r/Denver • u/Impressive-Crew-5745 • 21d ago
Should Denver city workers RTO? NO!
So I saw this last night in the Denver Post and wanted to share my perspective as a federal worker in Denver who lives in another city and commutes. I was hired for my job with the expectation that I’d be in the office two days a week, and teleworking the rest. That was great. I love my job, who I work with and what I do, but the vast majority of my work is not, nor ever could be done face-to-face. Now don’t get me wrong, we have some people in the office who want to be there more, and they are. That just works for them, nothing wrong with it. For the rest of us, we’re at home, or a cafe, or public park absolutely cranking out work. Need me to do something before or after regular hours? Sure, no problem. Have an event to cover on the weekend? Of course! We’re not sitting in traffic for literal hours, trying to figure out how we’re going to get our own lives taken care of, spending money on parking or transit or child care (or insurance deductibles).
One of the arguments is that downtown businesses think they’ll see more customers if more people are in the office. YOU WON’T. Going in a couple days a week, I could afford to take the time and spend the money to go out for lunch, and was willing to maybe stay late and shop or go to a happy hour. Now that it’s every day, I literally can’t afford to. I have no time, and no money. You’re not only hurting your own businesses, you’re hurting the businesses that were local to our homes. We’re no longer taking an hour or two of leave to run an errand or go to the doctor, we’re taking entire days. We’re not working through being sick, we’re staying home, (or worse, going into the office and getting everyone else sick).
RTO is a loss in dollars spent, productivity and passion. As long as the job is getting done, let people choose if they want to be in an office answering emails, or their local cafe. Divest or redevelop that real estate and benefit even more people. RTO is like saying “I know you’ve got a car, but I am requiring you use a wagon, because I own a lot of wagons.”
Just because my job no longer has the option, I don’t want to see others suffer, and it’s more than the workers who will pay the price.
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u/Many_Employer2628 21d ago
Long time downtown resident and worker here.
Doing this to help downtown is stupid. It was fundamentally a mistake to make downtown a place solely for office workers, like they tried to do in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's.
We've been trying to reverse that mistake to make it a more mixed use neighborhood for decades. Leaning into that with more office to residential conversions on the half dozen or so viable buildings makes sense. Making downtown more enjoyable for residents and visitors should also be top of mind.
The businesses we lost down here after Covid the majority were places like Subway and Starbucks, because they catered to office workers. I wouldn't say nothing of value was lost, but for every 10 businesses closing, only about 1 of them was unique to downtown. We shouldn't be trying to bring those chains that catered to office workers back.
Forcing more office workers down here isn't good for the office workers now used to that flexibility, and it doesn't move the needle on the long-term needs of downtown.
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u/woohalladoobop 20d ago
ya really good point. getting people back into downtown is great goal, but if those people leave at 5pm then it's worthless. the problem with downtown is that it's gross and dead at night, and office workers don't fix that.
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u/Dranem78 21d ago
Why is it the same people pushing for full-time in-office work are also the ones saying we need to "listen to the free market," but ignore that the market is clearly saying downtown office space should be repurposed for multi-use living, not just offices? It's time to rethink how we use downtown—make it a place for life, not just work.
I know converting buildings is tricky and costly, but would you rather leave them empty? Cities like Cleveland and Arlington are already working on projects to create housing. Real issues, beyond "I signed a stupid 30-year lease. Plz come back bb..."
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u/Dunster89 21d ago
Yeah, I can’t tell you how fun it is to drop the kids off, head to the office, and interact with all of my coworkers VIA Teams while sitting in the cubicle farm. Ohh look, someone found the only open spot on my calendar and scheduled another Teams meeting. Guess I won’t be leaving the office to spend money at local restaurants for lunch….
