Ted Rall for June 21, 2023

Up until… well it was a few years before the Covid epidemic… most people basically could not work from home. Technology wasn’t there. Remember “envelope stuffing” scams? As a programmer, I could work from home, and spent a year or so doing it. I actually preferred working in the office (assuming it was a good one). Because work was THERE and home was HERE and that was pleasant. That and wandering around banging my head on the walls while thinking a problem through is more productive when someone pops out and discusses the problem with me. Plus for programmers, caffeine is free at the office, but at home you buy your own. But I’d prefer home to the horrible experience I had with one startup where everybody worked at long tables in one big room. Everybody but mahogany row and HR anyway. Young males (most programmers are) don’t share space with old farts (me) very comfortably. I eventually started wandering around before people got there stealing their nerf darts which I hid away so they couldn’t use them to break my concentration. That helped a LITTLE bit.

Don’t understand what Mr. Rall is trying to say.

This doesn’t work since rowers during the roman empire were all slaves from lands they took over so your metaphor stupid as it is doesnt work

The problem is if the work can be done from “home” that “home” can just as well be in India for $2 hour.

Companies have these big buildings and they don’t like seeing them empty. Middle managers like the guy in armor are upset because they can’t micromanage and make employees’ lives a living hell. I imagine upper management also feels useless which has been their function anyway.

Is that DiStupid in the white dress?

They can’t be slaves. They are not black. EVERYBODY knows white men only enslave black people.

Two institutional ways of doing business are being threatened by the “work at home” development.

Commercial real estate is bottoming out in major population centers. A sector of the economy that is pushing back hard with its political influence in state and federal circles.

The other is the need for a level of middle management whose primary role is to assure upper management that they can report to their shareholders that the workers (who they are deign to associate with) are dutifully conforming to the established corporate culture.

In the first case it seems to me that this sector of the economy is ripe for extinction. (Trump/Kushner as poster boys)

In the second, one thing Covid has done for us is to prove the efficiency of not having to go to the bother of commuting back and forth to an office when a job can be performed just as well at home. Don’t trust your employees? Look in the mirror. When corporations began thinking of employees as liabilities versus assets (what a concept!) their might have been a loss of trust in the mission.

Good on ya, Ted. My Daughter is a temp working from home who knows the job and does it well, but they won’t put her on full time and give her benefits because she prefers not to go in to the office. Going into the office would provide no discernible benefit to her employer, and one of these days they will lose her valuable contribution because they are too stubborn to make her full time and allow her to work remotely.

Ted has the good fortune to work at home on Long Island so doesn’t know it’s that darn commute in and out of the city they hate!

Ted, those galley slaves lived on the ship, so technically they are working from home.

When I heard that Hunter Biden was making a plea bargain with the Feds yesterday, I pretty much figured out that Ted Rall and Scott Stantis would go full-blown Beavis and Butthead on their podcast, and they did not (did) disappoint with a special edition today. Let’s view their lamest lowlights.

1. Rall went full false equivalency by comparing Hunter to trumpster fire. Is Hunter a POS, absolutely. Should he have gone to jail, probably. When adults are brought into the room, is there a strong parallel between him and the orange sierra stain, no.

2. Ted is very scared about what is about to happen with our politics because justice is being brought to trumpster fire, and his older lil’ brother, Stanti agrees with him, wholeheartedly.

3. Ted contends that the U.S. is a banana republic because the country prosecutes a criminal, who knowingly retained top-secret military documents and showed them off to his friends. He and Stanti, who regularly, rightly complain that too many items are classified, try to false equivalency compare trumpster fire’s actions with top-secret military documents to Biden’s accidently keeping “classified” documents, which were probably some invitation to a luncheon or something. It’s when Ted does stuff like this that he loses every bit of credibility to which he ever aspired, and if I were the L.A. Times, I would have taken a strong side glance at him for such reckless behavior. As for Stanti, he’s just not that smart.

4. Ted says that trumpster has 70 million devoted followers. He has more like 30-40 million devoted followers and another 34-44 million people who voted for him last time. Good ol’ Ted, yeah, he’s lucent. He contends that justice = “disenfranchising half the voters.”

5. Ted says trumpster fire never should have been charged for his childish, arrogant defiance of our laws, AFTER, he was warned numerous times. He also notes that the Justice Department timed its actions for…continued:

the 2024 election, rather than methodically working cases against powerful people, which always takes a long time. Stanti notes that all the actions against trumpster fire have diminished the government, rather than the truth that American voters, by placing such a piece of crap in office, have diminished the government.

6. Ted thinks that Civil War is coming. Stanti is intrigued by the idea.

7. Here’s the deal, ADULTWORLD, trumpster fire’s rightful trials will not conclude before the 2024 election. Teddy’s contention that he will go to jail during the campaign is his shrill effort to just ruin the view of our country………..Stanti, as usual, falls right in with Ted, good little stooge. Ted further notes that (read this in a high-pitch, whiny, Elmer Fudd voice), nobody will evuh ‘won for office because dey will fear being prosecuted……….all because justice is pretty much being reluctantly conducted against the worst person to hold the office of President.

The only rich possibilities I see from “in-person collaboration” are those that only weak bosses who love to micromanage their underlings would benefit from.

Good one, Ted!

I actually agree with Ted here re: the so-called “in-person collaboration.” What BS! I had a conversation the other night with friends about how difficult it was to work in an office environment – cubicles – loud people on the phone, you can’t think, back to back meetings you can’t attend in person because the distance between the office buildings was too great to get from one to another, long long long nasty commute there and back, still work needed to be done from home as business was worldwide (Europe in morning, US during day, Asia evening, India middle of the night). Having people work from home also has the benefit of reducing traffic and emissions – a much better option than building more freeways or worse creating HOV lanes. So happy to be retired from the whole mess!

You load 16 tons and what do you get another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter ain’t you coming because I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store.

Corporations are again trying to destroy what they can’t control

Awesome, Ted! As someone who has taught leadership for more than 40 years, this is dead-on. They’re generally clueless as to the wants, needs, capabilities, and potential of their employees, and can’t fathom what it means to set expectations, equip and prepare them, and then measure their accomplishments.

Those troglodytes are going to be left behind.

Look up McGregor X and McGregor Y theory. In the U.S. many employers, and all large employers, are McGregor X.

Alright already! All the starboard crew members may work from home on odd numbered days, port side works on even numbered days. Now, are you happy?!