I'm a federal worker who commutes 15 hours a week after RTO. It's affected my marriage and social life.
By: Madison Hoff (Business Insider via MSN)
Yep, modern jobs are like that. There hasn't been job security in the labor market for decades. Employers view workers as an expendable commodity. Thank Bill Clinton for that.
Notice that there isn't any mention of the work to be done? Workers aren't going to invest themselves into job performance when there isn't any job security. Thank Newt Gingrich for that.
Boo, hoo. Sob, sob. In the world of work, no one cares any longer. Work is all about getting as much money as possible from smallest investment. That's been the goal of neoliberalism from the beginning. We're told jobs are plentiful so maybe it's just time to move on.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I work for the federal government, and we've officially returned to working full-time in the office.
That means my commute time has gone up to about 15 hours a week. I commute about three hours every day, an hour and a half in, an hour and a half back.
The biggest change is the lack of energy that I have. I also have disabilities, so traveling is pretty tiring.
My husband recently returned from his military training. We're figuring out what the new schedule looks like and how to support each other.
We chose to live close to his base — about an hour and a half commute to my office by train — so he could be available for the soldiers under his command as things come up. At the time I was in a contract to only come into the office twice a week, so the commute seemed like an OK payoff.
Now that I'm going in every day, it's not quite as balanced.
I've definitely noticed a lack of energy around the house and the restructuring of our weekends, where we used to go out and do things, meet up with people, and engage.
Usually we would meet up with friends at different places, like ice skating or go-karting or just a fun place for dinner. We also had regular game nights at different homes.
It's definitely a lot more staying at home, getting things done around the house, running our errands, meal prepping, and things like that.
Dealing with the often reckless and chaotic rollouts of different agendas has definitely left a huge mental toll. Supporting someone who is away for training in the military has been really difficult because I barely have enough energy for myself.
It makes me sad. It's definitely not what I had anticipated happening this year for sure, and it's just been a drain.
I think we are back full time in the office because of the confusion and the lack of clarity from executive orders and OPM guidance. There's been a lack of consistency in terms of who has to go back, when they're going back, and what's actually happening.
There was an OPM memo that came out that said that all military spouses should be exempt from the return to office, but the implementation just hasn't been consistent. So even within my department, different components have implemented that guidance in different ways.
With the implementation of the return to office, there's confusion regarding whether someone lives within 50 miles of the location, are they exempt from this order or not because are they technically remote.
Because I'm less than 50 miles, I'm not exempt. We definitely will be relocating in the future because military families move all the time.
Even if you live within 50 miles of where you work, that doesn't mean it's going to take you less than 50 minutes to get to work. In DC, traveling 50 miles could take you two hours. It's not even a good measure of whether someone should be remote or not.
For someone who's in the military, the work that they're doing, especially the work my husband is doing, is very stressful, and it's high energy all the time.
It's very important that you're able to provide that support for them so that when they come home, they're not continuing to be stressed. There's got to be an unwind point.
If I'm also stressed the whole time that he is home, then we just live in the stress bubble, and neither of us has the energy to work through that.
I came into the government for job security. You might not make as much money, but you'll have good benefits, and you have job security, and that is suddenly not there anymore.
The uncertainty around the future is definitely a huge stress. We make the joke, we walk in and we say, "Haha, we still have a job today." That's that dark humor of like, yeah, I still have a job, but I have no idea what's going to happen by the end of the day today or tomorrow.
That's its own form of stress.
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What I want to know is why a commute of less than 50 miles requires 1.5 hours of travel time. Washington D.C. has one of the best mass transit systems in the country.
Lol. I guess you don’t know the DMV. I went two years with a 2.5 hr commute each way. Covid was the best thing to happen to this area. Everything is always under construction, people can’t drive for shit, and one fender bender can add an hour to the commute of thousands of drivers. The masses then take an exit to try a different route and cause massive backups at signalized intersections. Leave it to Trump, the guy who’s never put in an honest day of labor in his life, to falsely accuse hard working efficient employees of time theft and return them back to the Stone Age.