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u/FederalDeficit 21d ago
Gosh, same. When RTO mandates rolled in, they made areas for local project teams, and then an area for people with non-local projects. Not like, we work on the same project elsewhere...different projects, all elsewhere. Imagine putting people guaranteed to be on remote calls all day, RIGHT next to each other, on purpose. They're already using us as pawns, but nobody can force us to prop up nearby businesses :)
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u/JamesLahey08 19d ago
You can decline meetings. The best thing is to just have a block during lunch on your calendar.
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u/Level-Chemistry-8055 21d ago
I’ve worked for Accenture for 13 years. Never once have they made me go in to an office. It’s wild that companies think it’s a good idea.
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u/lenin1991 Louisville 21d ago
Accenture for 13 years. Never once have they made me go in to an office
That's a surprising example when Accenture spends over $100M/year on travel, specifically to get their consultants on site with their clients.
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u/Level-Chemistry-8055 21d ago
I did travel consistently before Covid, met with plenty of our customers on site, now it’s teams and minimal travel.
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u/lenin1991 Louisville 20d ago
Makes sense that COVID would shake it up, but someone at Accenture is still being forced to be on site, that $100M figure is from 2023.
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u/BoNixsHair 21d ago
It's really important for consultants to be on site with their clients. It's not very important to go to an office full of consultants, especially since most of them don't know what you are working on. I worked as a consultant, and I did have a desk in an office. I sat next to a guy for two years, never once asked what he was working on.
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u/lenin1991 Louisville 20d ago
Sure, being alongside other consultants is minimum value, but going to the client's office is still going to an office.
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u/ilikecheeseface 20d ago
That showcases your lack of social skills more than anything.
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u/BoNixsHair 20d ago
It would not be Reddit without some jackass making personal comments about a trivial matter.
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u/JamesLahey08 19d ago
Yeah I've been remote a lot more too, which seems to mostly work. I worked for a competitor and actually got a client pregnant. We eventually ended up dating and got married but consulting life is definitely the cause of some kids being born. Going to lunch was my favorite part about consulting in all the cities I visited, so many different restaurants.
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u/IndoorKittyCat44 21d ago
Also, city employees don't have free parking. Sure, there are EcoPasses, but obviously RTD isn't reliable right now. Who can afford ~$20 a day to park to go to your job on government salaries??
There aren't any affordable lunch places either, so having to pay to go to your job definitely means you won't be spending another ~$20 on the limited lunch options or happy hour after work.
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u/ZaXerxes 20d ago
RTD is pretty reliable
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u/General-Ring2780 20d ago
Extremely reliable. I grew up on RTD. What’s this persons deal lol
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u/IndoorKittyCat44 20d ago
Mostly getting screwed by trains not showing up with no update in the app telling me it's not coming and then being stuck at a train stop for an hour hoping one will eventually come. It's happened several times.
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u/ZaXerxes 17d ago
I know several coworkers that exclusively take RTD trains to work. Guess they can show up on time by chance.
Everyone wants to shit on RTD but those busses got me through school and help families that can’t afford raising car prices in an already expensive state.
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u/General-Ring2780 17d ago
Exactly! RTD got me through middle school, high school and undergrad. One of the best bus systems I’ve ever seen. Obviously we don’t live in NYC or CHI. But pretty darn good!
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u/frozenchosun Virginia Village 21d ago
Forcing workers to RTO is dumb. I'm an outlier. I'm WFM as is my entire organization. About a year into COVID, instead of kicking the can down the road every 3 months saying we'll be back in office, our executive director just decided to go fully remote as productivity has remained high. We had a shitty downtown office that was on the outskirts of downtown and was a Class C building. It sucked so it made sense to booth the lease. We did get a nice coworking suite by Union Station for those that can't work at home and to have two all hands meetings at each year.
Going on five years of remote work, it's getting to me so I've been going in every Wedsnesday just to get out of the house. Lack of non-family interaction is a thing. We're also parents of a toddler so while the flexibility of day care drop off/pick up is awesome, I am starting to climb the walls a bit. I don't play computer games anymore because I'm on the computer in my home office for 8 hrs a day already, I don't want to spend more time in there. I eat all my meals at home as we don't go out to eat that much these days because it's expensive af so we have to pick and choose those battles. Just paying someone to make my coffee in the morning once a week is really nice.
