or IM them, and he can be easily ignored. Much to our collective relief.

Management should stop bitching about not being able to bully people, and start using it to weed this dead weight out.

I'll happily withstand the insults if it means I still have the 15 hours a week and 400 a month in savings I acquired when my daily commute ended

Same, r15. I now fill up my gas tank once a month instead of once per week. And i love that I can throw a load of clothes in the washer and work while doing chores that I used to only be able to do after work. I feel like I now have some semblance of a life.

This is not true. I work from home and our company, based outside Minneapolis has been work from home for years. The hours aren’t crazy but damn they can have working on 12 things at once. Other times it’s not so chaotic. He needs to go “do his own research!”

These mayors and corporations are shitting themselves over a situation they created -and of course blaming workers for all.

I wish I had had a nasty cat blanket on my lap.

He’s hot. That is a pretty dumb thing to say though

Why does he care if people work at home or not?

I don’t like working for home but I also don’t give a shit if other people do. It seems to work out very well for most people.

Maybe the incessant "howling" of the cats on the cat blanket will force the workers back to the office.

He cares because the owners of office buildings pay real estate taxes to the local municipality. And when people work in them, they eat lunch out and shop nearby and pay sales tax and those businesses are also located in buildings that pay real estate taxes. If the value of those buildings goes down precipitously it will be very hard to continue to collect the same amount of real estate taxes. If the municipality doesn’t have enough tax revenue they can’t pay the police, the sanitation department, teachers or the interest on the municipal bonds they have issued. And, because of the tax treatment, those bonds are usually held, directly or indirectly, by individual investors. And even if the municipality can scrape by and still manage to pay the interest on the bonds, the municipality’s credit rating might get cut and then when they need to issue new bonds to pay of the principal non maturing bonds, it will cost more. So that’s why they care. It’s a big deal. Fortunately, municipalities collect revenue from diverse types of commercial real estate and residential real estate. They don’t just rely on taxes from office buildings.

There is also the issue of the loans on in these buildings. Some of the debt is held by hedge funds and such, but a lot is held by regional banks, the big banks, and insurance companies. If those get into trouble the pain isn’t going to be limited to execs at those institutions.

So that’s why this guy cares. He doesn’t want his kingdom shrinking or his pension at risk, or people blaming him when services get cut.

I

Then these fucking developers need to adapt. Renovate the space into apartments. Turn it into a theater, local museum or American Gladiator play room where adults can do dumb shit with padded foam swords and obstacle courses.

Turn it into a dystopian hellscape for paintballers, or a giant greenhouse space for growing local vegetables and host a fucking farmer’s market every day. That would use the space, employ people locally, bring people downtown AND bring in money as well as get fresh vegetables into the urban areas.

Do all of those things. Stop blaming telework for YOUR lack of imagination and GREED

He's cute so I agree with everything he says.

[quote] Turn it into a dystopian hellscape for paintballers

This is the first good idea I’ve heard. Converting office space to residential could cost as much as tearing down and starting over. And why would anyone want to live in an old office building in a downtown if they are working remotely and could live anywhere?

But paintball in an office building? Like something out of a scene in Walking Dead or The Last of Us? Yeah, I’d show up for that.

He can go fuck himself

We found Biden’s replacement!

Has anyone every checked out the climate of Minneapolis.? 5-6 months of vicious winter, 3-4 weeks of spring, a humid, hot and mosquito-ridden summer 3 months, and 3-4 weeks of decent fall weather. Why would you brave the outdoors, where you probably have to put a block heater on your car when you park for the day at the office to make sure it will start when you get out and want to drive home, if you have the option of doing the same work from home? I'm with team work-from-home.

I want his balls bouncing on my face.

He used to be so cute.

What happened? Premature menopause?

I was always a pretty dedicated and dependable worker at office, and since our company transitioned us to work from home (including encouraging us to build office-space around our remote laptops linked to the additional monitors, printers/scanners, supplies and whatnot that we needed to do it remotely), if anything I work steadily longer, harder and with more concentration and minus the commutes and additional stresses/money/time spent.

And no, I don't miss the Alpha Office queens who lauded over us how they came in and left with their schedules matched to nuclear-clock accuracy, while spending pretty much half their workdays ironically away from their desks taking outside smoke breaks, playing with lunchroom puzzles or making coffee, planning office parties, or shooting the shit with coworkers or texting on their phones in their offices. That's preferable to me working productively from home? Uhm, no.

