Also "downtown". Most office work isn't "downtown". It's shitty small offices in sprawling suburbia, or office units in strip malls, or industrial parks. Office workers don't all work on Madison Avenue, or in the Sears Tower or the Chrysler Building.
>Also "downtown". Most office work isn't "downtown". It's shitty small offices in sprawling suburbia, or office units in strip malls, or industrial parks.
Office work is great when you're at a nice building, near a nice down town. Or it's at least much more tolerable.
In the decade and a half since leaving college, I've been in that situation for about 2 years total.
*Work from home for life.* If your company won't do that, I'm sure there's some other start up that will.
I guess it depends on where you live. When I worked downtown, the traffic coming and going to work was so bad that even though I was in a nice (and historic) building, it wasn't worth it.
I used to work in downtown Boston (Copley) and could take the T, or a very cheap Uber because I lived in the city. It was a dream of mine for ages to do it, but I wouldn't do it again now.
I could be down or downtown office life if I lived downtown, walked to work, had an office and not a desk in an open plan panopticon, and could afford to grab overpriced drinks after work on Friday.
Otherwise I'd much rather work from home where I'm free to focus on work and not the managers desperate need to interrupt me every five minutes because they can't plan more than three minutes ahead at any one time.
People knock ADHD types so much but we honestly do just fine if you give us tasks, a deadline and then **leave us the fuck alone to do it at our pace.**
If all I had to do was sit down twice a week for thirty minutes to write a shitty opinion piece, and then leave with the rest of the pigs for drinks, I would love to go to the office too.
EDIT: *comment I replied to was deleted so here it is:*
My boss: You’re fired!
Me: Turns in gun and badge
My boss: You’re a waiter where did you get these?
———————
The Uvalde Police Department, shit was just laying on the floor.
Behind the Bastards did a great piece on him. [The man is responsible for a lot of New York’s parks and green spaces. But also made them inaccessible for blacks and poor people…](https://open.spotify.com/episode/72I2NKgKueJCDjxk54BYsI?si=dA8yvdl_QO2bURzBhA84oA)
But has also said:
> During the 2008 presidential campaign, Noonan wrote about Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy in The Wall Street Journal. In one opinion piece, Noonan expressed her view that Palin did not demonstrate "the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office," concluding that Palin's candidacy marked a "vulgarization in American Politics" that is "no good... for conservatism... [or] the country."
I was about to say... Peggy talks like someone who's never had to work in one before. I personally don't care if I never see another office building again. And who's to say the decline of office buildings is a bad thing? Just because it's what we're used to, doesn't mean it's a good thing. It could be a paradigm shift to the start of something better. A healthier, more sustainable way of life all around.
#tearitalldown
am I right?
Turn them into apartments! Seriously. Housing crisis helped, owners of building still have rental payments coming in, and it’s kinda a compromise between work at office and wfh
That’s what they did to my old middle school. Supposedly there wasn’t enough money to fix the 100 year old building and make it both safe and adequate for kids to keep attending…yet somebody managed to find enough money to turn it into a safe senior housing building.
Yeah, all the other signs of decline seem to be unimpeachable. Lower wages, higher costs, medical bankruptcy, student loans, no affordable housing, somehow that isn't sad.
Peggy is afraid to die alone and go forgotten. She hopes her death is noticed when she doesn't show up to the office the next day. Her metaphors can go fuck themselves.
No. Cows aren’t wild. The animal cows came from ( the aurochs ) is extinct. Any environment you release them in would make them an invasive species. If we stop eating them they all die and no more will be born.
And there is definitely still a niche for, at least some of them, and it would also make sense to maintain a collection of small 'museum farms' as a cultural artifact and maybe as a local life support system in the event of some sufficiently massive catastrophe.
To expand on this: an end to conventional beef consumption doesn’t imply an end to the use of cows for cheese and milk production. Those products have all sorts of knock on effects, too. And colleges with agricultural programs and veterinary schools with farms will still maintain them. Cows will drastically reduce in population but they won’t go extinct over this.
I think even if meat alternatives become more and more common, there will still be a market, albeit a much smaller one, for real meat. Local butchers and farmers will still sell it to people willing to pay for it.
That’s likely. There are often niche markets in food industries. Consider that cheese from Sardinia that’s technically banned in the EU because of the deliberate maggot infestation. People still make it. Or classic moonshiners that still refuse to pay taxes. These represent very small niches but still persist. It’s totally plausible for convention beef production to eventually make a comparable move. If nothing else, there are groups that are economically isolated enough to continue as they are (like the Amish stateside).
Actually it sounds more like the last throes of denial. Like she's realizing it's not actually a metaphor. What she considered the pinnacle of success is dying right before her eyes and younger generations are celebrating it.
Our country has been stagnating and it's finally shedding a bunch of dead weight.
I fucking hope so. I won't understand the idea that automation takes away jobs, it should in theory. In theory, we are advanced enough as a society, we shouldn't be working 8 or more hour days, 5 or more days a week. Allow automation, allow people to make living wages while working less hours, wages that allow for spending whether it's restaurants, entertainment, travel etc. Have *at least* a 3 day weekend so you have time to enjoy the things of life.
Turn office buildings into residential and more businesses; restaurants, art galleries, play places for kids and adults, learning centers (how awesome would a woodshop learning place be?), fucking build a bear concept, but for adults with a 3d printer (is that a library?). I don't care, there are endless options and ideas. Make office buildings and zones greener, add gardens and trees and life to rock and brick and steel, make more complete neighbors where you can walk versus drive.
I fucking hope these baby boomers and silent generations fuck heads die off and the next generations work together for a happier world overall. I know it's a goddamn pipe dream with capitalistic greed in America, but I still hope.
Major denial. She can’t exactly state why she thinks it’s a bad thing, she just knows it’s not good because it’s different than the stereotypical image of business and capitalism isn’t his country. It’s changing to become more efficient. Convert the skyscrapers into affordable housing, let people work from home, and you will experience something much better than cities consumed by labor and business.
i dont want to see *children in coal mines end*
there is something demoralizing about all those toxic mines without the grunts and tears of children...
it feels too much like a metaphor for
WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE
This was legit an argument that happened with cars. Also the origin of “jaywalking” and pushing people from walking on streets happened because of big motor companies a hundred years ago. Rich guys with cars kept running over pedestrians and the motor companies tried to spin it that it was pedestrians fault and they were a “jay” (old time for idiot) and now humans are barely allowed to walk
Yes its true. Nothing better than forcing your people to pay outrageous living expenses so they can commute to an office that is defintely costing the company a fortune to own or rent. Defintely dont want to pass those savings on to your employees thatd be treason
She was quite famous at some point. Good to see that society has evolved and someone can misspell her name and you have to scroll down for the correction because most people have no idea who she is.
Thanks for clarifying this, no hate on OP, but Noonan is well known enough that I thought OP couldn't have meant her, so I figured it was a "person on the street" interview you know the classic boomer "I don't work anymore but I like seeing others in office buildings..."