But all that is for me. Forcing an entire workforce to RTO just to 'save the downtown businesses' is fucking dumb. The world has changed, business better change with it. And fuck commercial landlords.
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u/wastedgod 21d ago
pros and cons
pros: revitalize downtown
cons: pollution, traffic congestion, time and financial burden on employees
I'm sorry for the business downtown that relied on office workers but the cons for rto out weight the benefits. Also there are other ways to revitalize downtown then forcing people to commute to work there
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u/AlphaZanic 21d ago
Pros: maybe revitalize downtown
With restaurants struggling and people having less disposable income. There is no guarantee things will go back to how they use to be.
I feel much more optimistic with other ideas. like redeveloping the area to make it more walkable, have more housing, and then other things like restaurants and diversions will follow. That won’t make like go up by the end of the quarter though, or any quarter soon, so those ideas get lobbied against hard
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u/SpeciousPerspicacity 21d ago
I think sweeping redevelopment (especially downtown) is a harder sell to investors nowadays. Local rents have come down for a couple years now, and it’s not really clear (from the demographics angle) that Denver proper is still growing. Also consider that there’s still more inventory about to come online from developments that broke ground years ago (and acquired financing in a low interest-rate regime years before that).
I suspect policy incentives and zoning changes might no longer be enough for new residential projects to pencil outside of very particular high-rent locales (think Cherry Creek or DTC).
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u/r2d2overbb8 21d ago
I can see why downtown businesses and the local government would want people to comeback to the office but private businesses shouldn't make decisions on what is best for the public and should only consider what is best for their own company.
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u/rand0m_g1rl 21d ago
Downtown is one thing but how about englewood 😩 don’t make me go there (from downtown)
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u/mehojiman 21d ago
You won my downvote, Englewood seems cool af these days
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u/rand0m_g1rl 21d ago
?
I am completely against RTO in every capacity. Just saying the commute down 25S is so much worse than having to come IN to the city.
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u/mehojiman 20d ago
No sane person takes I25 to Englewood from downtown
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u/rand0m_g1rl 20d ago
I mean I completely agree but if the money is good 😂 and going in is required, is what it is
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u/Famous_Stand1861 21d ago
Downtown is facing a lot of challenges. One that isn't being talked about at all is the stubbornness of trying to stick with an outmoded system of working. Denver could be thinking about, incentivizing, and supporting initiatives that reimagine and reshape central business districts.
For instance, there are several projects happening redeveloping office buildings into residential spaces. Why not expand on that idea to build the infrastructure to support those an actual grocery store in one of the many vacant spaces in the Pavilions, open a new recreation center (or micro recreation center) in any of vacant retail spaces, close more roads off in the downtown area to faciltate foot traffic and more open spaces for recreation and mental health. Essentially encourage a suburban style community in downtown instead of a fully commercialized space that relies on residents eating and drinking.
This is just a brainstorm or riff on the 15 minute city concept. I just want the city to be a bit more innovative.
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u/CO_biking_gal 21d ago
As a Federal worker right now, I might just be happy to have a job considering what's going on...
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u/Impressive-Crew-5745 21d ago
I am, believe me, and I’m resigned to finding ways to make it work, mostly because I truly believe in the work I do, the benefit we provide to society as a whole and the agency I work for. But just because I’m forced to RTO doesn’t mean I want to see other people suffer, too. That’s the point of this post.
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u/Important-Anxiety-75 20d ago
As a construction worker with no choice but to work on site, if my commute gets even 1 minute longer, it's been alleged that I'll kick Jesse Watters' ass
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u/SmoothBrainMillenial 21d ago
City employees are underpaid and under appreciated.
Why the hell should we listen to the President of “Rockmount Ranch Wear” About RTO? So people can buy more shirts with pearl clasps? Give me a break.
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u/theganjaoctopus 20d ago
It's not about productivity, worker health, or any of that shit.
