Businesses are pressuring Target to force its employees to return to the office
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
When they went into business, they took a risk. It shouldn't be up to ordinary workers to save them.
I'd like to see a backlash here. If you are forced to go into the office anywhere near these businesses, don't give them your business.
Would you support a business that actively causes you harm for their own benefit? Probably shouldn’t encourage bad behavior.
This is what those business advocates and hopes for, in order to resume their original business model.
Hell, his latest restaurant isn’t even located downtown; it’s in the North Loop neighborhood where more people live than work.
He’s ridiculous and the fact he was even quoted for this article is even more ridiculous.
Every business has to constantly adapt to a changing business environment. The ones that don’t fold.
Never going back to an office. The world changed during lockdowns, and in this way, it changed for the better.
This is no more or less true whether you're working in an office or at home.
Personally, I work better -- both in terms of work output and in terms of socializing with my teammates -- when working at home, because cube farms are almost designed to prevent effective work and interaction (although they are far more conducive to both of those things than open office layouts!) At home, I'm more effective and in a better mood so I more easily socialize with my coworkers. Other people can be very different, of course, including the exact opposite of me.
I think a lot of this also depends on what level you're looking at it from and what size of a company you're talking about.
For instance, whether working from home or working in an office, you interact heavily with your teammates and are certainly not a faceless "somebody somewhere". If you're at home, though, you probably are to higher levels of management. Whether or not that's a problem for you (the lower-level employee) depends in large part on what sort of career path you are trying to chart. For my own path, it makes no difference because I'm not aiming for promotions or the like -- I took the job I have because that's the job I wanted.
Small companies tend to be more social/cozy in general. WFH may adversely impact that. It might not, though. I've worked at several small companies over the decades where nobody was ever in the same room, but the socialization with each other was still very high.
Large companies are a different beast entirely. In the office or not, you are a faceless cog in the machine to everyone except those you directly work with and directly report to. It's hard to see how it could be any other way, given the scales involved.
I agree very hard on large companies! Nothing I ever want to work with/at.
Honestly, the US has seen neighborhoods turn into bedroom communities over past 50 years with parents both working, sending kids off to daycare, etc. We are more isolated and lonely than ever.
I think we've optimized for working enough, maybe our local neighborhoods would benefit from people being around too.
None of this stuff was possible on a nights-and-weekends-only basis, WFH is what enables it. The cost of being less connected to my coworkers is one I am happy to pay for it.
My observations of people I know are that WFH improves all of this. Working from home seems to increase the amount of socialization with friends and neighbors.
You can no longer say "US-Centric" and "bad city design" together. Here is an analysis published right at the start of the pandemic that shows how different large cities are reorganizing themselves [1]. You can't cluster them by geography or political ideology (look at map 2).
The above analysis shows that Minneapolis, the subject of this discussion, as being in the top 10 large cities with "downtown" residential growth over the last 40 years. This article [2], published just two weeks ago, shows that the trend is continuing and may even be increasing.
The business owners are either being chosen for their willingness to say what the journalist wants them to say, or are clueless. It doesn't matter if Target is bringing workers back into their office. The gain in the number of people living near the Target office is larger than the number of people that would work in the Target office. These businesses need to adapt - they have more potential customers if they focus on residents instead of office workers.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/big-city-downtowns-are-bo...
To be fair, I see the same issues in Frankfurt/Germany as well. Here's to hoping people actually so something sensible with that. Office floors are empty. Restaurants are dying. Designated shopping streets are dying. Stuff like that. Most of it because of bad economics of the shops.
I agree on the original article being BS tho.
It varies by state quite a lot (as most things do).
1. The skyways are decimated because far fewer people are downtown any longer for work.
2. The skyways had some hidden gems, to be certain, but were never a source of high-quality food.
3. About 15 years ago, food trucks hit the scene and were the first to decimate the skyway restaurants because they offered far better options.
4. Many suburbs offer some hidden gems that are open outside of the lunch hour but in my opinion, for the most part, the best restaurants are outside of the St Paul and Minneapolis downtowns and are located in areas that are the smaller neighborhoods where people live, rather than work (see: North Loop in Minneapolis and 'Eat Street' in St Paul).
5. We live 10-15 minutes out of the Minneapolis downtown area and regularly drive to Minneapolis for nice dinners out being that our suburb is particularly devoid of any high quality eating.
6. We used to live about 30 minutes South of St Paul and Minneapolis downtowns and while there were (IMO) better options within 10 minutes of our home there than where we live today, they were primarily family-owned ethnic restaurants, nothing to write home about otherwise. This is likely due to the lower cost of living and the longer distance to the other options in #4, above.
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So, to your point, yes, MSP is similar to what you describe and for the same reasons, but it's not "ALL" of the best foods. It doesn't at all change my belief that Fhima and his restaurants aren't going to succeed just because several thousand Target Corporate employees are back in the office. There are just too many other companies who have also gone WFH and none of them should change just because David is pissed off that he made a poor business decision to open restaurants where he did and his menus don't drive foot traffic above other options elsewhere.
With post-COVID inflation, nobody can afford to eat there anymore anyway.
1. Trolling.
2. Don't live here.
3. (or) are clearly subsisting on a diet of misinformation.
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The areas where unrest was rampant were not known to be hotbeds of quality dining anyway and very few people here, aside from those who don't live in the metro area, are also on a diet of misinformation, or didn't go downtown often in the first place simply don't think that way.
Minneapolis is the 16th largest metro area and is in the 30s for violent crime rate.
The Minneapolis PD officers might kneel on your neck, keep bystanders from rendering aid, and murder you. It’s possible they might even execute you, acting as judge, jury, and executioner in the blink of an eye.
That said, the likelihood someone working downtown might run into a police officer on any given day is much higher than running into someone rioting because their ethnic community is routinely targeted and sometimes executed because officers feel threatened for their lives primarily by those with non-white skin.
Maybe that’s the reason people are afraid to work downtown?