Inflation Makes Returning to the Office Too Costly for Employees

Welcome back to this episode of the Alli from corporate podcast. I'm your host, Ali, and today we are going through a CNBC article about why going back to the office now is wildly more expensive than it was in 2019. Today I have my guest, my husband.

Hello. Thanks for having me back.

He's off camera, but you'll hear his voice. Think of it like voice in your mind. We are going through this article particularly because I'm hearing a lot of companies are calling their people back to the office. Aren't you?

I want to say something that might be controversial. Oh, but I think they're doing that to disguise layoffs.

Really?

I think so. I think they're saying, oh, if you. Because I just saw today that there was a tiktoker that said that they're giving, oh, you don't want to come back to the office, we'll give you a severance package. Oh, so now I'm like, they don't want you to come back. They want you to quit so they.

Don'T have to pay you. Yes, very interesting. I mean, we know so many people that have been laid off recently. And if you're not getting laid off, you're having to come back to the office and, and spend money on a ton of things. So let's go over a couple of them. So why, why is it more expensive going back to the office now?

Everything's more expensive. Every, every. Everything from gas to tires to, to just waking up in the morning. I feel like got more expensive.

I think child care is more expensive too, probably. All right, so let's go through this article. So first of all, the majority of workers say that they're back in the office five days a week and they're paying for it. So in 2023. In 2023, 66% of workers say they're in office five days a week. That is up dramatically From I think 41% who were in office full time 2022. So people are coming back and I.

Do not really like that. I like remote work. I think remote work, when you can measure goals for remote work, I think that's the way to go.

Yeah, I agree. I tried to do hybrid and it was messy and it felt unnatural and distracting. I'd rather be full time in office or full time remote. And you and I are both full time remote. We have been for, I think a year and a half now and I love it. So the report in the CNBC article surveyed more than 2,000 full, full time workers in the United States In June, they found that 26% of workers are hybrid this year and 7% are fully remote.

So I'm a draw a conclusion from this. So if you want a remote job, you're going to compete with the top talent from other companies?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think it sounds easy to measure productivity from home, but I think a lot of managers struggle with it and they think if you're in the office, you're being productive. But that's not true. That's not necessarily true.

I also want to say something else. I think CEOs and vice presidents like C Suite are not that tech savvy and they did not grow up with iPhones and iPads. And I think the new generation that's coming along is growing up with technology, with all this virtual remote stuff.

Yep.

And they're saying, and if they're going to become C Suite, they're going to say, well, however the boomers did it, that was insane. We're going to do it completely different.

Yeah. So do you know how much workers on average are spending every day when they go into the office?

I. I'm shocked. I have the number right in front of me from the article, but I'm shocked.

$51 a day. So people are spending an average of 16 bucks on lunches for that doesn't sound like California. California would be more like 25, I'm guessing. That sounds like a Vegas number, which is where we live. So they're spending an average of $16 on lunch, $14 on commuting, $13 on breakfast and coffee, and $8 on parking. Parking.

So sip Recruiter, you can look this up, said In October of 19th of 2023, the average hourly pay for in the United States is 1938. So you're going to be working two hours, a little bit over two hours, just for your commute, just to pay.

To go to work.

Just to pay to go to work. So two hours of your eight hour, you're not from your nine to five is basically just costing you to get there. And this needs to change.

Wow.

According to my opinion, that that just needs to change.

And hourly workers, I don't think that they're just allowed to work an extra two hours a day. I think that would be considered overtime. And even though they'd get paid more for it, a lot of people can't just, oh, I want to work some overtime to cover my costs of commuting. No, that's money you're losing. So workers also sometimes spend up to $20 a day on pet Care, Yeah.

Board your dog, do things. So but then, then you're already at three hours a day. So before you were at two. Now you add another 20 bucks to it. That is another hour that you're working. So from your eight hour day, now you are just gave away three of them away and now you gotta pay some taxes too. So let's take another hour away. So basically half the day is just cost of you going to the office and your living expenses and car payment, house payment, fun things aren't even included. So. Yeah.

And what about the mental cost? I feel like I don't hear a lot of people talking about that. It is exhausting to get dressed professionally, go to an office, you know, brave traffic for sometimes two hours a day. And then you're in an office with you know, tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of other people who are also professionals. And we all have this facade and we're all behaving ourselves and you know, speaking professionally, it's like mentally draining too. And then you can kind of take that mask off when you go home. But I feel like I can really be myself at home and I don't feel like that when I'm in the office. I feel like I have to be the professional version of myself. I have to turn that on. It's exhausting. Did you ever work in the office?

I did, but I had a company car provided for me, so I did H vac stuff. So I had now a company car.

That's nice. Wow. So back to this article. It says that full time office workers are spending roughly 1,020 every month to report to the workplace, while hybrid workers are only spending an average of 408 bucks a month. That's just not fair. Right. So do you think that remote workers should get a pay cut or do you think that in office workers should get a stipend? Like what? How do we make this more fair?

So first of all, when you're looking at around $1,000 divided by 20, so that's about the hourly rate you got to work 50 hours, that's more than a week of your month just to commute to the office and pay your pay to basically get to work. So what I think needs to happen is that people need to be comfortable, demanding hybrid work situations where they need to work, where productivity is measured. And I feel like a bunch of managers and boomers are misinterpreting office presence for productivity. Productivity 100%.

