105
Drive slower, work from home and ditch the tie: the world responds to Iran war energy crisis
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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How many global crises is it going to take to make the world just stop forcing in office work?
It’s clearly less energy efficient to drive all these people everywhere, and business seems to do just fine when it’s remote.
Why don’t we just restructure society around this and move on?
We’d all be so much more resilient without fossil fuels and work commuting.
It will take companies divesting themselves from their commercial real estate holdings. Shareholders don't like it when those lease/mortgage payments go to empty and unoccupied office space.
These spaces should just be turned into housing, affordable, granted to young working people. Then they can work from home at the office and nobody has to lose any money. The way we work needs to change, it’s from the Stone Age at this point.
Mostly agree. They should be sold and converted to residential. I certainly wouldn't live in a residence owned by my employer.
There's a lot of issues with that, as my city found out. Converting an office space to code-compliant, safe housing is rather difficult, from the materials used to build the thing all the way to how it's actually configured. You're running new pipe, new electrical, probably having to actively gut the floor you're working on to be compliant with housing codes and, more importantly, fire safety.
Yeah I’m not implying the employer should own it, just that the offices where people do work could become places where people live instead and then everyone skips commuting and housing prices go down with a huge inventory increase.
Ironically it is often local governments pressuring these companies to force the return.
When companies look for places to open offices, they functionally put out bids and make cities compete against each other for the best deal. They promise that they'll bring tons of high paying office jobs to whichever city gives then the most tax breaks and other benefits. These cities bend over backwards to attract these companies. Once they "win", the cities might even try to incentivize developers to build around the office, creating commercial and retail spaces for these office workers to eat and shop. Services like mechanics, lawyers, salons, gyms, daycare. While eceonmic ecosystems might be built around the idea that one of the big-4 accounting firms has an office there. Hotels spring up to accomodate business travelers visiting.
Then all of a sudden that company let's everyone work from home. All of those businesses dry up, although a lot of the demand might get redistributed to the nearby residential areas where those workers are working from now. But then, without the restriction of physical space, the company hires more and more remote workers in other countries instead. The company may be registered locally and may have their servers there, but the city already gave them tons of tax breaks. All that's left is an empty glass building that doesn't generate tax revenue, and a ghost town of extinct small businesses around it.
So the local politicians apply all the pressure they can to executives to keep employees in the office.
I don't mean to excuse any of this. The whole thing is a mountain of fragile and shortsighted decisions, and we are absolutely better off working remotely. Building communities and economies where we live, rather than where we work.
MY SO company had flexible remote work until CEO needed IT support and the WHOLE IT team bailed that day. So obviously the only solution is to force everyone back into the office instead of penalizing the team that didnt do their jobs. CEOs just look for a reason not to trust staff and idiots dont help.
I'm an essential employee who will probably always have to work in-person
I remember during COVID lockdowns with less traffic on the road my car was getting noticeably better mileage.
And I already commute at weird times when there really isn't much traffic anyway.
Nothing much else really changed about my habits, a lot of my hobbies are solo outdoors activities that are pretty social-distancing-friendly, so pretty much everything else was business as usual for me, just with less traffic.
It feels like such a no-brainer to be that any job that can be done remotely should be
This is another really good benefit of the system of if you can work from home you should. For those who can’t work from home their lives get easier too! Ambulances getting to places they need to be faster and safer!
Well there's this one old rich white man at the top of the pyramid scheme and he benefits from everyone else's detriment. So drive to the office we must!
Nevermind that he COULD sell the office building and make bank plus cutting all those immense operating costs and make all the employees love him and improve efficiency and morale and even make the shareholders giggle with glee as the profit to cost ratio jumps. Nah. What's more important is that "This is how we've always done it." so back to the mines you slobs.
That guy will lose the political power he has in the city if he didn’t have a giant office building, and if that happens none of his greedy pedophile friends will like him anymore.
Why won't anyone think about the pedophile class?! He just wants people to like him! (that, and a few million in the bank while denying minimum wage workers raises).
The problem is that even if you do convince them to eliminate office culture, many CEOs are more likely to skip straight past the "let existing domestic employees work from home for their regular salaries" and instead go to the "outsource everything to the Philippines or India for 1/5 the personnel cost" strategy.
How many global crisis is it going to take before we get rid of trump and other fascists?
Because you dont live in a democracy, you live in fascism. Is everyone still realizing this? Thats the sad part.
It's a tax you must pay. Think of all the shareholders who would go without if you didn't drive your car and buy your gas and pay too much for goods at gas stations or hit up food places because you don't have time to cook with all the running around.