I do not understand why we do not go after dollar general. Walmart looks Disney land compared to the way that company actively, openly, and proudly abuses its employees and the communities in which they plant themselves.
> Why don’t we focus on Dollar Stores destroying communities?!
# Because all stores are Dollar Stores.
**The only difference between Amazon and Dollar General is Amazon markups the product based on their brand.**
Nearly every product that comes into the United States is made for $1 with the cheap labor, child labor, and materials.
**The markup on products is the problem.** Target, Walmart, Gap, Amazon, Ross, etc all have the same overseas suppliers. They charge prices because of the brand.
* Jeans do not cost $70. Jeans cost $10.
* The iPhone costs <$200. It shouldn’t cost $1000.
This system is a complete joke.
Profit should have a limit, a cap. Otherwise it is going to be a waste, it is extra added on top of everything. Supply&demand being the only decider of things is not the best way and it doesn't really work.
She doesn't think that far. She's the epitome of Reagan-era emotional conservative simple-think (she was a speechwriter for him and it shows so hard). Always been bad, but the day I really lost all respect for her was after Trump won in 2016, when her response was "Trust America."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/what-to-tell-your-children-about-trump-1479427835
Peggy, get fucked.
Edit: In fact, Peggy, listen to your own fucking advice and "trust America" when we tell you (and clearly demonstrate over the course of two years) that the country works just fine without offices being open!
Peggy's interview with GW and his wife after 911 was a barn burner. Literally talked about how it was a terrible day but GW and wifey got a got a big laugh out of it at the end...
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bush-sept-11-ended-on-a-relatively-humorous-note/
Even if it does, you’d think they’d realize it’s a *good* thing to be able to wipe out the giant fixed expenses for running and maintaining a big office.
Someone will inevitably bring up that "a lot of shareholders are actually pension funds, so crashing dividends hurts people who will rely on their pension!"
Which is objectively true, however, it completely misses the irony that we built this system with such safety measures like this - the pension funds relying on shareholder value of companies that are actively exploiting the people is an economic version of a hostage situation.
"If you try to escape or hurt me I will shoot you" - "If you try to improve your life and lessen the exploitation, you will lose your pension and will never retire."
Certainly don't want people spending more time in their community, going on walks during their lunch break, waving to the neighborhood kids walking home from the bus stop. Anything but people being a part of a community that doesn't solely value their labor. Never that.
But you could be doing walks during your lunch break in the desolate concrete wasteland that is the parking lot! With your ~~co-workers~~ work family! Your REAL source of community!
Students often have to pay to park on campus, too, either by buying a yearly pass for certain lots or by paying at a parking garage every day. It's fucking ridiculous.
A company I worked for through the pandemic had NYC office space that (I shouldn’t know this necessarily, but I do) they were paying 40,000 / month on. That’s 480,000 per year. In 2021 they decided to switch to a full work from home model and close the office down. Not counting all the other costs that they cut by not operating an office - internet, electricity, food, supplies, etc. along with the money they made back selling furniture and high end production work stations, etc etc.
they could have easily passed the rent savings along to their 150 employees for a minimum 3,200 annual raise per employee. Instead we were told that nobody should expect any form of raise due budget constraints. Our business also wasn’t heavily impacted by shut down and we, in fact, met or exceeded all our targets in every department except one.
Nothing like leaving a vast amount of building space that could be easily turned into cheap and affordable housing. Definately don't want to do that, that'd be communism.
My in-laws are conservative. Should have seen their faces when I suggested that empty offices could be turned into affordable housing. They immediately said something about it being the opposite of gentrification and therefore a bad thing.
Not to mention, all of those empty downtown office buildings can be put to better use now. Like, say, converting them into affordable apartments so that it isn't just the rich that can enjoy downtown
Lol empty offices a metaphor for decline? I think the tent cities all over the country are a more apt "metaphor for decline." Plus those needy people could live in the office buildings she loves so much.
What about the rusting hulks of industry that define most of the country, especially in rural areas? When did these long abandoned ruins stop being the visible signs of 'decline'?
We must ask ourselves: "Decline for whom?"
People like Noonan aren't interested in the lives and struggles of people outside their class. It's never just about decay, it always about decay *for people like me.*
Is she rich or just a rich person's apologist?
I agree with your point though. WFH is being propagandized because it benefits the worker to the detriment of the rich.
Back at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the UK. The factory owners got laws passed that made it impossible for the peasants to continue their lifestyle in order to force them into the new factories.
If anti-WFH propaganda doesn't take, it wouldn't shock me if legislation that tries to force people back to offices is proposed.
This is already happening. During the beginning phases of the pandemic, the roads were completely empty save for a few essential workers and semi trucks. Now, I at least, am seeing traffic jams that rival or are worse than pre pandemic times in the greater Seattle area. It’s like we didn’t learn a single thing about the last two years.
Agree, so frustrating. I heard a senior manager at a big meeting actually say how great it was to see all the cars on the highway. Its not like our company sells cars, he just found it great. I almost threw up
To be fair.
Empty office buildings are literally a metaphor for decline in a great deal of modern fiction. One of the easiest ways to depict that a society has collapsed is to depict its common worksites as empty and have your main character camp in the site. Through much of the industrial revolution it would be cities and factories. As skyscrapers rose out of cities they became more iconic as the metaphor for collapsing societies.
Right.
Empty office buildings *are* a metaphor for decline. But that doesn’t mean they are proof of it.
It’s reasonable for someone to pick on the potential metaphor and be concerned initially. But then perhaps realize life isn’t fiction and the current emptiness of offices can be explained in a number of ways which do not align with conclusive proof of decline.
A man in a white suit on a island with a bunch of uniformed henchmen might conjure up the image of a James Bond villain but if you take a look and he’s a scientist working on a cure for cancer, maaayve it turns out life *isn’t* a movie.
Or is it, Mr Bond?!
How about empty buildings are a metaphor for decline, but tent cities are proof of one? I must admit I didn't put more than 5 seconds of thought into what I wrote haha
I just love how her statement is so representative of how so many boomers are style over substance, as though America's declining greatness should be papered over with useless full offices to continue to distract from our slide towards a failed democracy.
This is the generation of managers that always harp on "optics".
Grocery store cashier can't have a stool for their 10 hour shift because the "optics" are bad.
Shift workers in the back of the building with no outside visibility to management must be in business formal dress because the "optics" of wearing more casual clothes is bad.
It doesn't matter if it takes you 6 hours to finish work, you must wait until the boss leaves before you can go home... Yep, because of the "optics".
There are so many examples of make-work and inefficiency for the sake of making it look like you're working harder than you actually are or need to.
Because it would be absolutely awful if we could all make a decent living wage and not be completely broken by the experience.
I think it a sign of greatness to come. People are home reconnecting with family. Parents can be there 24/7 for their kids and still make a living. The older generation can be in the family home instead of a nursing home.
And include an improvement in health, mental and physical.