They're saying, oh, you're in the office, that means you're working. That's not true. And also just because somebody's home and their little team's green light isn't on and maybe it's yellow or red because they're active on their computer doesn't mean they're not working. So do you know, according to this article, what the number one response was for? What people, what perks people want that would get them back to the office?

No, tell me, I'm super curious. I have not pulled it up here. So.

So it's. If they said they would be more incentivized to come back to the office if their commuting costs were covered 100%.

I think that going to the office should come with more benefits. But I just heard somebody, a recruiter on TikTok saying that right now it's companies are demanding you to come to the office and it's basically you competing with a bunch of people because there's so many layoffs. I think Roblox just did a layoff and so LinkedIn did layoffs. So there's going to be, I would say in the next year or two there's going to be, there's a switch again where workers have the hand up.

Oh, the workers have the upper hand. Yeah.

I think they're going to hire again, right?

You might be right actually. And it's crazy. I mean I kind of do feel bad for corporations. I might get a lot of hate for this. But look, in 2019, before pandemic, in the before times, companies wouldn't have had to pay people to commute. I'd never been paid to commute before. But now that the pandemic has happened, people transitioned to remote and now they're trying to get them back. Now all of a sudden it's going to cost companies money to just get it back to the way it was. But I mean inflation happened also in the last few years and now things are more expensive.

So on another note that when you now go to the office, there should be a lot more perks in that office just to get you back. But yeah, see it's now, you know, now I feel like we have flexible. I'm not talking about hourly workers. You know, you can't just all at a grocery store say, oh, we're just not going to show up and have nobody show up.

Well, that's what a strike is.

Yeah, but that's, but with flexible work, when you have an office job, you should be able to come in at 10 o' clock and leave at 2 and just work the rest of the time at Home or on weekends or whenever you feel comfortable.

Avoid traffic, avoid rush hour. Yeah. So other things that people say in this article that would get them back to the office are free food. Who doesn't love free food? Childcare subsidies and a relaxed dress code.

I think Google has that. I think they have casual Fridays. I think these tech companies in the Bay Area do offer a bunch of these perks and that's why it's going really, really well for them with hiring.

Yeah.

And when you don't have these perks, you need to either pay them more or do something to entice them. But the economy, the general economy is also at scale here. So what I mean by that is if the whole economy is doing great, it's easier for you to find a job. But when everybody's doing layoffs and everybody's doing job cuts and cutting salaries, you cannot go and demand way more money to your and say, I need my commute paid for, I need childcare paid for. I need all this stuff. Read the room.

Yeah, and it's odd that you say that because, I mean, you're absolutely right. But I read from indeed yesterday they said there's about twice as many available jobs right now as there are job seekers. So is it just that everybody wants the same jobs? Yeah, they want these remote jobs, they want these high paying jobs at companies with great perks.

But let me throw in a curveball here and say if you moved from the Bay Area, you worked for Facebook, you made hundreds of thousands of dollars as a software engineer. Now you live in Boise or Florida, you bought a million dollar house.

Lower cost of living.

Lower cost of living. And with a tax salary, you lived like a king. You lived like a Saudi prince in Florida.

Yeah.

They let you go and now you're in Florida trying to find another job that pays you 90,000 from about 190.

Yeah.

With bonuses, stocks. And now you're all of a sudden like, oh my gosh, I can't even keep my house with this money. So what do you do?

Yeah, yeah, no kidding. I mean, we went through something like that.

Yeah.

Did you tell that story?

That's for another time, but I told.

That story on my TikTok. The story of how I thought I had a remote job. Then they called me back to the office, but oops, I had moved to Las Vegas.

So let me know in the comments if you want to hear the story. Then we'll do another episode on this. But frankly, it came down to up. Time's over, Covid's over. Was a remote job. When you applied, we changed the job description. You are now not remote anymore and we want you back to the office. So you are screwed. Screwed.

And you got to sell that new RV that you just bought.

Well, we bought it so we can go to the office.

Yeah, that was a crazy time. But I'm glad where we are now. I love living in a place that's a lower cost of living. We moved from Santa Cruz, California to Las Vegas, Nevada, where lunches used to be 60 bucks for two people. Now it's 30. We're saving money, we're making more money. I like this, this change and I like working remote because like I said before, I can just wake up whenever.

I want and see with you and me, it's. So we work remote, we do social media and it's. And it's interesting. We, we have deadlines from clients, but we don't really have self imposed deadlines. We just have. We would have problems paying the bills if we weren't doing it.

Yeah.

But since we work like 80 hours a week, you know, we work Saturday, Sundays, late at night because it's also my hobby, so I don't really mind it.

Yeah, me too. I mean, when you said eight hours a week, I was like, but I think you're right, we do.

I mean, and I would do it regardless if I. If I left the money or not.

Yeah, I liked it. I mean, we started doing it for free. We've been doing it for free for the last three years. We just started making money from social media maybe like a year ago, right?

Yeah. So we had a little bit here and there, but now we're bringing it to the next level where we have mobile podcasting, we have brand deals, we have sponsored posts, and if you know another podcast guest that would fit perfectly for this podcast, let us know. We'd love to have them on.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that concludes it for this episode. This article was pretty good eye opening. I mean, a lot of people are going through this right now. So I hope you found this helpful. Let me know if you are an employee who's being called back to the office and how you feel about it. I am your host of this podcast, Allie from Corporate. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Rico, for being my guest.

Thank you, thank you.

And tune in for next time.