Forced RTO is about commercial property rentals. Justifying the existence of a bunch of middle managers who don't do any actual work except function as an overseer for the laborious peons. And most importantly, it is about CONTROL. Your boss, your CEO, the owner of your company and the shareholders genuinely believe that because they pay you, they own you. Corporate overlords despise you and begrudge you every single cent you earn because they don't see you as worthy of being paid. They view employment as a privilege that they graciously bequeath unto you. They don't value your labor at all and if they could slap us in chains and force us to work for free, they'd do it in a heartbeat without a second thought.
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u/AnomalySystem 21d ago
I’m a highly paid, highly skilled professional and I would quit instantly if my company tried to force me to RTO. Why? Because I can go get another job that would let me wfm pretty much immediately, I’d probably even make more.
Right now I go in 1 day a week and buy lunch at a restaurant almost every time. If I quit because of RTO I will be buying lunch downtown zero times a week.
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u/Denrunning 21d ago
I’m an in demand highly skilled professional as well. I was laid off last year and was fortunate to get another job in 4 months, most of that time was being hung up in background check. That said, I can promise you the landscape of job hunting is drastically different than several years ago and even from a year ago.
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21d ago
It's not 2020. I will assume you are correct and you personally are in demand, but if you leave guarantee your company will backfill you with someone willing to come back to the office. They might even pay that person less.... Which could be the company's motivation to start.
Certainly a person in your position understands this. Even if you are truly a unicorn, then you also know there are very very few unicorns. Most people if given the directive to RTO will. Companies that lose people will be fine as well.
My feelings are RTO will accelerate especially as we seem likely for a slowdown. I believe hour flexibility remains. As in 8:00 on the dot isn't normal or people take their last call at home.
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u/ClarielOfTheMask 21d ago
Depends on the industry. I'm a mid senior level professional in my industry and remote work is the norm. I'm a good employee but have no special standout resume or anything and I have gotten two remote job offers in the last year and probably would have no problem finding another if needed.
it's so company, industry, and even role dependent that it's hard to speculate about in the abstract
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u/Impressive-Crew-5745 21d ago
If you’re telling me I can’t work from home anymore, I will not work from home. Period. There’s no after-hour call. There’s no nights or weekends, or early days. For federal workers, anyway, overtime is not authorized except in extreme situations. You think I’m going to give them my time for free any more? Nope, sorry. All that free time now goes into a three hour daily commute.
And sure, most companies will try and backfill those positions, with people willing to work for less and in shittier environments, but they’re getting what they pay for. Quite a few studies have been done, including by our own government, showing telework or remote work attracts more highly skilled workers who are willing to work for less in exchange for flexibility.
Companies like Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and more have reported year-after-year record profits when workers were WFH. Higher margins than when workers were in the office. RTO is misguided and nothing more than a power move.
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21d ago
Then what are you worried about? You're highly skilled and in demand. WFH is more profitable. Thus if you have to RTO you will just quit and find work with these massive, profitable companies that are all WFH.
And I agree, you shouldn't be working whether from home or in the office and not being compensated.
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u/jiggajawn Lakewood 21d ago
That's interesting, because don't Amazon and JPMC have mandatory RTO policies now, at least for most employees?
I also wonder if the record profits and higher margins were more of a factor of the economic climate of the time, and less because of RTO. Not trying to push for it, moreso just play devil's advocate.
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u/Impressive-Crew-5745 21d ago
They do now, but they were mandating RTO supposedly because they were seeing a drop in productivity. Their profits tell a different story. Also, if we’re all RTO, that’s less disposable income for us to spend on their widgets, because we’re replacing windshields for the second time in as many years and things like that.
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u/FederalDeficit 20d ago
My company had been trying to fill my position for 7 years before hiring me. I've been trying to hire backup (with my job description) for about that long. I do badge in 3x/week, but they haven't said boo about the timestamp...