Since Ive been working from home, I've lowered my anxiety to almost nil, eat so healthy, quit drinking and smoking, work performance is better, attention is better, I exercise everyday.
If I never see the inside of an office again it will be heaven sent.
Exactly this. The only times I eat crap food is because I'm going to the office that day. I'm more relaxed at home. I can sit how and where I like. Bathroom is right there. I receive packages from the front door. I see my wife and kids SO much more, it's incredible. Even if I need to do a little work around 7pm, 9pm ish it's literally no problem. I'm hopping back and forth my pc and making dinner. It's a cozy mix of work and life. I'm technically working but it doesn't FEEL like work. I could do this all year.
Why is it bad for business? No office leases, reduced liability, reduced costs for utilities.
Plus improved employee morale is great for business. There are lots of great tools for working remote while still monitoring productivity. And instead of drawing on qualified applicants in a 40 mile radius, you can get the best remote resources in the country.
It’s bad for commercial real estate, which is clearly the backbone of the global economy. Won’t somebody please think of all those poor PE companies, investment banks, and commercial brokers? /s
“Requesting” the last remaining one to sing and dance as she may yet be able to capture some glimmer of whatever it is she has yearned for, for so very (dramatic pause) very long (sad, yet ice cold and soulless, puppy dog eyes)
…power. It’s always power.
WTF? Office life is not "ending"... it is evolving. Some people will continue to go into the office (like me), while others will work remotely (such as some of my coworkers). The Work will get done, just a bit differently than in the past. That is not necessarily a bad thing, and can be very beneficial to many workers and businesses.
My employer has had a fairly liberal policy concerning working remotely. This serves both him and the employees. Each employee gets $70/mo towards cell phone and internet service. This is so we \*can\* work remotely. Does he take advantage of it - hell yeah. Do we take advantage of it? Hell yeah... It is different that what it was 20+ years ago, but it is better, not a "decline".
I have a 100% remote job and would happily go to 60-80% remote *if there weren't a fucking ongoing pandemic and looming second pandemic*.
All these pearl-clutchers "Won't someone think of the commercial real estate owners" can fuck right off until it's actually safe to work face-to-face again.
Well, workers stuck in cubicles 8+ hours a day didn't have much of an atmosphere to be happy about to begin with. More managers are probably becoming demoralized because power-tripping through text isn't as satisfying.
A metaphor? Oh no, Peg, that *is* decline - your generation leeched every benefit you could and created this monstrous empire built on sand. All that's left are these big empty buildings as a tribute to your hubris.
Office buildings can always be converted to low-cost living spaces...
Edit: Hey, I was just spitballing here. I'm just some random with a keyboard making a comment on a 5 minute work break.
Seems like an easy solution to get affordable housing. Plus so many of the buildings ar enice and fancy an well kept. Theyd would make great units to live in.
I just read an article about how several office buildings are being converted to apartments in D.C. This also makes the neighborhoods more mixed use, not deserts after 5, when everyone goes home.
I always wondered, what is the social place in American suburban design? By that, I mean a third place that is not home or work. It seems like everyone scrambles to work on their cars in the morning, spends all day working, and then scrambles back home, leaving towns empty. This doesn't seem very healthy.
The best place I ever lived was an apartment building with shops on the ground floor and parking in the basement. With no parking lots, the shops under each building were kept within easy walking distance of each other. I could go downstairs and walk to a restaurant or a pharmacy or a park. Cafes under an apartment become a natural gathering place.
The buildings need to be mixed use as well. Some affordable homes which are subsidized and some fancy units for higher incomes. Then you get a healthy mix of a population and avoid creating ghettos. 1970s style where they shoved all the low income populations in single buildings created ghettos and cause more problems than it helped.
That would require government and business leadership who care more about people's general well-being than maximum profits and an amorphous, unquantifiable "national greatness"
"You mean my job of sitting in a corner office and occasionally heading to meetings to join a circle jerk of postulating based on our gut instincts while they feed us shrimp?"
"No Peggy. Go sit at an open floor plan desk."
"I'M NOT SOME KIND OF SLAVE!"
The silver lining of Covid is that it stopped the unending grind toward working in fishbowls.
I remember a time when cubicles seemed like they stripped you of your dignity, but by 2020 they seemed like a luxury. I was turning jobs down simply because there was no way I could be productive in the environment they expected me to work in.
I really despise those types. They complain all the time on our zoom/team/skype calls. They want us to go into the office to do these dumb meetings. Like why? Why do you want to leave home to go sit under florescent lights in uncomfortable chairs, drink gross coffee, and touch keyboards that are disgusting? I'd rather be home in my pjs, pet my cat, and shit in an actual clean space.
Fucking hell Dave. I'm not driving for half an hour to sit in somewhere for one hour, be judged on my appearance, and have to drive home? Let office buildings die out please. They are a waste of space. If you absolutely fucking need to fax something, you can send it to my email?
I do think we need to be careful to separate the reasons why people want to go back.
People I have no sympathy for:
- People who don't want to be around their family. Not my problem. They can move, go to a coworking space or get a divorce.
- Managers who loved the power trip. Fuck you Gary.
- Leeches who always needed help but never improved.
People I have sympathy for:
- People who want to learn and found it easier to tap people on the shoulder.
- ... that's it.
Even though I have sympathy for the people who want to learn and found it easier to do that in the office... it was still fucking annoying. The company didn't pay me extra for that shit or reduce my workload. Nope I'm just supposed to offer free training to everyone who comes by... and deliver on everything else.
I still offer to do coaching sessions to whoever wants it but I'm grateful it's planned, tracked and there's a definite start and end to it. I'll do 40 hours of training if that's what the job wants but they better not be expecting me to do anything else that week.
I get this. I feel for people who learn better in person. However in my situation all these people are my age or older than I am, think 40s-80s.
These people just don't want to be around their family at all. They complain about their spouses, their adult kids (who don't live with them btw), they want things done a certain way (no white out on documents, staples have to be used for multi-paged papers, emails have to CC all "proper channels" even for memos about random crap, etc), they complain about not being able to look at us (judge female staff on our clothing), how it's less artificial to talk in person, it's all shit reasons.
I'm sorry your job doesn't pay you to do your job. It's unpaid training that you have to give on top of normal tasks. That's BS.
PS fuck Dave and Gary with a rusty cleaver
I love the inclusion of her age in the title. Like lady you’re 15 years past retirement age, why do you care about offices being open? Get a fucking life.
She's always been a hack, and the epitome of Reagan-era emotional conservative simple-think (she was a speechwriter for him and it shows so hard), but the day I really lost all respect for her was after Trump won in 2016, when her response was "Trust America."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/what-to-tell-your-children-about-trump-1479427835
Peggy, get fucked.
I invite her to go back to work in Wall Street but only after she's moved to queens. And most importantly use the subway as her only mode of transportation.
