[umvi]

I'm not sure I completely agree with this logic because you are saying "if I neglect <X> in personal time, then it is in my and my employer's best interests for me to address <X> during work time (because otherwise I will be less productive)"

However, X could be a wide range of things. To use an extreme example, I could neglect fixing my furnace during personal time, and thus I can do it on my employer's dime so that I don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning while WFH (I would be unproductive if I am dead)...

[egypturnash]

If you were in an office then your employer - or the building's landlord - would arrange for someone to fix the furnace. But your employer has now commandeered your home as your workspace during the pandemic. It's probably seeing a lot more wear and tear because of this. Are they going to pay someone to come out and fix your furnace? Probably not.

[aaron-santos]

It's the same equation at play in the Uber/Lyft/auto+gig realm. A portion of the means of production[physical space, electricity, plumbing, etc.] has been shifted from being employer-owned to employee-owned while keeping other parts of the equation constant. Rather than employers bearing the cost of purchasing or maintaining these means, employees find themselves paying for these out of their wages. It might be tempting to respond with "yes, but employees have or were going to buy these anyway." But consider effects beyond the surface level, additional wear to heating and cooling machinery because the machinery would otherwise be idle while the employee was away at work, the wear of home office furniture, and the change in monthly data usage w.r.t. data caps. Some employers have recognized this shift in burden, but have most? How does this shift affect incentives?

[blurbleblurble]

Keep in mind that a lot of this stuff is really owned, at the end of the day, by capitalists... in the literal sense, by institutions and individuals who command capital. Auto gig workers typically rent or lease the cars, then work to pay them off, living on precarious margins. Sure, they're responsible for maintenance, but at the end of the day, the cars will vanish if they don't make their payments. Most of us rent our houses or have mortgages on them, but they're not paid off.

Which is why people are working so much in the first place! There are payments to be made, on a strict schedule. You could lose your home and burn bridges if you don't keep up. Quite a few people actually do lose their homes and burn bridges. It's common to think of this as being their fault for being lazy.

But this whole arrangement is unsustainable for the people and for the planet.

And this is the whole point of Thomas Piketty's famous book a few years back that caused a big stir but is all but ignored by political and economic leaders in the US.

There are very good reasons why cultures before banned usury. Sure, rent and debt are powerful economic tools, but with great power comes great responsibility, and I'm still waiting for the lawmakers and business leaders where I live (the US) to go ahead and exercise that responsibility by creating sensible countermeasures to protect people from exploitation.

[nubb]

The key to making the parent post make sense is to not think of time as personal/work time. My job is 100% project based so I don’t need to be owned by my job during the 9-5 hours. If I nap all day and work nights and my projects all complete, who cares? I understand not all roles fit this model.

[glasss]

I think I agree with their logic more than I would have thought on my own.

I would be less productive at work if I were stressing out about a personal item that I would normally handle during "personal time". I've had fantastic employees have horrible weeks / months because they refused to take a few days off to deal with personal items.

As an employer, I would definitely say it is in my best long term interest to have an employee who is happy and doesn't have problems at home. If that means someone I'm paying 6 figures needs every Friday off for a few months then so be it. Or in this case, taking a nap whenever they need to, provided it's not a 4 hour nap everyday at 1 PM.

[P_I_Staker]

Your example isn't even bad though. The point is that why do we have to eat the personal cost of that? My work follows me home and I don't get compensated. If you aren't structuring your time around this, I do think it's often in the best interest of the company.

[fogetti]

But that's not what the comment says. He says he is not neglecting the bedtime and despite of that he cannot sleep enough. It can have a whole range of reasons why someone cannot sleep, many of them out of the commenter's control, so there cannot be any neglect whatsoever in any sense of the word in that case.

[boatsie]

Doctors and dentists typically only work during “work time”, so are you saying you would schedule a vacation day in order to visit one?

As non hourly, exempt workers, it’s generally assumed the time is flexible, in the same way you aren’t paid for overtime.

[m463]

You are making the assumption that people working from home work on a clock, and talking to my friends and coworkers is not common. Although I have one friend who does it pretty religiously, and he seems to be happier for it.