" diddling on their laptop"

That's a lie! I use a desktop computer.

He’s not wrong.

But who cares if the work is getting done?

So we're asking all office workers to donate approximately 10-20 hours a week unpaid commute time and various relalted expenses (lincluding lunches, "office attire etc) so that downtown business districts can thrive? sorry, but its not gonna work. the genie's out of the bottle on this one

Don’t forget about the machete-wielding homeless people downtown, r36!

Minneapolis downtown was declining even before Covid (not totally, it has some vibrant areas), and now commercial real estate is hit even harder since Covid. It's unfortunate for central city areas, but I don't think shaming and name-calling remote workers is the answer. I loved working in vibrant and bustling downtowns with tons of people, lots of retail, decent nightlife, and just a "buzz." But, things change. That was the byproduct of everyone in a company having to work all in one place and people having to shop in stores (which I still prefer for a lot of things, but many don't). He's probably frustrated by a shrinking tax base and I don't blame him, but it's not going to magically be the 1980s and 90s again.

I mean, he is right. Get back to work, lazy fucks.

I'll work in his office.

On my knees.

Five days a week if he wants.

He has bad skin.

Prices of center city real estate are not low enough to attract people to live in the center, in turn generating a need for shops, bars, restaurants, support services, etc. He should worry more about incentives to filling the center with residents and less about placating commercial real estate investors who misjudged that their market trends would last forever.

He has the face of a retard.

Barf.

Working remotely from home was seen by many to be a heavy price to pay as a safe social distancing practice during the pandemic . Personally I hated it, but understood the rationale for it, and I was the first one to go back to the office in hybrid manner when my company allowed it. But working from home is for the most part destroying not just the daily networking at the office, but the businesses that grew around the business districts in cities and rely on their patronage. I know many businesses in midtown Manhattan that managed to struggle through the pandemic only to see a partial return to normalcy afterwards, forcing them to close down for good.

[quote]But working from home is for the most part destroying not just the daily networking at the office, but the businesses that grew around the business districts in cities and rely on their patronage. The daily networking at the office?

You mean looking up every morning at 10.11 on the dot to see Joe Krushke, bald as a cue ball, humming, having come up from the Sales Floor to pass by your desk with folded sports section of the newspaper he snagged from the coffee room. He'll be back in about 20-25 minutes, having taken a big stinking dump in the restroom around the corner, still happy as a clam and humming, the smell of his big work for the day not far behind him?

You mean Marilyn in HR Communications coordinating the circulation of birthday cards tucked discretely into a manilla file folder used and reused and reused again since people used manilla folders? Oh, and are you coming to the retirement lunch for Carole "with an e"?

It's Monday, so maybe you men all of your immediate colleagues and some people you suspect don't actually even work there stop about and ask about your weekend? "Do anything interesting?" That sounds fun! Was it fun?"

You mean the smell of burnt coffee and microwaved fish paste rice wafting all the way from the opposite end of the floor in your hermetically sealed environment in which nary a window opens, not even a crack?

You mean your colleague at the desk nearest you wondering aloud to any and all ad nauseam why the regular Monday afternoon meeting was moved forward an hour on the schedule? "Are we all being fired? Have you heard anything?"

[quote]the businesses that grew around the business districts in cities and rely on their patronage.

You mean the newstand where you can a tin of Smints to chase away the smell of three cocktails at Carole's (with an e) farewell party?

You mean the place that sells stinky vaguely Asiatic food is styrofoam clamshell containers, perfect for reheating in the microwave upstairs when you get peckish around 3.30?

You mean the coffee shop with its interminable lines and 1001 questions about how you want you "plain medium black coffee"?

You mean the guys at the parking garage where you pay $160 a month after your company kicks in $65?

You mean the dry cleaners? The way, way overpriced lunch spot whose owner sports a new Hermes scarf every day, who fancies herself a real Ina Garten, but posher? The Lululemon? The Carwash Concierge?

Those places will open again in some other format in some other location. It's not as though they are fixtures of the downtown retail (or suburban office park) scene since 1916.

[...]

[...]