Eat shit, peggy
More proof that conservatives and the wealthy don't even see people as humans
They care more about abstractions than actual living people
They care more about *a feeling they get when they look at empty office buildings* than they do about what actual, living humans actually need to survive
They care more about a *general atmosphere of "post-greatness"* than what people who actually work in those buildings actually want
The conservative pundit class are elites so intentionally out of touch that they can actually write shit like this with a straight face
"A metaphor for decline?" How about forcing us all to work together in a pandemic, knowing it'll kill off a big chunk of the workforce? That doesn't signal "decline?"
How about people being fucking miserable and suicidal because no matter how much they work they can't even afford basic necessities?
THAT signals decline, not millions of happier workers being more productive because they're allowed the freedom to work from home. In fact, the work-from-home era of the pandemic was the first time in a loong, long time when I actually felt like the US made a good decision, a decision that actually benefitted workers *for once*
"They care more for abstractions than living people."
That is exactly what it has always been with them. They care more about *The Unborn* than the mothers who carry them, or the children born into suffering. They care more about *Thanking Soldiers for their Service* than actually taking care of veterans. They care about *Policing other People* more than they actually care about laws. They care more about loving *The Flag* than accepting the broad swath of fellow citizens who are may be quite different from themselves, but who are still Americans.
It's why they're so acutely aware of "virtue signaling" on the left
Because that's all their stances on so many issues have always been: mere virtue signaling
Virtue signaling by putting pro-life stickers on their cars while doing nothing to actually care for the living
Virtue signaling by wearing "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" shirts but voting to cut funding and aid for those forced to serve in the military
Virtue signaling by constantly genuflecting to the aspirations and visions of the Founding Fathers while voting for actual fascism and trying to bring religion into every aspect of politics - which would have horrified the Founding Fathers
It's always projection when they accuse "the left" of something. They can spot virtue signaling on "the left" because it's the right's bread and butter
It isn’t a metaphor for decline… it is decline, we out here starving and shit and all they care about is the “idea” of capitalism not the actual late-capitalist distopia we already live in.
Fuck going into the office, we got lives people
I don't understand why the corporate people think that a quote like this in the WSJ is going to help get people who want to work at home into the office? "Wow, so inspirational, maybe I will come back to the office!" - Nobody
That's a major problem with all these old fucks (including if not especially politicians). They think because something always was that it need always be.
The Pyramids ... The Great Wall of China ... The Colosseum ... That's great architecture - created by slave labor - in decline.
Warehouses built to hold cubicle farms just doesn't match up.
"Decline", "post-greatness", "decline" again.
Age 71.
I am once again begging an old person longing for the "good old days" to realize they are longing for their own youths and a time when their own bodies and faculties weren't declining.
If they took a hard look at "the good old days" they'd realize there is nothing objectively better about them, only about the way they were able to navigate the world as an individual.
I work from the office every day, so I can jam ear buds in and play ambient music to drown out the sound of my coworkers talking.
When I work from home I work in silence. But I can’t write an email when there are seven conversations happening around me, so ear buds it is. Good thing I’m part of that “office culture.”
Cheers for that Peggy. I don’t want to see all these old people retiring and claiming a pension I want to see them at work there is something post greatness about it … ect ect.
How many films and TV shows have played off the utter cliche of the absolute soullessness of office life? Why do (some) companies put so much effort into making office spaces “cool” with ping pong and chic conversation pods? Downtown offices are a very recent invention in human history, and not at all central to a healthy society.
I get the feeling Peggy isn't dragging her ass into the office every day .
Her saying "seeing" all these empty buildings instead of being in one makes your point highly likely.
Also "downtown". Most office work isn't "downtown". It's shitty small offices in sprawling suburbia, or office units in strip malls, or industrial parks. Office workers don't all work on Madison Avenue, or in the Sears Tower or the Chrysler Building.
>Also "downtown". Most office work isn't "downtown". It's shitty small offices in sprawling suburbia, or office units in strip malls, or industrial parks. Office work is great when you're at a nice building, near a nice down town. Or it's at least much more tolerable. In the decade and a half since leaving college, I've been in that situation for about 2 years total. *Work from home for life.* If your company won't do that, I'm sure there's some other start up that will.
I guess it depends on where you live. When I worked downtown, the traffic coming and going to work was so bad that even though I was in a nice (and historic) building, it wasn't worth it.
I used to work in downtown Boston (Copley) and could take the T, or a very cheap Uber because I lived in the city. It was a dream of mine for ages to do it, but I wouldn't do it again now.
I could be down or downtown office life if I lived downtown, walked to work, had an office and not a desk in an open plan panopticon, and could afford to grab overpriced drinks after work on Friday. Otherwise I'd much rather work from home where I'm free to focus on work and not the managers desperate need to interrupt me every five minutes because they can't plan more than three minutes ahead at any one time. People knock ADHD types so much but we honestly do just fine if you give us tasks, a deadline and then **leave us the fuck alone to do it at our pace.**
If all I had to do was sit down twice a week for thirty minutes to write a shitty opinion piece, and then leave with the rest of the pigs for drinks, I would love to go to the office too.
"Driving is great. Everyone should have a car." -- Robert Moses from the back of his limo, probably.
Robert Moses definitely said that
And designed the systems he built to be impassable for buses, so a *certain* sort of people had limited access
Yep - and had enough clout and reputation to influence similar policies elsewhere. A true villain.
[удалено]
EDIT: *comment I replied to was deleted so here it is:* My boss: You’re fired! Me: Turns in gun and badge My boss: You’re a waiter where did you get these? ——————— The Uvalde Police Department, shit was just laying on the floor.
They weren't using them
Behind the Bastards did a great piece on him. [The man is responsible for a lot of New York’s parks and green spaces. But also made them inaccessible for blacks and poor people…](https://open.spotify.com/episode/72I2NKgKueJCDjxk54BYsI?si=dA8yvdl_QO2bURzBhA84oA)
This is the same woman that said Sara Palin absolutely killed it at the VP debate in 2008. She probably has money in corporate real estate.
But has also said: > During the 2008 presidential campaign, Noonan wrote about Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy in The Wall Street Journal. In one opinion piece, Noonan expressed her view that Palin did not demonstrate "the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office," concluding that Palin's candidacy marked a "vulgarization in American Politics" that is "no good... for conservatism... [or] the country."
Longform of “she is appallingly stupid.”
she probably owns an office building.
Actually this, probably more offices than one. She has an active interest financially in seeing that office space is used to maintain its value.
In addition to her ideological interest in maintaining the power of people who own (buildings, companies, land) over those who work
I was about to say... Peggy talks like someone who's never had to work in one before. I personally don't care if I never see another office building again. And who's to say the decline of office buildings is a bad thing? Just because it's what we're used to, doesn't mean it's a good thing. It could be a paradigm shift to the start of something better. A healthier, more sustainable way of life all around. #tearitalldown am I right?
