„Keine Frage“, dass die Rückkehr ins Büro gut für die Innenstadt sein wird, sagt die Handelskammer
https://ottawacitizen.com/public-service/return-to-office-public-servants-downtown-business
„Keine Frage“, dass die Rückkehr ins Büro gut für die Innenstadt sein wird, sagt die Handelskammer
https://ottawacitizen.com/public-service/return-to-office-public-servants-downtown-business
9 Kommentare
It’s just bad for workers, families, taxpayers, the environment and – by the way – overall productivity.
I wish every worker who got screwed over by this pointless nonsense would just commit to packing a lunch from home every day forever.
I’m tired of their nonsense. 1 more day for public servants won’t make a difference. It’s time for them to adapt instead of lowering the quality of life for everyone based on their greed.
A few problems here: first, they were already at 3 days a week and businesses complained that government workers weren’t patronizing their businesses enough. Talk to anyone in the public service and you’ll learn that many of them despise businesses in Ottawa’s downtown for the perception that they’ve lobbied the government to put them back into in person work, which costs them more and is a major inconvenience. Many pack their lunches with them and don’t spend money at businesses as a result, something which I imagine won’t change much for 4 or 5 days a week.
Second, the government is laying off thousands of people – they don’t have any comments on that? Isn’t that the people they want coming to their businesses and spending money?
I would think that business owners would want a more consistent and solid consumer base for their businesses, which to me implies dense neighborhoods with lots of people who actually live there rather than people who feel they’re being forced into the neighborhood for the purpose of spending money. Not surprising that business owners don’t know what’s best for themselves though, seeing as how they tend to be wrong a lot of the time about where their customer base is coming from.
I highly encourage everyone affected to spend your dollars (if you have any left after commuting costs) outside Ottawa or Toronto.
Bring your lunches (bulk lunch prep is really handy), plan trips elsewhere, plan fancy dinners where you live.
These groups think people have endless dollars like them, and that instead of spending money on your family, you should spend it on commuting and the businesses the represent. Screw them all.
I don’t know if the benefits will be as big as they expect.
My work made the move from 3 days in office to 5 days about a year ago, since the change I’ve found myself eating out a lot less and spending less downtown. This wasn’t due to any hostility to downtown businesses, more of a psychology and budgeting thing.
Knowing I’m in all week encouraged me to meal prep more and see eating out as less of a treat and more of an ‚ah crap I forgot my lunch‘ affair. I’ve also found myself going downtown far less on evenings and weekends, I’m spending so much of my week there I’d rather go just about anywhere else on my free time.
Anecdotal, I know, but from what I’ve seen it’s not an uncommon reaction to 5 day RTO.
This is just to naturally push out retirement aged employees who after 30 years of commuting enjoyed the last 6 years working remotely and living a semi-retired life while still collecting a full paycheck.
I think people are missing the point of this. Yeah, it sucks, and that’s what they want because it incentivizes people not to stay. They would rather lose people through attrition because of shitty policies like this than have much larger mass-layoffs.
If a city’s downtown only exists to funnel in suburbanites in their cars to work on laptops in cubicles and buy overpriced coffee and lunch… then that city sucks and RTO won’t do anything to fix that.
A lot of people are saying this wont help businesses because people wont spend as much as before, situation isn’t the same as before the pandemic and etc.
And yes that is true.
However from my observations in Toronto some businesses are certainly getting a boost. The food courts in downtown Toronto in the path have been absolutely PACKED recently at lunch time. I don’t even know why so many people would line up for so long for food court meals, but they are. Personally I just wait a bit until a slightly later lunch time to avoid the crowds, but I know not everyone can do that.
Of course food courts aren’t small family businesses, mostly chains, and maybe this isn’t translating to other kinds of businesses and might not be as big as before pandemic. And this doesn’t justify sending everyone back on it’s own perhaps — there are other factors to consider.
But return to office is definitely going to help some businesses sell food at lunch. And probably other businesses too.