Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There are many aspects to working from home or at the office. One is simply the time wasted commuting.

Folks are returning to the office after the pandemic. They are? Are they saying they are, but not really?

One simple aspect of the question is commuting. I live in he Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. These suburbs stretch for dozens of miles to the west and south of the District of Columbia. While a few of us have offices in “the District,” most are now working from offices in Virginia. A few of us work from offices in Maryland across the Potomac River. Those commutes are just as bad as commuting into the District.

The commute is bad. One hour to work. One hour home. People are paid for eight hours work and work eleven hours. That is a 25% cut in pay.

Well, what do you want? This is America. This is chasing the American dream. This is just the way it is and just do it.

Then we had a pandemic. We worked from home over the Internet with those ZoomerTeams meetings. Get stuff done happened as we got stuff done. More or less productive? Are you kidding? The fact is, no one knows how to measure productivity for these office (and especially these government-related) jobs. Hence, claims of greater or lesser productivity are just that—claims. Nothing was measured before, during, or after the pandemic.

What was measurable and measured was the time of day. Those two hours of commute time were easy to measure. What was measurable and measured were the expense. The credit card bill showing gasoline bought at the station was easy to measure. The money spent at the lunch place at work was easy to measure.

Worried about productivity? In Washington, D.C.? Are you kidding?

This aspect of work from home is pretty simple. If employees are spending hours a day commuting, they will want to work from home most of the time.

There are other aspects of the discussion that are more complicated. More to come on those.