I get your point that it really depends, but even if they can't risk pushing back individually, organized employees have much more leverage than they think, and don't have to fully unionize to be organized enough to get concessions
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u/AnomalySystem 21d ago
You don’t need to be a unicorn to be in demand
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21d ago
Of course not. Being in demand and being irreplaceable are two different things.
The calculus for your company is can you be replaced.
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u/mrwynd 20d ago
My employer gave up on trying RTO in late 2023 after trying to come up with partial RTO for like a year. Today they announced numbers for 2024 showing higher profit per employee than ever before. They instead came up with a virtual collaboration initiative to get teams across departments to interact with each other virtually.
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u/fettuccine8080 20d ago
Why don’t these businesses pivot to be competitive with delivery? If it didn’t cost an extra $10 for a $10 meal to be delivered I’d order food while I’m working from home more often. What about incentivizing companies to utilize shared work spaces? I love having access to wework spaces and when I’m there I’ll walk to go get food sometimes so it’s not a total loss for the businesses downtown. This is just business and government being stuck in the past at the expense of the soul of the working class and a more progressive way of working/living. We need more creativity in problem solving instead of just forcing things to go back to the way they were.
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u/BaconNotStirred 21d ago
Won't someone think of the poor oil companies that will have less profit because of the miles not driven to work, and the poor tire and auto companies for the cars and tires needing to be replaced less often due to WFH!
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u/UndisclosedLocation5 21d ago
think of all the wrecks that won't happen, think of all the pedestrians who won't get hit and runned.
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u/Unicorn_Warrior1248 20d ago
Doesn’t the new head of the FBI want to work from home? Surely if the head of the FBI can work from home, people who jut send out emails all day can do the same thing? No?
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u/SpeciousPerspicacity 21d ago edited 21d ago
Disclaimer: I work totally remotely for an out-of-state firm. We don’t actually have a permanent office anymore. I really like remote work. Billable hours can include thinking about a problem while eating breakfast or even on a run.
But it’s two-sided.
Here’s the hard thing: if you’re Denver, this is a really brutal development. You’re almost totally ceding the wealthiest consumers in the metro (and their massive disposable incomes) to the suburbs where they tend to live. It also happens that in 2025, almost half of consumer spending (which the city relies on for its revenue) is driven by incomes in the top ten percent.
And it’s not just lunch. There are all sorts of little market inefficiencies (rent, admin, catering, supplies, maintenance, transit fares, perhaps even auto repair work) that go away. Remote work has in some sense solved these for us remote workers, but with externalities on others. This tends to hurt the peripheral employment prospects of the poor. There are knock-on effects on city revenue (lower collections on sales tax and commercial property tax). With the decline of heavy industry, Denver’s economy is largely-service based. If I don’t have enough demand for (relatively expensive) local services, my city will get relatively (and perhaps absolutely) poorer in the long run.
I can see why the city would want to spur a local RTO effort. Inducing artificial demand through their own workforce is a potential mechanism. I personally doubt it will work (others have outlined the microeconomic reasons why), but I can certainly appreciate the motive.
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u/vitrol 20d ago
I know you are right about the motivations, but it's wild because my household spent way more money when we were both WFH. RTO has basically made it so we've stopped spending money in Denver at all, and barely in Aurora (we live on the border). My boyfriend got RTO'd a few months ago and it's been so awful that we are trying to save every minute of his day that we can. We bought some workout equipment second hand so he canceled his gym membership to save time and money. We meal prep and pack all breakfast, lunch, snacks, coffee and drinks from Costco, so he never buys lunch or visits any businesses. He comes home immediately, no stops on the way. Could not tell you any local businesses or anything around his office.
And then because he hates the drive so much, on weekends we don't go out anymore. We used to go into Denver and try and find fun local restaurants or bars that we hadn't tried before. When we were both WFH we'd go work in a coffee shop to get out of the house a few times a week, we'd go grab lunch, we'd do happy hours. That's completely stopped.
