Life in Ruins

District C19

Four years ago the whole world came to a standstill with the spread of COVID-19 or did it? Well, many large gatherings were either canceled or postponed indefinitely. A lot of businesses required their workers to work from home, you already know about this because you lived through it so I won’t bore anyone with its reminders. It took a few years but eventually things returned to normal. Live events like concerts, in person church services, concerts, sports and oh let’s not forget pro-wrestling resumed. Certain businesses started either allowing or in some cases requiring employees to return to the office. Everything was supposed to be “normal” again, and its all good right?

In my case I was forced back into the office five days a week as I work in IT helping people with computer or all around tech issues. A trip downtown typically cost me me either $5 for a bus trip or $10 for parking (I’d typically park across the river which is cheaper than the parking garages which cost in somewhere in the range of $20-30 dollars a day) At this point I’m bringing you forward to 2022. Eating out would usually cost anywhere from $15 to more than $20. Each day I’d walk across the bridge and through the streets and into by job where I’d sit and wait for something to break or test meeting rooms.
The RTO came at a cost and the cost I’m referring to here is time and money. Take two hours for the travel along with another for lunch hour, plus the eight hours of work. Do the math and you’ll figure out how much additional time it takes someone now commuting to and from work each day. So that takes care of the time issue but what about the money? Even if someone takes the bus both ways that’s $25 out of a worker’s income that was there before. Ideally someone can choose not to eat out for lunch but realistically speaking its going to happen. The average person does this three days a week. Yes you read that right. So take the amounts I put in above and add them together with the cost to either park or take the bus and add that to however much a worker spends on gas now. This is unsustainable to average workers, especially those only paid $15-$20 an hour. Remember that many of these people didn’t have these expenses during the pandemic. Yes we lost a lot of money when the pandemic ended but was it all worth it?

To address this, I’ll focus on in-office turnout. I’ll try to keep this short.
When we returned to the office in the spring of 2022, attendance increased. On Mondays and Fridays, the turnout would be less than 10 a week. The days in between might have as many as 30. So this means we still had to send laptops to people working from home. So IT had to come to the office regardless of how many came in. This lack of attendance continues to happen to this day across many companies. This has created an epidemic in this particular city where several of its tallest buildings now have projects in place to replace the offices with apartments. I’m trying to say here that the office culture is now dead across America, plain and simple. Despite this, these companies aren’t adjusting to worker behavior but instead are stubbornly stuck in their pointless spending methods. The company I worked for was in the process of doing a network refresh, replacing the cabling putting new routers in etc. As well as replacing the meeting room equipment which were lemons but both had been purchases and installed during or right before the pandemic. These are projects set into motion by managers who routinely spend money even in the name of wasting it. They do this because if they don’t spend it each year they won’t get the same budget. If the budget wasn’t there their job wouldn’t be either. And if you have five people in the office all this equipment is doing is collecting dust. If people aren’t coming downtown it affects the other types of businesses in the city, like stores and restaurants. But we’ll get to that later first let’s talk about who exactly is hanging around the downtown areas if its not workers.

After the return to office happened, the streets were fairly empty compared to pre-pandemic levels, save for the epidemic of the homeless population, which had grown exponentially over the years. But homeless wouldn’t be the best word to describe some of these people. Many of them are, in reality, panhandlers. These are people who aggressively ask for a handout; some may be genuinely homeless, while others are frauds. In all the years I worked downtown, I generally paid these people no mind, but after COVID hit, their numbers increased exponentially. To put it briefly the our cities in general are less safe than they’ve been in years, less clean and full of crime. Crime and violence in our cities has, in fact, increased drastically in the past four years. Why bring workers to these areas and risk having something bad happen to them. The response to this is to add more police. That’s how it works right? Most of us aren’t committing crimes. People may like to come down, shop and hope not to get mugged. But a number of stores and restaurants have gone out of business and the buildings or space they were in sit empty for years. The same thing goes for office space real estate. One website I saw projected that half of Pittsburgh’s office space could be empty within four years. I’d expect to find parking lots and empty buildings.

So, to wrap this up, I wanted to emphasize that this is only a review of our current state in Western Pennsylvania. A lot has changed in four years, and not for the better. I’d love to be positive, but I must remain skeptical about anything getting better anytime soon. No man can wave a magic wand and fix our issues. Of course, some may try to mislead, and by that, I mean they may say, “Hey, things are great,” but really, they’re just lying. If we want things to change, we must make it happen and stop betting on someone else. In these blogs, I hope to explore and dig deep down the rabbit hole of life, politics, war, the economy, and money, and not just expose answers but wake people up to the world around us. Keep in mind that our perception of reality is full of bias. Sometimes, you’ll be shown a green pasture, but we have big problems that will catch up to us. I hope to prove in this blog how we’re being led down a path as a society that will eventually become more and more authoritarian. And it won’t just be our cities and towns that become more authoritarian but also our workplaces. America was founded on the principles of freedom, and we must maintain that paradigm regardless of what it may cost. I don’t care what party someone is with; if their actions go against the constitution of the United States, they are traitors and should face indictments accordingly.

With each blog I’ll suggest a book to read. If I haven’t read it I will do so as well. Today’s book is Station Eleven by  Emily St. John Mandel