Back in the Office

Nicola says: Stop working from home - and buy some bloody coffee.

UPDATE: This newsletter was previously paywalled but is now public and available to all. Thank you kindly to the paying subscribers of Nick’s Kōrero. 🙂

These things that I've been told can rearrange
My world, my doubt in time but inside out

This is the working hour
We are paid by those who learn by our mistakes

Songwriters: Ian Stanley / Roland Orzabal / Immanuel Franklin Elias

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Since Covid, life has been tough for many central city businesses. As you know, people had to find different ways of working during the pandemic. Ways that didn’t involve leaving home or possibly even putting on pants. For many, the experience was positive, both in terms of their productivity and their lives.

Since Covid went away. Sorry, yes, I’m kidding. Let me re-phrase.

Subsequent to our measures to prevent the spread of Covid and our now apparent acceptance of the number of people dying from it, most people have returned to the office. However, quite a few have settled into a split routine of perhaps a couple of days a week working from home and then going into the office the rest of the time.

In so doing, they get the benefit of face-to-face time with colleagues while also retaining focused time without the distractions and wasted hours of meetings and commuting to actually get stuff done.

So far, so good. A win/win for everyone: happier staff who can more easily manage the day-to-day hassles of having a child home sick from school, for example, while still being at least as productive. Less commuting is good for the environment; we should move towards having far less of that. We spend billions building roads to transport people into the central city for no good reason.

Imagine a world where everyone already worked from home, and someone proposed they spend 1-2 hours a day stuck in gridlock, belching fumes into the atmosphere, paying an exorbitant amount for parking, and having constant distractions rather than just getting on with their work. People would laugh at it. It’s a crazy idea—it makes no sense.

The only people who are concerned about folks working from home are bad managers who feel the need to maintain some illusion of control or add value by observing people in the office. Managers like this guy:

The Prime Minister said he wanted a “highly productive and collaborative” public service. He said, “I do not want to see working from home undermining that ambition that we have,” as he was worried young graduates would not have the opportunity to learn from senior public servants because they were working from home.

Are those senior public servants working from home, Christopher? Is that where they are? Does it help you sleep at night to imagine that the thousands of people whose lives you have damaged are not desperately looking for work or thinking about moving to Australia but are “Working from Home”?

They say ignorance is bliss - that would explain the smile from the Prime Minister because I sure can’t imagine another reason for him to do so. In fact, I think what he was really saying was more like this:

“Since we laid off all these public servants, the businesses in Wellington keep going broke, and we have no idea why, so we think the best thing is if the rest of you come back into the office and, for god sake, buy some sandwiches and coffee.

Hey, Nicola, why don’t we eliminate all the coffee machines and kettles in the public sector? Then they’ll have to buy drinks from the shops, and we’ll be the saviours of the cafe scene. What do you mean my microphone is still on?

Errr, I think you mean let’s put the kettle on and make those hard-working public servants a cup of tea. Everyone deserves one of those, don’t they, Nicola?

Why are you looking at me like that? I’ve told you before that when you keep mouthing, O M G, while I talk, it’s bad for my confidence. So stop it, and tell me - when will they like me? Hey, stop laughing.”

It’s a bit rich for a guy who is barely in the country, let alone the office. If you think that’s harsh, then answer this - what has Aotearoa gained from all of Luxon’s gallivanting overseas? Apart from embarrassment? Nothing that I can discern.

To be fair to our Prime Minister, without Ministerial responsibilities, this isn’t really his baby. Mr Luxon appears quite childless when it comes to ideas and initiatives. This one is all about Nicola Willis, who yesterday declared that the Public Service has had it too good for too long

Nicola Willis wonders where everyone is. Image: BeFunky.

Was the Public Service Minister worried that having laid off thousands of public servants, the rest felt complacent? Was she concerned that morale was a bit too high and needed to be taken down a peg or two? Or does she think there are some points to be had with the ZB crowd from giving the public sector another flogging so they don’t end up moving their votes to ACT, who are undoubtedly happy to be even more ruthless?

Any way you look at it, it’s a pretty crumby thing to be doing. What problem is she trying to solve exactly?

While I’m sure we all sympathise with the food businesses impacted by a lack of customers in the CBD, the reality is that people stop spending money on things like coffee and takeaways in times of uncertainty. They bring a packed lunch and save their pennies in case they’re next on Nicola Willis’ chopping block.

Come on, guys, it’s not just the working from home; it’s all the headless corpses of the public sector in the box that everyone can see marked “For the Tax Cuts”. That elephant in the room is not mentioned until the last 10 seconds of Stuff’s report from last night on the announcement.

The whole thing is just odd, and it’s certainly the only time you’ll hear Nicola Willis say “Back” and “Office” in a sentence that doesn’t also include “Heads”, “With”, “Off”, and “Theirs”.

It just seems so unlikely and off brand for Willis to be concerned about businesses failing, especially the bare faced hypocrisy of it given that she is more responsible for their downturn than anyone else. So why on earth would she decide out of the blue to make such an announcement this week? Was it simply another daft gimmick as a distraction from the important stuff? Or could it have have been the influence of others?