Downtown where I work was getting desolate before Covid, but now it’s pretty much a haven for homeless meth heads and people with mental health problems. I’m sure they existed before, but with fewer people downtown, maybe they just stand out more. I dunno. We’ve had people doing drugs in the stairwells of the office building where I work. People doing drugs and having sex in the parkade. The nearby mall has a gauntlet of panhandlers outside the entrance, and once you’re inside it doesn’t feel safe. We’ve had a few attacks in the mall the past couple years. These things have gotten worse. I don’t blame people for not wanting to return to this, or of not feeling safe. My office building will put in security for a few weeks after an incident, but then cut it off. I go into the office 3 days a week and am not opposed to a full 5 days. But honestly, if we do, I hope my workplace at least relocates outside the downtown core. After this long, it ain’t ever gonna turn around.

Mama’s mussy is twitching so hard she’s worn out her third cat blanket!

He has no reason to blame people working from home for the mess created by greedy hedge funds and local municipalities. The fact that he blames the workers for the demise in revenues shows that he is an asshole and an idiot and is not fit to be a leader.

Working from home saves wear and tear on my car, commute time, gas, wardrobe and food, it’s like a mini raise. I am hybrid so I still go to the office and those are my least productive days. I hate the constant interruptions from coworkers who somehow cannot manage to do their job on their own and I dread the commute which has only become worse with all of the people moving here.

It’s time for change to keep up with the evolution of the workplace and the workforce. This is the new Industrial Revolution.

It's a good thing the mayor is a millennial, albeit an older one. Otherwise the media would frame this as some generation war. They love that.

I read all these articles about commercial real estate cratering - and getting worse. But then I'm always surprised by various cities various office vacancy rates. I'm not saying that something like 24% vacancy (Houston) is a good thing, but the way it's written about makes it seems like there's 50 or 75% vacancy rates. Granted "vacancy" is determined based on leases, not anyone actually occupying offices. For 2023, Minneapolis had a 17-18% vacancy rate.

I don't give a shit. I am never going back to the office and I have the skills and experience to be able to make that demand. My can't be automated and it can't be done by generative AI, either.

I will be WFH for lyfe.

Typical political bullshit. Blaming the workers instead of addressing the cultural issues. Greed. Hostile environments. High cost of commuting. Entitled management mindset. What are the incentives for going into the office? None. Address that before you start pointing fingers and making jokes about the people doing the heavy lifting.

I work "loose" hybrid - essentially every other day, so Tuesday and Thursday one week, followed by MWF the next week. But, my boss is very flexible. Like my roof was being repaired last week on an "in office" day and I wanted to be at home. I didn't have to exchange a remote day for an office day some time later. I just asked my boss for an extra remote day. And a few of us in the office have elderly parents who don't live near us. So, we can go visit for a week or 10 days to help out, and are able to take all that time as remote work and use no vacation or personal days; or we can split the time between vacation/personal and remote work.

I'm equally productive in the office or at home. I still enjoy going to the office but (1) there's that annoying tinge of obligation to go when I first get up, and (2) I live close to my office with a very easy commute. Five minute drive; 17-20 minute walk. So many quality of life issues like high costs of commuting, lots of time and stress per day commuting, really don't apply.

R55 - they’d argue the incentive is your paycheck. I’m all for wfh and love that I have the ability, but am also acutely aware how replaceable I am should I balk at going in 5x a week. I need my paycheck so can’t afford to die on any hills. I’d wager most of us are in the same position.

R54 - same here. I get emails a few times a week from HR people and staffing agencies wondering if I'd like to make a career "pivot." All the jobs they promote to me seem to think offering a hybrid role (3 days in office) is some kind of marvelous flex. I'm always polite in my reply, but I reiterate that I'm currently pleased with my fully wfh job, and don't care if the position on offer has significantly more pay than my current job. Quality of life is more important to me, and being forced on-site, even 2-3 days a week, is not at all an incentive. These dipshit mayors and politicians need to do some mental flexing of their own to figure out how to revitalize their cities without relying on browbeating employees back into dreary offices. The world has changed, and as one commenter stated, that genii isn't going back in the bottle.

R57 - Sure, they can believe the incentive is the paycheck, but my skills, length of experience, and expertise give me all the real leverage at this point. I know this because of how often I'm contacted for interviews and pleaded with to consider a new job opportunity when I'm not even listing myself on LinkedIn as "open to work" or actively looking for a job. Fuck them and their on-site and hybrid requirements.