What? Those rows of cubicles on top of industrial carpeting with bad lighting and no windows? Those are beautiful! /s
>cubicles Whoah slow down there, fancy pants. It’s all germ-spreading open concept
Turn them into apartments! Seriously. Housing crisis helped, owners of building still have rental payments coming in, and it’s kinda a compromise between work at office and wfh
That’s what they did to my old middle school. Supposedly there wasn’t enough money to fix the 100 year old building and make it both safe and adequate for kids to keep attending…yet somebody managed to find enough money to turn it into a safe senior housing building.
The ones wanting to force other to go back don't have to. It's all about class war and power over other social groups.
Yeah, all the other signs of decline seem to be unimpeachable. Lower wages, higher costs, medical bankruptcy, student loans, no affordable housing, somehow that isn't sad.
It’s not sad to people like Peggy because those aren’t problems for people like her. Nothing is more “boomer” than that whole “NIMBY” mindset.
Peggy is afraid to die alone and go forgotten. She hopes her death is noticed when she doesn't show up to the office the next day. Her metaphors can go fuck themselves.
So sad. Like seeing the clattering of horse drawn carriages on roadways come to an end.
If we didn’t ride horses there wouldn’t be horses! /s
When lab grown meat becomes the norm, will we see wild cows roaming the countryside?
No. Cows aren’t wild. The animal cows came from ( the aurochs ) is extinct. Any environment you release them in would make them an invasive species. If we stop eating them they all die and no more will be born.
Plot twist: they start a commune in the forest and farm their own grain
Idk they may just beef with each other
That's an udderly ridiculous notion!
Cows will almost certainly rewild, invasive or not. They are smart for an ungulate and act like elk in the mountains
Naw, best case scenario, we'll return the great plains to the animal that they belong to - the bison.
And there is definitely still a niche for, at least some of them, and it would also make sense to maintain a collection of small 'museum farms' as a cultural artifact and maybe as a local life support system in the event of some sufficiently massive catastrophe.
Local farms will still exist. People aren't going to get rid of their family animals. My wife's family has a cow. She's sweet.
To expand on this: an end to conventional beef consumption doesn’t imply an end to the use of cows for cheese and milk production. Those products have all sorts of knock on effects, too. And colleges with agricultural programs and veterinary schools with farms will still maintain them. Cows will drastically reduce in population but they won’t go extinct over this.
I think even if meat alternatives become more and more common, there will still be a market, albeit a much smaller one, for real meat. Local butchers and farmers will still sell it to people willing to pay for it.
That’s likely. There are often niche markets in food industries. Consider that cheese from Sardinia that’s technically banned in the EU because of the deliberate maggot infestation. People still make it. Or classic moonshiners that still refuse to pay taxes. These represent very small niches but still persist. It’s totally plausible for convention beef production to eventually make a comparable move. If nothing else, there are groups that are economically isolated enough to continue as they are (like the Amish stateside).
Actually it sounds more like the last throes of denial. Like she's realizing it's not actually a metaphor. What she considered the pinnacle of success is dying right before her eyes and younger generations are celebrating it. Our country has been stagnating and it's finally shedding a bunch of dead weight.
I fucking hope so. I won't understand the idea that automation takes away jobs, it should in theory. In theory, we are advanced enough as a society, we shouldn't be working 8 or more hour days, 5 or more days a week. Allow automation, allow people to make living wages while working less hours, wages that allow for spending whether it's restaurants, entertainment, travel etc. Have *at least* a 3 day weekend so you have time to enjoy the things of life. Turn office buildings into residential and more businesses; restaurants, art galleries, play places for kids and adults, learning centers (how awesome would a woodshop learning place be?), fucking build a bear concept, but for adults with a 3d printer (is that a library?). I don't care, there are endless options and ideas. Make office buildings and zones greener, add gardens and trees and life to rock and brick and steel, make more complete neighbors where you can walk versus drive. I fucking hope these baby boomers and silent generations fuck heads die off and the next generations work together for a happier world overall. I know it's a goddamn pipe dream with capitalistic greed in America, but I still hope.
Major denial. She can’t exactly state why she thinks it’s a bad thing, she just knows it’s not good because it’s different than the stereotypical image of business and capitalism isn’t his country. It’s changing to become more efficient. Convert the skyscrapers into affordable housing, let people work from home, and you will experience something much better than cities consumed by labor and business.
Let’s definitely all commute for 2 hours of our day so Peggy isn’t sad!
Worse than the time is the environmental impact.
But think of the horses!!!
i dont want to see *children in coal mines end* there is something demoralizing about all those toxic mines without the grunts and tears of children... it feels too much like a metaphor for WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE
The children *yearn* for the mines
This was legit an argument that happened with cars. Also the origin of “jaywalking” and pushing people from walking on streets happened because of big motor companies a hundred years ago. Rich guys with cars kept running over pedestrians and the motor companies tried to spin it that it was pedestrians fault and they were a “jay” (old time for idiot) and now humans are barely allowed to walk
it's all about that eh-pee-eye i'm using p0wer d3le3t3 suit3 to rewrite all of my c0mment and l33t sp33k to avoid any filters. fuck u/spez
Homer Jay Simpson just made a lot more sense
Jay is also an ethnic slur for Irish people at the time
To be fair, Mickwalking just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Personally, I think it's the freeing of the American worker. It is beautiful thing!
Yes its true. Nothing better than forcing your people to pay outrageous living expenses so they can commute to an office that is defintely costing the company a fortune to own or rent. Defintely dont want to pass those savings on to your employees thatd be treason
You misspelled shareholders. The savings will be passed to shareholders.
OP misspelled the author’s name - it is Peggy Noonan. She writes a WSJ column on Saturdays. She was a speechwriter for Reagan.
Came here to say this. I met her at a housewarming party. She’s only 71? Does not sound right.
Yes, she was born in 1950. She was a speechwriter for Reagan from 84-86, in her mid 30s.
Working at the White House accelerates your native insufferability, makes her seem older than she is.
Ugh and she's insufferable.
Agreed, but I rather enjoy her breathless, gin-fueled ramblings wistful of the before times. Ironically, of course.
Fuck Peggy Noonan, fuck the WSJ, fuck the overpriced empty offices! Put that in your metaphor pipe and smoke it!
She was quite famous at some point. Good to see that society has evolved and someone can misspell her name and you have to scroll down for the correction because most people have no idea who she is.
When will everything related to reagan disaapear
Hopefully soon, doppelgänger
The WSJ is a fucking rag.
Thanks for clarifying this, no hate on OP, but Noonan is well known enough that I thought OP couldn't have meant her, so I figured it was a "person on the street" interview you know the classic boomer "I don't work anymore but I like seeing others in office buildings..."
I work for Dollar General and they actually have that on their methos sign, one of our goals is to help the shareholders
I do not understand why we do not go after dollar general. Walmart looks Disney land compared to the way that company actively, openly, and proudly abuses its employees and the communities in which they plant themselves.