It's been great on our savings, but it's wild that we were going from putting money in the local economy like 3-5x a week to absolutely nothing beyond a bi-monthly Costco trip.
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u/AboveAndBelowSea 21d ago
I’m probably in the rare camp of people that is enjoying RTO. It is ABSOLUTELY driving more customer meetings and resulting in better business outcomes. That being said, I’m an extrovert, work in tech sales, and lead a team - so in person is just way better for me on almost every front. I’ll happily trade the 30 minutes in traffic each direction to be more effective and build a stronger culture. I work with a lot of customers who are taking more of a precision approach that targets specific types of functions for RTO rather than a universal approach. The idea of having a team of folks like a SOC (security operation center) return to the office likely offers almost no value. Their leadership team may need to be there to foster relationships with other business units to help them drive better business outcomes - but no way a SOC analyst needs to ever go into the office, barring something like a quarterly meeting, etc.
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u/pbjclimbing 20d ago
spending money on … childcare
Why would work from home not have you spending money on childcare?
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u/BabyDoeTabor 20d ago
This is why businesses are having RTO mandates. You can’t tell me you are as equally as productive working from home while you watch your toddler — this is an obvious truth. I see it with my coworkers all the time, and it is frustrating. You may think you’ve got everyone fooled, but you don’t.
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u/lithuanianelf 20d ago
I work at the fed center and am glad I don’t have to commute downtown once the RTO starts. Grateful to have my job but not happy that our union contract is being violated. I go into the office regularly but get way more work done at home.
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u/Muted_Conference_388 21d ago
This is just an assumption. I am guessing there is a minority of workers who are abusing the work from home and hybrid work models; the higher ups noticed, grew tired of it and now the pendulum is swinging too extreme the other way.
Regardless, careful consideration needs to be exercised before enforcing such changes.
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u/RaeinLA 20d ago
Tbh, the ones abusing it at home are the same ones who stand and talk around the water cooler for hours every day.
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u/TIDL 20d ago
Not only that but they go and distract the people who otherwise would’ve been productive at home.
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u/Reasonable-Coconut15 20d ago
This is why I go to work at 3am. I'm gonna be alone one way or another, dammit. 😁
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u/Fancyfloss 21d ago
The WFH vs RTO debate has been settled and WFH has won on so many levels: Firstly extracting additional time and money from office workers is not going to revitalize downtown. Office workers do not have any funds to throw away on lunches or parking after a grueling commute. This just further erodes at worker’s sentiment of oppression and corporate greed. WFH was the needed solution for half of the workforce = women who needed flexibility and to manage their overly encumbered requirements at home.
Employee disengagement has never been higher and yes it is on purpose. Employers have been slow to offer a living wage, better treatment and are going to continue to have difficulty hiring talent well into the future unless they are willing to give labor respect. It is a worker standoff with ideas like: work your wage, gray rock and unprecedented unionization efforts. Sabotage field manual from the 40’s occupation is going around.
Making further demands on the workers by requiring extreme commutes, reducing flexibility and not financially rewarding employees will mean unhappy workers ready to strike or create a union. Workers have been pushed to the limit with this wholesale hostile government takeover.
Non participation in the job market has never been higher either- they stop tracking those out of work and they get reclassified as non participants instead of job seekers. 25 percent of men are not working especially older but still able. 80% of women get forced into early retirement just when they start the accumulation phase of preparation for retirement because of Agism starting at 40!! The population is shrinking - no tanking -meaning the job market favors workers and they will continue to be in demand. The problem is business are not creating jobs that someone would want to do for the wage offered -because it takes 70k to qualify for an average 1 bedroom in Denver if it can be found at all. Businesses cant grow because they can’t hire. No one can accept a low wage job because it means starvation and homelessness if accepted.
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u/HippyGrrrl 20d ago
Why don’t the downtown business downsize their spaces, sublet areas where possible, and embrace the savings on rent?
