An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead, by arbitrarily forcing a tight timeline and using heavy, specific, and inflexible top-down mandates that don’t let those closer to the work use the information they have (say, that their offices aren’t ready to work in).
Spending freezes, blanket firing of tons of provisional workers (fun fact: the recently-promoted are also provisional, this doesn’t just mean brand new workers), and other measures have probably also disrupted the ability of offices to sensibly execute the orders. That is, it’ll take them longer to get the offices ready.
> An organization allegedly about reducing waste is creating it instead
The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. We have discovered something bad...which would seem to be part of the reason of doing it.
The counterargument is obvious to anyone willing to think about it for a few seconds, but the article doesn't even bother addressing it. They even admit that the headline office without wifi was only without wifi for a few hours:
> In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week.
...and yet this is in the headline. This all reeks of cherry-picking.
Agree, there are bound to be some logistical issues during RTO and they will eventually sort themselves out. The article is grasping at straws. Do I really think asking government employees to work out of an office is unreasonable? No.
alabastervlog|1 year ago
Spending freezes, blanket firing of tons of provisional workers (fun fact: the recently-promoted are also provisional, this doesn’t just mean brand new workers), and other measures have probably also disrupted the ability of offices to sensibly execute the orders. That is, it’ll take them longer to get the offices ready.
One might begin to think it’s not about waste.
kept3k|1 year ago
timr|1 year ago
The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. We have discovered something bad...which would seem to be part of the reason of doing it.
The counterargument is obvious to anyone willing to think about it for a few seconds, but the article doesn't even bother addressing it. They even admit that the headline office without wifi was only without wifi for a few hours:
> In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week.
...and yet this is in the headline. This all reeks of cherry-picking.
unknown|1 year ago
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pixxel|1 year ago
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throwaway173738|1 year ago
floatrock|1 year ago
If I was knowledgable about government contracting, I would scoop up a bunch of those folks for a government-certified TaskRabbit service.
After all, private sector is always more efficient.
sporkit150|1 year ago