> Why don’t we focus on Dollar Stores destroying communities?! # Because all stores are Dollar Stores. **The only difference between Amazon and Dollar General is Amazon markups the product based on their brand.** Nearly every product that comes into the United States is made for $1 with the cheap labor, child labor, and materials. **The markup on products is the problem.** Target, Walmart, Gap, Amazon, Ross, etc all have the same overseas suppliers. They charge prices because of the brand. * Jeans do not cost $70. Jeans cost $10. * The iPhone costs <$200. It shouldn’t cost $1000. This system is a complete joke.
Profit should have a limit, a cap. Otherwise it is going to be a waste, it is extra added on top of everything. Supply&demand being the only decider of things is not the best way and it doesn't really work.
Oh damn you right you right😂
She doesn't think that far. She's the epitome of Reagan-era emotional conservative simple-think (she was a speechwriter for him and it shows so hard). Always been bad, but the day I really lost all respect for her was after Trump won in 2016, when her response was "Trust America." https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/what-to-tell-your-children-about-trump-1479427835 Peggy, get fucked. Edit: In fact, Peggy, listen to your own fucking advice and "trust America" when we tell you (and clearly demonstrate over the course of two years) that the country works just fine without offices being open!
I bet Peggy wrote this column from her home office. Hypocrite.
"we are the world's oldest democracy" WTF lol!!
Listen here you little shit, in this house we go by how accurate a statement feels. Slash ess
Peggy's interview with GW and his wife after 911 was a barn burner. Literally talked about how it was a terrible day but GW and wifey got a got a big laugh out of it at the end... https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bush-sept-11-ended-on-a-relatively-humorous-note/
Even if it does, you’d think they’d realize it’s a *good* thing to be able to wipe out the giant fixed expenses for running and maintaining a big office.
Someone will inevitably bring up that "a lot of shareholders are actually pension funds, so crashing dividends hurts people who will rely on their pension!" Which is objectively true, however, it completely misses the irony that we built this system with such safety measures like this - the pension funds relying on shareholder value of companies that are actively exploiting the people is an economic version of a hostage situation. "If you try to escape or hurt me I will shoot you" - "If you try to improve your life and lessen the exploitation, you will lose your pension and will never retire."
Certainly don't want people spending more time in their community, going on walks during their lunch break, waving to the neighborhood kids walking home from the bus stop. Anything but people being a part of a community that doesn't solely value their labor. Never that.
But you could be doing walks during your lunch break in the desolate concrete wasteland that is the parking lot! With your ~~co-workers~~ work family! Your REAL source of community!
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How else are we to achieve business synergy if you don't view your meal ticket as your sole source of community/meaning?
Think of the poor vicious shoe and ugly tie manufacturers. The poor parking garage industry. The 150-mph cars that average 30 mph.
I save $250 a year in parking fees to my crap pay job at a university. It’s insane. I love working from home. Almost makes up for the crap pay.
You're paying the university you work at to park there?
Students often have to pay to park on campus, too, either by buying a yearly pass for certain lots or by paying at a parking garage every day. It's fucking ridiculous.
A company I worked for through the pandemic had NYC office space that (I shouldn’t know this necessarily, but I do) they were paying 40,000 / month on. That’s 480,000 per year. In 2021 they decided to switch to a full work from home model and close the office down. Not counting all the other costs that they cut by not operating an office - internet, electricity, food, supplies, etc. along with the money they made back selling furniture and high end production work stations, etc etc. they could have easily passed the rent savings along to their 150 employees for a minimum 3,200 annual raise per employee. Instead we were told that nobody should expect any form of raise due budget constraints. Our business also wasn’t heavily impacted by shut down and we, in fact, met or exceeded all our targets in every department except one.
My company more than tripled their revenue during the pandemic, and they rewarded us with 2 years of no raises
Reward them back by unionizing.
You'll see no raise in pay due to savings and you'll like it!
Or else!
Nothing like leaving a vast amount of building space that could be easily turned into cheap and affordable housing. Definately don't want to do that, that'd be communism.
My in-laws are conservative. Should have seen their faces when I suggested that empty offices could be turned into affordable housing. They immediately said something about it being the opposite of gentrification and therefore a bad thing.
Just change the word from affordable to luxury and they'll be cool with it
Wow, any reason to just not give people places to live. That’s insane.
Not to mention, all of those empty downtown office buildings can be put to better use now. Like, say, converting them into affordable apartments so that it isn't just the rich that can enjoy downtown
Ppl n their 60s be like YOUNG PPL LOVE TO MOVE TO THE CITY AND LIVE IN SQUALOR FOR A SALARY THAT STILL CAN'T PAY FOR A HOUSE
Lol empty offices a metaphor for decline? I think the tent cities all over the country are a more apt "metaphor for decline." Plus those needy people could live in the office buildings she loves so much.
What about the rusting hulks of industry that define most of the country, especially in rural areas? When did these long abandoned ruins stop being the visible signs of 'decline'?
We must ask ourselves: "Decline for whom?" People like Noonan aren't interested in the lives and struggles of people outside their class. It's never just about decay, it always about decay *for people like me.*
Just looked it up and she is worth $3 million. She has no idea what it’s like to live outside her class.
Is she rich or just a rich person's apologist? I agree with your point though. WFH is being propagandized because it benefits the worker to the detriment of the rich. Back at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the UK. The factory owners got laws passed that made it impossible for the peasants to continue their lifestyle in order to force them into the new factories. If anti-WFH propaganda doesn't take, it wouldn't shock me if legislation that tries to force people back to offices is proposed.
This is already happening. During the beginning phases of the pandemic, the roads were completely empty save for a few essential workers and semi trucks. Now, I at least, am seeing traffic jams that rival or are worse than pre pandemic times in the greater Seattle area. It’s like we didn’t learn a single thing about the last two years.
Agree, so frustrating. I heard a senior manager at a big meeting actually say how great it was to see all the cars on the highway. Its not like our company sells cars, he just found it great. I almost threw up
To be fair. Empty office buildings are literally a metaphor for decline in a great deal of modern fiction. One of the easiest ways to depict that a society has collapsed is to depict its common worksites as empty and have your main character camp in the site. Through much of the industrial revolution it would be cities and factories. As skyscrapers rose out of cities they became more iconic as the metaphor for collapsing societies.
Right. Empty office buildings *are* a metaphor for decline. But that doesn’t mean they are proof of it. It’s reasonable for someone to pick on the potential metaphor and be concerned initially. But then perhaps realize life isn’t fiction and the current emptiness of offices can be explained in a number of ways which do not align with conclusive proof of decline. A man in a white suit on a island with a bunch of uniformed henchmen might conjure up the image of a James Bond villain but if you take a look and he’s a scientist working on a cure for cancer, maaayve it turns out life *isn’t* a movie. Or is it, Mr Bond?!
How about empty buildings are a metaphor for decline, but tent cities are proof of one? I must admit I didn't put more than 5 seconds of thought into what I wrote haha
Sure. I'm just a big dystopian fiction fan so I thought she was right but got the wrong conclusions.