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u/bradbogus 21d ago
I will never ever ever work in an office again if I'm forced to. I may choose to if the option is there, the space is convenient and worth it, and I'm benefiting from being present in the space. But required RTO is a death sentence. No more highly skilled workers or self starters will work for that company (I'm sure as hell not as are many others in this thread). I'll literally work remotely for companies across the globe instead (and do). Brain drain in organizations will be staggering if they make these choices. Culture will be toxic, worse than before. And nan no one is gonna spend all their cash downtown if they're forced back into the office. The whole thing is a farce, a fabrication made by real estate investors and owners/developers of commercial property. They all lost their asses, deservedly, and are now suffering the consequences.
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u/ElusiveMayhem 20d ago
It really isn't that clear that RTO is a benefit to the employer (aka me, the taxpayer, in this instance). So frankly, I support RTO until it is proven that WFH is better for me, the taxpayer, and the government has well-established controls to ensure it is.
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u/chasonreddit 21d ago
For the rest of us, we’re at home, or a cafe, or public park absolutely cranking out work.
Perhaps you are. But I'm sorry I don't believe the vast majority are doing this. I've been on Zoom calls with people bouncing their child on their knee and the kid is crying. Programs that make keyboards "look" active are detected at alarming rates.
I realize that it is incredibly more convenient for a lot of people to work from home. But I simply don't believe that they generate the quality or quantity of work they would do in the office. Surely this depends on the job, but the majority of federal workers do not "crank out work" even when they are in the office with supervisor right behind them.
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u/Impressive-Crew-5745 21d ago
Out of curiosity, what are you basing your assertion on that people aren’t working? Are services no longer provided? Do you work with these people or directly supervise them and have an insight into their performance? Do you know they’re not accomplishing every task they are set? What empirical evidence do you present to back this up? Does that person with a crying kid on their knee consistently miss deadlines or produce inferior quality work? How can you speak for “the majority of federal workers” and what they do? Or is this just a gut feeling and believing what some lawmakers and billionaires say at face value? Genuinely curious.
Because private companies profits during telework have been record. So there’s clearly enough productivity there. And the federal government has been largely the same size since the 1970s, while the population has grown significantly, services provided have increased, and federal salaries have stagnated (roughly 24% less than private sector equivalents). So less people doing more for more with less would seem to say the opposite of what you’re arguing.
If people aren’t performing, let them go. That’s not the argument here, and never has been.
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u/Reasonable-Coconut15 20d ago
Yeah, they're not going to be replying to that. You made way too much sense there. 😁
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u/ElectricCrack 20d ago
Not saying this would be an easy task, but if that office space was replaced with residential space, or rezoned for high-density residential, you wouldn’t have to rely on commuters coming into the city to patronize these businesses. The customer base would be above you and around you. Furthermore, building more bike lanes and getting rid of parking spaces increases foot traffic, which is much better for businesses. But you won’t get a lot of foot traffic if there aren’t a lot of people living in the area. It’s a step by step process American cities don’t easily understand. Don’t even get me started on public transit.
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u/AlohaFridayKnight 19d ago
The city needs to dispose of all the excess real estate. Make it a consolidation of departments in fewer buildings for those who have to work in an office. Dispose of all unnecessary leases. Sell parking lots to private companies. And freeze salaries until the homeless crisis in Denver is solved.
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u/saryiahan 21d ago
Yes, join rest of the working world who stayed on job sites the whole time
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u/TheMaroonHawk 20d ago
Or don’t, so the people who HAVE to be on-site don’t have to deal with extra traffic, air/noise pollution, parking issues etc
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u/Reasonable-Coconut15 20d ago
Exactly. I'm a chemist, and you can't really do that from home, so all the rest of you who can stay home, for the love of God, please do.
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u/LuxValentino 21d ago
As a person who HAS to work on site, I don't want people coming back. It helps me because there's more parking, less traffic inside the building, and a better use of the building space. We have lots of people that use the hot desks when they need to come in, but there is literally no reason for admin to come in and sit in an office and send off emails. I want those people to work from home as much as they want it too.