[quote] Like my roof was being repaired last week on an "in office" day and I wanted to be at home. I didn't have to exchange a remote day for an office day some time later. I just asked my boss for an extra remote day. And a few of us in the office have elderly parents who don't live near us. So, we can go visit for a week or 10 days to help out, and are able to take all that time as remote work and use no vacation or personal days; or we can split the time between vacation/personal and remote work.

And this is precisely why WFH people have a bad reputation.

You're basically using company time to do your personal business, which is exactly why you hate the idea of coming back to the office.

I think it's disgusting the way that WFH people constantly tell us how busy you are and how much work you get done.

WHAT A JOKE.

I'm glad that businesses and government are waking up to the WFH scam and forcing people back into the office.

You lazy jerks have had it easy for too long.

[quote]All the jobs they promote to me seem to think offering a hybrid role (3 days in office) is some kind of marvelous flex.

RIGHT?? I get these DMs on LinkedIn all the time. I already left one job because they tried to make a power move and require me to be in the office just TWO days per week. I knew that two days would be just the start, and that eventually they would try to increase that number to 5 days a week. So I got a job with Salesforce and I am now 100% remote.

I let them know in the exit interview exactly why I was leaving, too. Good luck finding another technical architect who knows this platform like I do.

[quote]You lazy jerks have had it easy for too long.

We're not lazy jerks. We are skilled workers.

And what are you doing on Datalounge during the work day, you fucking hypocrite?

Now watch me do my laundry while I take this next conference call.

Here's hoping that these companies ship all of the remote jobs to India.

But you DEMANDED to stay home.

My job can't be outsourced, hunny.

Your job will be shipped to India long before mine will. And you know that.

What are you talking about, R60. I wasn't doing the repair myself. I wanted to be home in case the contractor had any questions or issues and so I could pay him at the end. I was working from home the whole time. Jesus. Why are you so bitter?

[quote]Why are you so bitter?

Because he is marooned in an office park somewhere stuck in a career where he can't make any choices about his own quality of life. Obviously.

You would be bitter too!

I diddle sitting on a regular desk chair.

Fucking hell, R60, do you think R56 was using a WFH day to repair his own roof? No, he was working from home and got up from his chair for 10 minutes to let the roofers in and show them where the bathroom is, then another 10 minutes to say goodbye/thanks when they finished.

Not "basically using company time to do your personal business" but working 8 full hours at least, not counting the salutations with the roofers.

Who was harmed except your fragile sense that everybody else in the world has it better than poor put-up on you?

That's exactly it, R68. Thank you.

Roof guy wasted less time talking to the contractor than he does in the office getting coffee and wading through all of the office “small talk”.

But sure, the company is getting “ripped off” by lazy WFH people.

The bootlickers on this thread are hilarious in their jealousy. I can do my work from home just fine and I'm at the top of my field so no one is going to force me back to an office. With one phone call, I would be employed elsewhere in a heartbeat because I've worked in my field for 30 years and so many people know my work and want to work with me. So far, my company hasn't even mentioned hybrid or going back into the office and I'm the most happy I've been in years working from home. My work/life balance is better and I don't have the office idiots interrupting me daily to talk about their fucking football games that I give two shits about. It's really the only thing straight men have to talk about and it's sad as fuck.

People who think they aren’t replaceable because of their skills and years of experience amuse me.

I need to come in an average of 2.5 days a week, do I do two days one week, three another. The management says if you live within a 50 mile radius of the site, you have to come in or be fired.

The problem is, before the pandemic, they had hired several people whom they allowed to go remote and they’ve rescinded all of that.

I'm in a creative field, r72. My skills and years of experience are in demand. Sorry that that amuses you, but the creative fields are much different than your typical office jobs. In the creative arts, talent is what is in demand, not the ability to push buttons. And you can't teach talent. You either have it or you don't and those that don't are discovered quickly. Those of us who have it are always employed. In my 30 years of experience, I was let go from a job only once and immediately after, had people in the same field contacting ME to offer me jobs.

I work in healthcare so I have to be at my location, but wouldn't a compromise work? Perhaps 2 days a week with a full week of WFH once a month?

Having to deal with co-workers who are WFH is annoying. They’re always hard to get a hold of.

I’ve recently just started pretending they don’t exist. Which they kind of don’t.

Perhaps 2 days a week with a full week of WFH once a month?

Why?

R72, a friend of mine has a Top Secret clearance and that alone in his field makes his job high demand/low competition because they cost so much and take so long to get.