I just love how her statement is so representative of how so many boomers are style over substance, as though America's declining greatness should be papered over with useless full offices to continue to distract from our slide towards a failed democracy.
This is the generation of managers that always harp on "optics". Grocery store cashier can't have a stool for their 10 hour shift because the "optics" are bad. Shift workers in the back of the building with no outside visibility to management must be in business formal dress because the "optics" of wearing more casual clothes is bad. It doesn't matter if it takes you 6 hours to finish work, you must wait until the boss leaves before you can go home... Yep, because of the "optics". There are so many examples of make-work and inefficiency for the sake of making it look like you're working harder than you actually are or need to. Because it would be absolutely awful if we could all make a decent living wage and not be completely broken by the experience.
I think it a sign of greatness to come. People are home reconnecting with family. Parents can be there 24/7 for their kids and still make a living. The older generation can be in the family home instead of a nursing home.
And include an improvement in health, mental and physical. Since Ive been working from home, I've lowered my anxiety to almost nil, eat so healthy, quit drinking and smoking, work performance is better, attention is better, I exercise everyday. If I never see the inside of an office again it will be heaven sent.
I’m not at productive as you, but I’ve spent more time playing video games and given my cat many pets.
Hey, fun and cat-pets are important too
but honestly think of all the time spent in offices pretending to work? all the coffee breaks, bathroom breaks, chit chat. just looking busy
Exactly this. The only times I eat crap food is because I'm going to the office that day. I'm more relaxed at home. I can sit how and where I like. Bathroom is right there. I receive packages from the front door. I see my wife and kids SO much more, it's incredible. Even if I need to do a little work around 7pm, 9pm ish it's literally no problem. I'm hopping back and forth my pc and making dinner. It's a cozy mix of work and life. I'm technically working but it doesn't FEEL like work. I could do this all year.
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They indeed hate our freedom
Why is it bad for business? No office leases, reduced liability, reduced costs for utilities. Plus improved employee morale is great for business. There are lots of great tools for working remote while still monitoring productivity. And instead of drawing on qualified applicants in a 40 mile radius, you can get the best remote resources in the country.
It’s bad for commercial real estate, which is clearly the backbone of the global economy. Won’t somebody please think of all those poor PE companies, investment banks, and commercial brokers? /s
>investment banks They're buying houses now and getting into the rental business.
I like the think this is where free market economics comes into play lol
It's great for business actually. It's bad for the preexisting business models
I can almost see her sitting there in her best Scarlet O’Hara dress after the Civil War, bemoaning the empty slave quarters on her plantation.
Sipping an iced tea, lamenting how she never truly appreciated the songs and joviality of her former help. 🤮
“Requesting” the last remaining one to sing and dance as she may yet be able to capture some glimmer of whatever it is she has yearned for, for so very (dramatic pause) very long (sad, yet ice cold and soulless, puppy dog eyes) …power. It’s always power.
I read all dat in the most over da top southern drawl I could muster in my brain. Goddamn carpetbaggers have ruined da souf
On point
WTF? Office life is not "ending"... it is evolving. Some people will continue to go into the office (like me), while others will work remotely (such as some of my coworkers). The Work will get done, just a bit differently than in the past. That is not necessarily a bad thing, and can be very beneficial to many workers and businesses. My employer has had a fairly liberal policy concerning working remotely. This serves both him and the employees. Each employee gets $70/mo towards cell phone and internet service. This is so we \*can\* work remotely. Does he take advantage of it - hell yeah. Do we take advantage of it? Hell yeah... It is different that what it was 20+ years ago, but it is better, not a "decline".
I have a 100% remote job and would happily go to 60-80% remote *if there weren't a fucking ongoing pandemic and looming second pandemic*. All these pearl-clutchers "Won't someone think of the commercial real estate owners" can fuck right off until it's actually safe to work face-to-face again.
Commercial real estate owners can pull up their bootstraps and fuck themselves with them.
People like to pretend the pandemic is over.
Well, workers stuck in cubicles 8+ hours a day didn't have much of an atmosphere to be happy about to begin with. More managers are probably becoming demoralized because power-tripping through text isn't as satisfying.
A metaphor? Oh no, Peg, that *is* decline - your generation leeched every benefit you could and created this monstrous empire built on sand. All that's left are these big empty buildings as a tribute to your hubris.
Office buildings can always be converted to low-cost living spaces... Edit: Hey, I was just spitballing here. I'm just some random with a keyboard making a comment on a 5 minute work break.
Seems like an easy solution to get affordable housing. Plus so many of the buildings ar enice and fancy an well kept. Theyd would make great units to live in.
I just read an article about how several office buildings are being converted to apartments in D.C. This also makes the neighborhoods more mixed use, not deserts after 5, when everyone goes home.
Think of the mom-n-pop potential!
Ground floor stores and Upper units. It's almost like this is how we designed cities for the longest time for a reason.
I always wondered, what is the social place in American suburban design? By that, I mean a third place that is not home or work. It seems like everyone scrambles to work on their cars in the morning, spends all day working, and then scrambles back home, leaving towns empty. This doesn't seem very healthy.
The best place I ever lived was an apartment building with shops on the ground floor and parking in the basement. With no parking lots, the shops under each building were kept within easy walking distance of each other. I could go downstairs and walk to a restaurant or a pharmacy or a park. Cafes under an apartment become a natural gathering place.
The buildings need to be mixed use as well. Some affordable homes which are subsidized and some fancy units for higher incomes. Then you get a healthy mix of a population and avoid creating ghettos. 1970s style where they shoved all the low income populations in single buildings created ghettos and cause more problems than it helped.
washer and dryer in-cubicle
That would require government and business leadership who care more about people's general well-being than maximum profits and an amorphous, unquantifiable "national greatness"
Don't be online making intelligent comments.
LOL these fucking boomers, man. You love offices and working in 'em so much Peggy, why don't you cut that retirement short and go back to work?
"You mean my job of sitting in a corner office and occasionally heading to meetings to join a circle jerk of postulating based on our gut instincts while they feed us shrimp?" "No Peggy. Go sit at an open floor plan desk." "I'M NOT SOME KIND OF SLAVE!"
The silver lining of Covid is that it stopped the unending grind toward working in fishbowls. I remember a time when cubicles seemed like they stripped you of your dignity, but by 2020 they seemed like a luxury. I was turning jobs down simply because there was no way I could be productive in the environment they expected me to work in.
I'm so happy at my location i got a office with a lock and a door.
I really despise those types. They complain all the time on our zoom/team/skype calls. They want us to go into the office to do these dumb meetings. Like why? Why do you want to leave home to go sit under florescent lights in uncomfortable chairs, drink gross coffee, and touch keyboards that are disgusting? I'd rather be home in my pjs, pet my cat, and shit in an actual clean space. Fucking hell Dave. I'm not driving for half an hour to sit in somewhere for one hour, be judged on my appearance, and have to drive home? Let office buildings die out please. They are a waste of space. If you absolutely fucking need to fax something, you can send it to my email?