Don’t like it? Make a change. Easy peasy …..
My commute from southwest of Arlington (close the to the GW masonic memorial) up to Chinatown was around 15 min. It was faster to drive sideways to an outlying Metro station for the commute. It's been decades so I don't know if the planned extension of the Metro farther out was actually constructed. There was talk of extending the line I rode out to Mount Vernon.
Lol. You are the king of naive comments. I did make that change and it took a full year to happen. Long commutes are a way of life here, period.
Not everyone can afford to live that close to DC.
Typical lack of empathy. I'm glad your life is so easy. Everybody else's life is not necessarily like yours.
My son had a high school baseball game one evening west of "the city", but approaching it. I allowed 2 hours of travel time to get there. It's an 85 mile drive. I'd have been travelling in the opposite direction of rush hour traffic. I didn't get there until the 2nd inning, thanks to an accident, and the team nearly had to forfeit, due to that same accident. Had they arrived on time, I'd have missed half of the game.
Are you kidding? I don't know about D.C., but here in Southern California, I wish I could go 50 miles in an hour and a half.
I didn’t want a long commute so I took a job for less money but more quality of life. Like short a commute, ten miles from my job, 15 minute commute.
Whiners like this make me sick. Don’t like your job? Make a change like the rest of us. You are not the shiniest penny that you think you are.
Yeah, just "take a job." They're like sticks of gum at the supermarket checkout. Get whatever you want whenever you want it.
Look who’s back ….. Sparty on …. Look who’s back … look who’s back, look who’s back ….
Yeah well, the world is full of choices and not all of them fit perfectly into the entitled mindset. In fact few do. The world owes you nothing but through persistence and humility one can mine it for everything. Through intellect, humility and hard work.
Expecting it to come to you rarely works. Unless for course if you are born with a golden spoon up your ass. Which most of us aren’t.
Hey DOGE, we just found the next deadwood you can cut, and he self identified for you.
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This whole move to force people back to the office is just about traditionalism. If you can do the work from home, then you should do it. If there is no advantage to making people come into the office, then it's just bullying. The boss gets to order you to do something pointless. Aaaannnndd.....FLEX!
There are so many advantages to working from home. I work primarily from home, even when I’m sick. When you work in an office you have a tendency to show up even if you have a cold. There’s a good chance you caught it from someone who did the same thing and that you’re going to help spread it to others. I’d have to get up at least 2.5 hrs earlier and get home 1.5 hrs later, leaving barely any time to make dinner and relax a bit before having to go to bed early because of getting up so early. Anyone who thinks that’s a recipe for efficient employees probably is like Trump in that they have never had to actually work themselves.
The employer decides where the employee will work, when the employee will work and on what the employee will work - seems simple enough.
An employee (anywhere) should be and is free to choose whether to continue to work for an employer
An employer should do what he/she thinks is best for the organization and an employee should do what he/she thinks is best for the employee and his/her family.
Are you not in favor of any protections for employees, or employers?
It’s weird that anyone thinks it’s possible to work from home without actually working. Employers keep tight tabs on remote workers and would immediately know if someone wasn’t hitting quotas and milestones. I bust my ass every working hour of the day. Trump is a complete moron for thinking remote workers are out on the golf course. He’s just envisioning what a lazy, entitled piece of shit like himself would do if someone ever made the mistake of hiring him.
As usual, his accusations are confessions.
Didn't he once say that if he were POTUS, he'd be too busy to golf? Now we get to pay for his golf trips while he dishonestly gloats about getting rid of wasteful spending.
Your question makes no sense
Having to work in the office of the employer that hired you is not some great misdeed against an employee
Should the employee not want to work under the new requirement they should seek employment elsewhere.
Unless of course their employment contract guarantees that under no circumstance and at no time would he/she be required to actually work in the office of the employer.
Work in the office or move on - easy and simple choice.
This employee is a lot better off than the many fedral employees that have been terminated.