Nobody wants to work anymore

[arewethereyet]

A lot of businesses who were dead set against remote working suddenly embraced it in a big way around here.

There's more and more traffic as more people are returning to offices but there's still a lot of employment ads for remote workers.

My SO worked from here at the house for the first couple months... She has sunce gone back to the office - but she is the only one there 99 % of the time and doesn' t have to physically interact with anyone...

We have embraced our hermitage.....

I have been working from home since last June when I got this gig.  

One trip a week to the office to pick up checks and other paperwork and supplies, but I am in and out in under an hour.

Usually I see one person when I'm there and we both have received our vaccines and his office is large enough that it's no problem to stay six feet apart.  I have my mask with me in the off chance someone else comes in.

[Crossless2.0]

A lot of businesses who were dead set against remote working suddenly embraced it in a big way around here.

There's more and more traffic as more people are returning to offices but there's still a lot of employment ads for remote workers.

My SO worked from here at the house for the first couple months... She has sunce gone back to the office - but she is the only one there 99 % of the time and doesn' t have to physically interact with anyone...

We have embraced our hermitage.....

You embraced your hermitage? I positively fucking reveled in it.

To no one's surprise -- except, apparently, my boss's -- our office was, if anything, more focused and on-the-ball working remotely than we usually were while sitting stupefied at the office day after day. People were taking care of business, yes, but also themselves, their families, their homes. Hobbies were explored, exercise regimens were taken up, shit got done. People were happy.

Now we're back in the office full time, and a palpable funk has fallen over everyone. I suspect the only reason is that my employer owns the  building and wants to "get his money's worth". If they leased, I doubt we would have returned to the office full time, and we would still have a more flexible approach to work.

[Drich]

Unless you have a really good reason to quit a job you aren’t going to get unemployment. Try again.

CO-VID.. how's that? You know this time last year 1/3 of the work force was laid off and have not been working since. the excuse was the shops were closed... now the truth comes out they are making too much money to stay at home.

[Foxaèr]

[arewethereyet]

Unless you have a really good reason to quit a job you aren’t going to get unemployment. Try again.

CO-VID.. how's that? You know this time last year 1/3 of the work force was laid off and have not been working since. the excuse was the shops were closed... now the truth comes out they are making too much money to stay at home.

Quitting a job and being laid off are two different things.

As a supposed employer, you should know that.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is it.

When products are in short supply, we pay more to get them. If willing workers are in short supply, businesses will have to pay more to get them.

Henry Ford, noted capitalist, one remarked that one of the basic rules for industrialists is to pay the highest possible wage.  Love him or hate him, it seems indisputable that Ford knew how to run a successful business.

Boru

[Foxaèr]

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm glad we're all having fun, lol..but...at some point, reality has to step in - bummer.

The princely sums of 300 a week aren't keeping people people from working. No matter how hard a person believes it, no matter how much trouble they have filling their particular work order - it just isn't true...and the longer they continue to advance this fantasy rather than solve their particular recruitment issue...the longer their order will remain unfilled.

The usual hiring networks and levers were destroyed by the plague. Workers have taken other jobs after the wave of shutdowns - moved on.... or simply died. The expansion of UI benefits has produced no difference in the rate at which employees return to work nor is there any actual labor shortage in the united states produced by benefits - the correlation between benefits and labor runs in the exact opposite direction. States with more generous benefits have more employables seeking work - full stop.

Fact free politics and governance will not fill the empty position at your local deli counter. Amusingly enough, vaccination would - the one thing the same cohort that peddles this bullshit is increasingly deadset against. People really will go back to starvation wages if they don't also worry that they won't merely starve ..but die, and maybe kill a loved on their way out. It's right there, the us hasn't changed so much that you can't whip the poors into enriching you at their expense.

You just have to put in the work. You don't even have to put in any work making the job better or pay better - you just have to make the candidate feel better........ever was it thus.

Fucking....Lazy...Employers. So used to sucking the government tit with welfare wages that they don't know what to do when, as they have it, the government competes with them on the endless race to the bottom.

[no one]

I don't recall ever even remotely insinuating that I wanted to work.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's some asshole looking to hire exactly me out of a pool of me, locally, and he's probably imagining that I'm collecting too many benefits to work for his wages. Nevermind that my labor has been off the market for nearly ten years and that the last time I sought employment based on my skills..they were already paying less than I could accept. That, if I wanted to go back to making boards - I wouldn't work for them..or live here, anyway.

I realized long ago that I made more money not working for them than they could ever bring themselves to offer. In the interim, I managed to pay off my debts and my wifes debts and my late fathers debts (further reducing their leverage) and increase my wealth while my peers are - apparently, saddled under a debt they will never be able to pay off in their lifetimes. People I used to envy are homeless. Convince me, in the 20 to 45 minutes of the average interview, that I got all of this wrong and should come back hat in hand, even so?

-and why...because they're hurting. Boo hoo...you're bad at business. Not my problem. Not anyone's problem but their own.

It's rough, I know that most americans haven't fared so well in the same frame of time - to the point that we're looking to bring The Wife's parents up and build them a little cottage and provide them with a busywork job that covers their necessities ...including their tithes to fucking god...... precisely because a known producer like my father in law can't find anyone to pay him a living wage anymore. It's almost as if younger cheaper employees, even in this time of covid, who may or may not have his abilities....... have taken his job, or something..even as we all know that no one is taking any job anywhere on account of how Biden made us all maharaja by unanimous decree......................

My sainted goddamned mother, bless her sinful heart, who outright owns everything she touches, and who has no children who do not likewise own everything our eyes might fall upon - is working for minimum wage at a gas station making fries - for fun - just to see living human people. She's turned down better paying jobs - and I bet they think she's at home collecting demoncrat largesse, too. The wife is a journo from fucking kent state - who (very successfully) sells people on sub-rotten-ron-wage-jobs. At the end of the day, I grow flowers.

---

-right on cue, The Wife calls me as I type the last bit. She's going to be director of associate care in the se us for one of the largest staffing firms in the world. It's the last job she'll ever interview for - and the only reason she even got the chance is because the last guy stepped out on account of not wanting to get the plague. She's cheaper and more qualified than he was - and I like the guy, I know his kids, I make the carnitas for his staff soirees.

Covid has been windfall for my family. Why is it, again, that competent business is incapable of exploiting this moment? When the housing bubble collapsed, we grew. When the world got the plague, we profited...tell me again why these sadsack business owners are having trouble making ends meet, and...more importantly, why anyone should give a shit???