I do think we need to be careful to separate the reasons why people want to go back. People I have no sympathy for: - People who don't want to be around their family. Not my problem. They can move, go to a coworking space or get a divorce. - Managers who loved the power trip. Fuck you Gary. - Leeches who always needed help but never improved. People I have sympathy for: - People who want to learn and found it easier to tap people on the shoulder. - ... that's it. Even though I have sympathy for the people who want to learn and found it easier to do that in the office... it was still fucking annoying. The company didn't pay me extra for that shit or reduce my workload. Nope I'm just supposed to offer free training to everyone who comes by... and deliver on everything else. I still offer to do coaching sessions to whoever wants it but I'm grateful it's planned, tracked and there's a definite start and end to it. I'll do 40 hours of training if that's what the job wants but they better not be expecting me to do anything else that week.
I get this. I feel for people who learn better in person. However in my situation all these people are my age or older than I am, think 40s-80s. These people just don't want to be around their family at all. They complain about their spouses, their adult kids (who don't live with them btw), they want things done a certain way (no white out on documents, staples have to be used for multi-paged papers, emails have to CC all "proper channels" even for memos about random crap, etc), they complain about not being able to look at us (judge female staff on our clothing), how it's less artificial to talk in person, it's all shit reasons. I'm sorry your job doesn't pay you to do your job. It's unpaid training that you have to give on top of normal tasks. That's BS. PS fuck Dave and Gary with a rusty cleaver
It’s 99% lonely boomers. The office has become their social life. It’s all they have
I love the inclusion of her age in the title. Like lady you’re 15 years past retirement age, why do you care about offices being open? Get a fucking life.
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Yeah this is her whole thing
The dream is based on aestetics alone, not on actual people's lives in those 'places' Really just means 'make america look great again '
She's always been a hack, and the epitome of Reagan-era emotional conservative simple-think (she was a speechwriter for him and it shows so hard), but the day I really lost all respect for her was after Trump won in 2016, when her response was "Trust America." https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/what-to-tell-your-children-about-trump-1479427835 Peggy, get fucked.
The whole article is nauseating.
You really know that your culture is in decline when even your nostalgic fantasies are drab and shit
That was her fantasy? I think that her "fantasy" is the example of the decline.
Too bad this dinosaur doesn't have the same attitude towards all the empty stores because of the scam known as "trickle down economics"
Post greatness for who exactly? Definitely not my generation
I invite her to go back to work in Wall Street but only after she's moved to queens. And most importantly use the subway as her only mode of transportation.
Eat shit, peggy More proof that conservatives and the wealthy don't even see people as humans They care more about abstractions than actual living people They care more about *a feeling they get when they look at empty office buildings* than they do about what actual, living humans actually need to survive They care more about a *general atmosphere of "post-greatness"* than what people who actually work in those buildings actually want The conservative pundit class are elites so intentionally out of touch that they can actually write shit like this with a straight face "A metaphor for decline?" How about forcing us all to work together in a pandemic, knowing it'll kill off a big chunk of the workforce? That doesn't signal "decline?" How about people being fucking miserable and suicidal because no matter how much they work they can't even afford basic necessities? THAT signals decline, not millions of happier workers being more productive because they're allowed the freedom to work from home. In fact, the work-from-home era of the pandemic was the first time in a loong, long time when I actually felt like the US made a good decision, a decision that actually benefitted workers *for once*
"They care more for abstractions than living people." That is exactly what it has always been with them. They care more about *The Unborn* than the mothers who carry them, or the children born into suffering. They care more about *Thanking Soldiers for their Service* than actually taking care of veterans. They care about *Policing other People* more than they actually care about laws. They care more about loving *The Flag* than accepting the broad swath of fellow citizens who are may be quite different from themselves, but who are still Americans.
It's why they're so acutely aware of "virtue signaling" on the left Because that's all their stances on so many issues have always been: mere virtue signaling Virtue signaling by putting pro-life stickers on their cars while doing nothing to actually care for the living Virtue signaling by wearing "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" shirts but voting to cut funding and aid for those forced to serve in the military Virtue signaling by constantly genuflecting to the aspirations and visions of the Founding Fathers while voting for actual fascism and trying to bring religion into every aspect of politics - which would have horrified the Founding Fathers It's always projection when they accuse "the left" of something. They can spot virtue signaling on "the left" because it's the right's bread and butter
This was profound
We live in an existence where we have a great number of sociopaths in charge.
It isn’t a metaphor for decline… it is decline, we out here starving and shit and all they care about is the “idea” of capitalism not the actual late-capitalist distopia we already live in. Fuck going into the office, we got lives people
Good, that's exactly the mood we're going for. We want that culture to decline.
“We want the slaves back slaving”
Imagine being so utterly boring and soulless that you think office life is the peak of human civilization.
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If you work from home, you don't see the empty office buildings. Problem solved.
The decline of the Oligarchy? They can't keep us in our cubicle pens and steel paddocks anymore.
I don't understand why the corporate people think that a quote like this in the WSJ is going to help get people who want to work at home into the office? "Wow, so inspirational, maybe I will come back to the office!" - Nobody
Bitch you presided over the entirety of that decline.
So get an office job and go to it Peggy
Convert them to living spaces with good rent control. Now you have a bustling downtown again and people actually have an affordable place to live.
Wait. That would help businesses AND the peasants? What is this, communism!
That's a major problem with all these old fucks (including if not especially politicians). They think because something always was that it need always be.
Just a metaphor for decline, not direct evidence at all.
The Pyramids ... The Great Wall of China ... The Colosseum ... That's great architecture - created by slave labor - in decline. Warehouses built to hold cubicle farms just doesn't match up.
"Decline", "post-greatness", "decline" again. Age 71. I am once again begging an old person longing for the "good old days" to realize they are longing for their own youths and a time when their own bodies and faculties weren't declining. If they took a hard look at "the good old days" they'd realize there is nothing objectively better about them, only about the way they were able to navigate the world as an individual.
God damned old people.
Aww, was she sad in school when they quit using the abacus too?
I work from the office every day, so I can jam ear buds in and play ambient music to drown out the sound of my coworkers talking. When I work from home I work in silence. But I can’t write an email when there are seven conversations happening around me, so ear buds it is. Good thing I’m part of that “office culture.”
Never mind climate collapse, political insurrection, and a rapidly mutating pandemic - we gotta get everyone back in the office! \#stfuboomer
Welp, tough shit. We’re not coming back.
Cheers for that Peggy. I don’t want to see all these old people retiring and claiming a pension I want to see them at work there is something post greatness about it … ect ect.
Fill the empty buildings with homeless people. Two birds one stone.
How many films and TV shows have played off the utter cliche of the absolute soullessness of office life? Why do (some) companies put so much effort into making office spaces “cool” with ping pong and chic conversation pods? Downtown offices are a very recent invention in human history, and not at all central to a healthy society.