Every time his company tells him he has to start coming in to the office more than one day a week, he just goes thru his email and sees what other offers he’s gotten that week and calls them.

The funny thing is, they want him to go into an empty office building to get in a zoom call with people in other states. Why can’t he do that at home?

I work for a large national firm that decided to pivot to mostly remote. By mostly, I mean they prefer people to work remotely, and downsized to much smaller office spaces so that if employees desired to come in and be onsite, they could, they just need to reserve an office or a work space in advance through office services. The onsite office space also has a few meeting rooms, a break-room kitchen with the usual supplies, and a full-service mailroom for shipping, labels, scanning, copies, etc. No one really needs to be onsite unless they want to. I have absolutely no sympathy for companies with commercial real estate leases for huge offices that they're paying exorbitant prices for which is the main reason they want to force employees back onsite. Get a lawyer to get out of that lease, you greedy, lazy fuck. It can be done and is being done by a lot of other forward-thinking firms.

R72 - Go ahead and be smug in your amusement, pookie-butt, but those of us who know the patterns of our industry, particularly with regard to our length of experience, well, we know what we're talking about. If anything, I've seen an increase in demand that has risen exponentially since the pandemic.

Lots of jealousy on this thread. Don’t hate people for having the ability to WFH.

Fine, three of you allegedly aren’t replaceable. I’m not trolling you, either. Good for you that your job is secure and that you have the pick of your jobs. Just simply pointing out that the majority of us are not that blessed, and if we’re told to go into the office more often, we don’t have much of a hill to die on. I’m not saying I want to love my hybrid work privileges either, but they are just that - privileges.

^^lose, not love

They are only "Privileges" because your company views them as such. My company simply calls it "working."

A question to all the fanatical opponents of work at home: what kind of office work do you do that is so worthless that your boss doesn’t know if you do it unless he observes you doing it/pretending to do it?

I work at home but produce things that my boss would notice if I did not produce them even if he doesn’t observe me producing them.

[quote] People who think they aren’t replaceable because of their skills and years of experience amuse me.

I agree with everyone commenting on R72's arrogance.

Can you just imagine what it's like to be around that pompous ass, all day at work?

I actually think it's better that R72 works from home.

That way no one has to deal with that asshole in person.

He should have called them loosers.

Working from home is a scam and we all know it. That’s why there are so many hysterical posters on this thread, trying to justify how hard they work. I say get back to the office or sack the lazy fuckers and replace them.

Bootlicker alert! '^

Clocking into an office you're physically SUPPOSED to be present at, and then going home while a mannequin sits in your chair would be a "scam." If the companies are complicit in work from home, how is it a scam?

R88 NAILED it!

I totally agree with you.

I was doing half days in office as the pandemic inched further along, after being fully remote. My job is a pain in the ass to do from home. But even with the extra steps I enjoyed it. No longer did I have to hear the one coworker bitch all day or deal with the boss, who hangs out in the break room making awkward small talk. All I had to do was my job. No one else’s.

Now that I’ve been full time in the office again for 3 years the suck is real.

So many jealous, bitter queens on this thread. Glad I don't work with any of you...because I work from home.

R88. Why can your boss not tell if you are producing or not when you work from home? Do you have one of those worthless jobs where schmoozing is the only point of you employment? Why can’t you produce any noticeable work product? Do you have no talents or skills?

I started WFH recently. Do you know how many days I sat around in the office pretending to do shit while not really doing anything at all? There was no reason I couldn't be doing the shit I do in the office at home. In fact, I'm more productive when I WFH.

Those who hate WFH are those creepy bosses who like to breathe down your neck all the time.

In 25-30 years of working in offices, I was lucky not to have many horrible experiences with bosses or coworkers (a few here and there, but a small percentage of my office time). I work hybrid, and If I'm called back full-time for some reason, I'll be slightly disappointed, but it wouldn't be THAT big of a deal, especially since I don't have that long left before retirement.

As far as productivity, the vast majority of people are either productive or their not. Only a small percentage will suddenly change their productivity based on where they're working. And they themselves usually recognize it. And all those years working in the office - even in the tightest, strictest, most breathing-down-your-neck environments, the lazy non-productive people would STILL find a way to to not get shit done.

[quote] Working from home is a scam and we all know it.

Getting your work done without some asshole bothering toy every five minutes is a scam now.

Another workplace bully.

toy = you