Public Service Minister, Nicola Willis. Image: NZHerald.

My friend Irene posted about a column Heather du Plessis-Allan had written, suggesting the two were linked. I hadn’t read the article having had a day off looking at the news, which goes about 10,000 fold for anything from that source. I’ll read her words to inform my writing, sadly this is the information that many in this country are being fed, but on a day off? Not a chance. A few headlines in the Guardian, sure, but Heather’s reckons voluntarily? Oh hell no.

In fairness to Heather while she may be one of the nastiest people in the country, and her vile columns rage with hate and misinformation to anger the dumbest people in the country, I do get it. If I shared a home with Barry Soper I’d be all for getting back into the office too. Surely even Heather deserves some respite?

I’m kidding - those two deserve each other, it’s just a shame they have to be inflicted on the rest of us.

Just the day before Nicola’s call for people to return to the office, by complete coincidence, Heather wrote an article calling for just that. Uncanny isn’t it?

It’s hard to tell whether this means that the government is now taking direction from Newstalk ZB or whether NZME is being notified of government announcements ahead of time so they can smooth the waters. Of course it could simply be a coincidence, and if you believe that could I perhaps offer you a bridge for sale?

Heather begins her article by setting out who the villains in the story are:

They’re called “Twats”: public servants who only bother coming into the office Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Obviously, it’s just a wild coincidence that the Working From Home (WFH) days are on either side of the weekend. It won’t be at all because that creates a four-day weekend and allows a public servant to spend four whole glorious days at the beach house.

So there you go, over in ZB land the reason there might have been some impact on the public sector is nothing to do with the government laying off all those pointless pen pushers but it’s the fact that the skivers are taking a four day weekend - every week. Those lazy bastards.

Heather du Plessiss-Allan. Photo: NZ Herald/Hagen Hopkins.

In her article Heather uses the example of Amazon who have recently required Australian employees to return to the office. And what better role model than a company that penalises staff for spending too long going to the toilet, paying low wages, while making massive profits that the CEO uses to play spaceman?

Heather finishes her delightful diatribe against the public sector by saying:

There’s no downside to ordering them back into the office. It’d be good for the governing parties, given that they tell us they’re here to whip the country back into shape. It’d be good for the private sector too, providing an example for corporates to point to while they still struggle to get the reclusive IT teams to actually turn up at HQ. And it’d be good for the Wellington economy.

The only people it’d be bad for are the public servants forced to cut down their time at the beach house.

Do you remember that bit a few paragraphs back when you maybe thought I was being a bit harsh on Heather? How about now? Gross isn’t it? I think it’s time for some other opinions.

Duane Leo, National Secretary for the Public Service Association, said, “if the Government really cared about the Wellington economy, then it shouldn’t have cut thousands of hardworking, dedicated public service workers from its payroll. Simply telling workers to come back to the city a few more days a week won’t revive the Wellington economy. In a cost-of-living crisis, people are already saving money by making their own lunches and cutting down on coffees and after-work drinks.”

Public Service Association national secretary Duane Leo (Source: Supplied)

Carmel Sepuloni, Deputy leader of the Labour Party, said, “I think that they have had a theme right from the start of demonising public servants and this certainly fits with that. I’m not sure when this became the big issue of the day. I’m very surprised to see so much time spent on this given there is no evidence base to show that actually public servants have in fact been less productive working from home or in any way skiving off which seems to be the inference here. We haven’t seen any evidence to show performance was affected.”

Francisco Hernandez, Green Party Public Service spokesman, called the move a “shallow soundbite policy” and “a cheap shot to a public service that is being gutted by the Government”. He said, “It is laughable for the Prime Minister to claim that this will be good for the Wellington CBD when his Government has cut almost 7000 public service jobs, which has had devastating downstream effects to the local economy.”

In the years post Covid all workplaces have had to adapt and I’m sure that there are guidelines in place in these public sector organisations already without the need for intervention from Nicola and Christopher.

Funny isn’t it? In every other situation. From the police to health. National Party ministers are all to quick to invoke the mantra that it’s an operational issue and not up to them.

They’re always ready to distance themselves from bad news yet they feel the need to demonstrate that they add value. Beyond simply trimming staff numbers and threatening those who speak out with the sack.

So we get pointless initiatives like banning phones in schools, when schools already had rules in place, or telling the public sector to manage working from home - despite offering no evidence that there is any issue.

This idea that after Nicola and Christopher have so badly damaged the economy, particularly in central Wellington, that it is up to the remaining Public Servants to not only pick up all the extra work of their former colleagues, but to buy enough coffee to keep the CBD going as well - is insulting and idiotic.

So, just another day from the helpful folks at your coalition. As usual if this newsletter reaches 100 likes today I’ll open it up to others. Have a great day all you lovely people - not you Nicola Willis.

If you grew up in the 80s chances are you know that Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears was an incredible album. Here is Working Hour, if you don’t know it I really encourage you to give it a go.