Nanny Employer

[Yppej]

I was shocked to hear in the news the other day that there is proposed legislation to reimburse people lucky enough to have been able to work from home. Not only are these folks safe from the pandemic, but they have saved commuting costs. All of them I know had the employer provide a laptop.

The example given in the news story as to why this was needed - they had to buy their own coffee instead of their employer providing it. Seriously? Everything going on with covid and this is what the country should be spending money on?

Is coffee a perk the nanny employer owes you regardless of where you work?

[Tybee]

I've worked remote for 20 years and never had an employer provide me with a computer, let alone coffee.

[JaneV2.0]

I worked remotely from my own computer, drinking my own coffee. As far as I know, that's normal.

[SteveinMN]

DW, who worked at county government was part of an employee-funded coffee pool. In my 30 years in IT, if coffee was provided for free (very rarely), I didn't consider it drinkable (that's my deal but it proves we weren't talking Starbucks here). Not a perk I ever relied on.

I'm curious about the source for the news story. It sounds like there's more to the request than just reimbursement for coffee and it could be sloppy reporting. Even the New York Times has slacked off their old standard. It could just be that story.

[Yppej]

I heard it on TV but here is a print article that includes a reference to it:

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/work-from-home-cost-stipend-covid-19

[JaneV2.0]

I've read that some employers provided laptops to those working at home from money they saved in office space rentals. Seems fair to me.

[bae]

When I worked remotely from here for my Silicon Valley company, they dropped ~$100K to install a T1 line to my mountain fortress, paid the $1600/month charge for it, provided me with a rack of servers and some Sun workstations, videoconferencing gear, and hardware-encrypted VPN routers.

I had to buy my own coffee though.

My Silicon Valley company is selling off its very expensive Mountain View campus, which we built right when I moved up here, for a fortune, because they don't intend to return to a face-to-face model for most of the workers there. Amazon or Google are purchasing the campus.

My Fire Department employer provides free water and power for the coffee machine at the station, we have to buy our own beans out of our union funds.

[catherine]

For several years the company I left (and now work for freelance) promoted remote work, and outfitted account people with computers, printers, phones, etc.

Not sure how they're handling the exodus of ALL employees to working from home.

[Tradd]

At the old company I was laid off from in March, I would have been expected to work from home on my small MacBook. I had two large monitors at the office. They did not have enough laptops to go around. It would have been very inefficient snd I wouldn’t have gotten as much done. They did provide coffee, but since I drank tea, I provided my own.

Current boss since I work from home fully remotely was provided with a good laptop and two 24” monitors.

I know some work from home (since the pandemic) people have gotten their knickers in a twist about having larger utility bills since they’re home all day.

[JaneV2.0]

I would think utility costs would be offset by not having the expense of gas and auto upkeep. Not to mention, one's time is valuable, and commute time adds up.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I suppose one could waste time getting angry of every possible piece of legislation someone somewhere proposed that won't make it past committee. Does the lack of Trump's daily chaos means they have to try extra hard now to generate outrage?

But no you are simply wrong about how life works. *shrug* I work from home and had to use my own laptop. The company is not big and did not prior to this have ANY work from home capacity. About a month ago my laptop stopped connecting to the work vpn altogether DUE TO software that WORK INSTALLED. Since they couldn't fix that, I now have a work laptop. So it was my own laptop, and extra expense for internet (got more expensive internet as it was a struggle to work with what I have) but saved on commute. I'm not complaining, but I also really doubt this is serious legislation that is being proposed rather than just something being talked about to generate anger. One could itemize expenses for tax purposes I suppose, but with Trump's tax changes itemization generally makes very little sense anymore if it ever did.

I don't drink coffee.

[ApatheticNoMore]

That article doesn't seem to reference anyone proposing any actual legislation (and it's from August).