this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
738 points (96.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
36932 readers
875 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Arguably there is an average commute time baked into the wage already along with other expenses people have in life. I'm not sure it needs to be itemized out as its own thing.
And this also assumes an IMO flawed assumption that working from home is entirely expense-free. I have a decent work area in my home. If I didn't, that space could be used for another kid's bedroom. Or a craft room for the wife. Or a dedicated Lego room. Or a sex dungeon. Maybe some of those things can be paired up with an office easily enough, but that's my choice, not my employer's. Plus there are other day to day costs, like the electricity to run my equipment, the Internet connection I probably would have had in the 21st century but technically don't have to, heating/cooling costs... You get the idea.
Choose a house with 1 extra room, courtesy of your WFH savings.
An itemized cost paid straight by your employer will have the effect of encouraging them to waste less of your time with a commute. They might try to hire locally, might pay for moving expenses, might keep you out of rush hour traffic, might be worried about keeping you late such that now you're driving on overtime, might actually align their concerns with the planet's by reducing all the oil going literally up in flames to transport people around to do knowledge work in a cubicle.
You're not totally off-base there
When WFH is an option. Where it isn't (eg, the sandwich dude)...
I have a really hard time seeing this actually happening in practice, especially on low-level jobs. Or people who live with their family (of whom others work elsewhere). Or when you say "hire locally" I say "can't get a damn job in my field because I don't live nearby and moving would take my wife away from her job"
You brought up fast food workers in your first comment only to then make this one all about office workers, how come?
Because I'm talking about different things: paying for commute times for jobs that could be done at home, and paying for commute times in general.