Posted on 02/11/2023 12:57:34 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
WASHINGTON — There are evenings when things feel almost normal at the Exchange Saloon, a pub across the street from the White House once popular with federal employees, thousands of whom work in the surrounding buildings. On those days, the bar is crowded with patrons sharing work gossip and munching on burgers or wings. The bartender struggles to hear an order placed above the din of laughter and conversation. As evening deepens, the after-work crowd swells.
Such evenings are rare.
Improbably, the Exchange survived the lockdowns, restrictions and disruptions that marked the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, only to emerge into 2023 haunted by an inescapable question: Now what?
Survival was a feat, one that many businesses in downtown districts across the country, without the steady influx of tourists and commuters, failed to accomplish. Yet even among those that did survive, thriving as they did before the pandemic remains a distant dream.
“There’s an uptick,” a bartender at the Exchange told a Yahoo News reporter one recent night. But, he added, “we’re far from normal standards.”
Although the pain has been felt in every major American city, it has been felt especially deeply in Washington, where remote work has been more popular than in any other American city of significant size. Now, with the pandemic on the wane, district officials are fighting the trend by confronting the enormous institution that has, in their view, made far too little effort to bring its employees back into the office: the federal government.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Fire them all.
Kind of makes you wonder about their actual work ethic, doesn't it? Well, maybe "wonder" is the wrong word...
Getting people back into an office is a dream unless they threaten to fire them.
Once the genie is out of the bottle then it is hard to put him back in.
The short answer is ‘NO’.
DC is currently DSC-occupied territory, as is the ‘City of London’ and the Vatican.
Mornings on the DC Beltway is now a piece of cake. Gone from an average of maybe 35 mph to 80 mph.
BUT Klaus Schwab has gotten his wish. Using a pandemic to close down non-corporate, small businesses.
Rather have the traffic.
It will likely be a nicer place without all the baggage.
Agreed! There are way to many government workers.
Washington DC makes nothing but wars, laws and regulations.
Detroit after WWII was the wealthiest city in America.
Now it’s Washington DC.
Says a lot.
So they don’t really need all that expensive office space in DC?
Sure, the federal workforce needs to be drastically downsized. Many jobs and federally claimed responsibilities abolished, some more delegated back to the states. Where redder states can further shrink or abolish them and blue states can figure out how to pay for them from just their own constituent's pockets.
But a lot of federal positions no longer have to be done at one central location. With modern communications many can be shifted to darn near anywhere. Saving money via cheaper real estate and cost of living costs directly and indirectly in lower competitive wages. Diluting the power the current concentration provides.
Fire them all”
Yeah sure, try it and see what happens
The Republicans should use the current debt ceiling crisis and institute a hiring freeze.
Finally the MSM gets curious. Hey, why is DC deserted 2 years later? 😆
Well heck, sibce nobody’s working in DC now maybe they can close down that noisy Airport.
We have more government than we can afford.
These Feds are wanking off at home. No real work is done but they get paid for doing jack, while living in the burbs of Virginia and Maryland. This Federale “work” system can maintain in a steady state, but will fail in any kind of crisis or challenge.
I have a relative who is a WFH state worker, paid over 200 thousand per year. He files lots of useless/never to be read reports. They get printed out and put on a shelf in his house. He can obviously email a PDF if some other “worker”/ slug wakes up/ snaps out of it/ and requests a copy.
So he makes useless reports, some Zoom meetings, some phone calls. Probably most/many of these Federal shirkers in DC are the same.
I would not be willing to commute to work in DC (or any large city in the US) unless offered a whole lot more money than any sanely run business would ever pay me.
Eventually that will happen. Not sure what. But we have a couple of examples. Civil War. WWI. WWII.
Remember that baby formulae shortage and crisis? This is what happens when these Feds are all jerking off at home. They cannot handle a severe disruption. Lols...... And how often do you think Buttigieg shows up at the Dept of Transportation offices. Twice a month?
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