A few years back, I lived in the SF Bay Area. Driving home at 3am, drive time was 45 minutes. During daylight hours? 3 hours, each way. I would leave at 6am, get there at 9am, and then when I turned around to go home at 6 pm I would get home at 9pm. Longer on Fridays.
This was my best option. Commuting on rail and bus wasn't possible because the hours the bus ran were too short, when the bus showed up at all. Ironically, if there were better bus service from rail hubs in the SF/South Bay, I would probably have never left.
Rail and bike worked, except I literally had to jump off my bike at least twice to avoid being killed by drivers, in addition to people trying to door me, run me off the road, or cut me off- mostly by people who literally would rather kill me than yield for a bike (and yes, I was following all traffic laws, even when they weren't). Also, being harassed by police for various reasons, including for locking my bike up to street signs because there is no bike parking in the Bay Area. I once had a San Jose police officer pull a gun on me and threaten to shoot me if I didn't get off my bike and walk it down an empty street, just because.
Motorcycle didn't work because I had people cut me off or door me to keep me from riding around them in traffic. Radio DJs would regularly joke about dooring motorcyclists. After seeing too many downed motorcyclists, and a couple of my own near mishaps, I stopped riding a motorcycle there.
And, yes, that burned me out. I moved away from there, found work in places where I could safely ride a bicycle or remote work. My health as been better for it.
Never going back to commuting if I can possibly avoid it.
I’m lucky that I can reach the office by lrt in about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, my colleagues usually take an hour or longer… I don’t understand the need to be in offices all the time. Sure, having IRL interaction with your colleagues sometimes is good but it doesn’t need to be all the time.
Right? Tell me about it. I would rather those who can do their job from home stay home so I don’t have to fight for a place on the public transport or be aggressive on the road.
I take the train instead of drive to office and still the long commute (3-4 hours per day) is burning me out. All for jobs that not only can be fully done at home, but also can be done much more efficiently from home because all the chatter and distractions in office. Luckily managed to push for WFH on certain days of the week, so that I can work more on WFH days because I can’t get shit done on WFO days.
I take the train as well due to the time taken for me to drive to work is roughly the same time needed through public transportation. I still feel tired, and I don’t know how others drive to work everyday. Through this congestion.
Yeah I drove to work from Kajang to KL every day many years ago. Definitely prefer taking the train. But it’s still a needless waste of time and energy.
I passed up the opportunity to convert my internship into a full-time position because there’s no flexi working arrangement even though I could do most of my tasks at home. The commute whether by PT or driving is intolerable
Oof, sorry to hear. I really don’t understand the whole “we have an office, you must be in the office to work even if you can do your job just as week from home” mentality.
it’s about control, boomer managers are afraid of losing that. they talk about office culture but when you rock up they talk about their kids and what not also. tf
What a terrible article. No content that has anything to do with a headline, it reads like some random gibberish that chatGPT spat out.
But other than that, I’d say optional WFH wherever possible is a must. Forcing people into offices for multiple days a week when they could do their job at home is stupid.
It also forces people who have no interest in cars or driving to drive (because let’s be honest, it’s faster for most commutes), which causes frustration for everyone on the road.
thanks for your feedback, considering all the context cues that this was a piece of malaysian article written by malaysians for malaysians posted on a malaysia instance, maybe cool it with accusing their (heavily edited) submission as being written by AI. or maybe just don’t say anything at all.
I had a 10 min bike ride to work, then “accepted” a “promotion” that led to an opening with a 70 mile commute in LA traffic that could be at best 1.5hrs, at worst 3hrs each way. 3 weeks straight work, then one day off for the next 15, then christmas day off, then 6 days @ 12-15hrs.
Needless to say that lasted 11 months (got slightly better through the summer) & I started consulting & private catering until we left the US for good the following year.
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