Montreal City Weblog

Kate 12:11 on 2026-04-03 Permalink Reply  

• steph 16:15 on 2026-04-03 Permalink

  What a waste of money, time and resources. It’s not the job of civil servants to save down town. I’ve been hearing more and more people talking about boycotting downtown shops completely because of measures like this.

  At my workplace they changed the vocabulary recently from “obligation to work in office twice a week” to “permission to WFH twice a week”. I’m on a four day schedule so it changed nothing for me, but people working 5 days are far from pleased.

• CE 19:09 on 2026-04-03 Permalink

  Why would people boycott downtown shops because of policies at other workplaces that they have no control over?

• Blork 22:15 on 2026-04-03 Permalink

  I’m wondering the same.

• steph 23:00 on 2026-04-03 Permalink

  Considering how CCMM has a clear agenda to encourage return to the office to rekindle downtown spending, boycotting downtown spending is a form of pushing back those ideas. Makes sense to me.

• bob 07:05 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  WFH is great in theory, and there are productivity gains, and there are personal benefits for workers. But there are some other effects that create or accelerate corrosive social and economic trends. It is yet another atomizing influence in a society that is already hyper-individualistic to the point of pathological narcissism, it is applied in an iremmediably inequiitable way across classes of workers undoing a century’s worth of gains in economic and social equality, it depopulates city cores but also public spaces in favour of being ensconced in a self-centered, entitled bubble.

  @steph – ah, the logic of the tantrum. If I can’t have my way I’ll ruin everything for everyone. The people have no bread, so the mobs burn down the bakeries. Shades of Dominique Francon.

• steph 08:37 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  @ bob – You’re comparing how I spend my money with a tantrum and arson? You sound ridiculous.

• Kevin 08:58 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  I have spent my entire life working with people I’ve never met in person. I interact with phone calls, emails, video calls and nationwide intercom systems.

  This community on this blog is another example of a group that has used tools to grow together without ever seeing each other.

  The idea that people have to meet in person to work together is absolute nonsense.

• Chris 16:46 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  and the idea that videoconferencing is as good as in person is absolute nonsense too.

• Kate 17:35 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  It feels like bob’s argument comes down to the same reason kids should go to school rather than be taught at home: everyone needs to spend time with people they didn’t choose and may not like – in fact, may actively either fear or despise – and learn how to cope with this situation. Everyone also needs to live with the fact they’re in a pecking order and how to suck up to the boss while dishing out appropriate amounts of crap to those beneath them.

  You learn the basics at school and go on to practise them at the office, and opting out is somehow either unfair or weak.

  Do we lose our social skills by WFH, as we lose muscle strength by sitting all day?

  Chris, do I need to smell you to interact with you?

• Ian 19:42 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  As a teacher I can say that engagement definitely goes down with distance learning. I know there are a lot of factors involved so I can’t say precisely why, but the interaction is very different. Teachers can’t see what students are working on, when we are giving lectures or asking questions we can’t observe reactions, and the students can’t tell what is going on with the teacher for the same reasons – let alone each other. There is also way more back channel texting which kind of blows the rhythm of a class if you don’t know if people are even paying attention.

  I think part of it, especially for younger people, is also the separation of home and outside. I also noticed my post-covid cohorts being really emotionally fragile for a couple of years. Part of being in class is definitely the communal experience of working together in proximity and getting immediate feedback, and the micro-socializations that occur between not only teacher and student but studetn to student.

  This is not to say that distance learning or homeschooling don’t work, but that they lack the immediate interaction that groupwork and face-to-face provides naturally. It also prevents people from developing the ability to judge reactions when doing presenations or pitches.

  I personally worked for decades remotely and loved it, but teaching remotely was problematic on many, many levels – and I didn’t even have to deal with being constantly stuck at home with my parents with no physical social contact with my friends let alone just getting away from everyone for a bit – which is kind of a big deal all by itself. Of course that’s covid, but for remote schooling it’s not much different except you can go for a walk to blow off steam or just be alone for a bit.

• Mozai 20:47 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  My order of preference for white-collar office work is: classroom style, cubicle farm, working from home, open-concept office, hotdesking in a giant cafeteria, folding tables in a gymnasium. Guess what is the norm in 2026.

• Ian 20:57 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  I liked cubicle farm the best. Open concept hotdesking is hot horseshit.

• Blork 21:14 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  Oh gawd, hotdesking is the worst.

• Blork 21:15 on 2026-04-04 Permalink

  People who say that nobody ever needs to work from the office, and people who say everyone should always work from the office, are both wrong. There are many variables at play, including the type of work, the type of people (some are naturally social and some not), the nature of the commute, where the person is in their career, etc. There’s no one right answer.

  Personally, I would have hated to WFH in the early years of my career. I was young, had an easy commute downtown by bike or Metro, and I enjoyed sharing the workspace with my colleagues, especially since I was in way over my head, so having people there to help me F2F was really helpful, especially since we all got along well and had fun times at the office. I made a lot of long-term friendships there, which wouldn’t have happened if we did not have physical proximity and an easy exit to a 5à7 on a regular basis. It was also nice to be downtown with all the activity and various lunch options. Much better than being cooped up in my apartment all day (and then at night, after work).

  By the time of the Pandemic I was already WFH two or three days a week, which was great by then, at point in my life and career. My commute by then was longer and more annoying, and my home situation was better (an actual home office and not just a nook carved out of the living room).

  Younger workers definitely benefit from in-person mentoring. This has been demonstrated over and over. Also, recent studies show that in-office junior workers tend to do better than their remote counterparts. This isn’t because of company rules or anything; it’s just human nature that people who are physically present are noticed more. These are important considerations for people in the early stages of their careers.

  By the time you’re a middle-aged middle manager it’s probably less important, although AFAIK it still stands that the visible (i.e. present) people tend to have the advantage when it comes to raises and promotions, and avoiding layoffs and whatnot. This isn’t absolute, but it’s a tendency.

  As to boycotting downtown businesses because some people in authority want less WFH, that makes no sense to me at all. Those businesses (I’m thinking cafes, restaurants, retailers) are just trying to do business and survive. They’re not the bad guys.

• Kevin 08:56 on 2026-04-05 Permalink

  I know many fields are different, but have you people never had to interact with co-wonkers in different cities or countries? Did you really need someone from another branch come to visit you in person in the pre-pandemic years?

  One of my current tasks is to spend a fair amount of one-on-one time with a junior staffer and it’s working amazing well using ancient technology: the telephone, with both of us looking at the same document online.

  There’s a slight chance it might be better to meet in person in isolation in an office, but like Mozai points out very few people have individual offices with doors anymore — the norm is a noisy cubicle farm or a noisier hotdesk room.

• Blork 12:39 on 2026-04-05 Permalink

  Kevin, I agree that when you’re working directly with someone or on a specific project it can work just as well or even better if the people are in different locations. In my last job, probably half the people I worked with were scattered over the U.S. and Canada, as well as Australia, Europe, and South Africa. It worked well aside from a lot of waiting because of those time zone differences. (I wish I had a dollar for every time I had to wait 18 hours for a simple “yes or no” answer.)

  But there is much more to office work than just the direct work on specific tasks. Especially for younger workers, it’s the little things you pick up in indirect conversations with people, or when you just happen upon someone else’s conversation and you join in.

  It’s all that stuff you pick up in non-meeting chats with people who aren’t even on your team, or who work on different projects than you do; stuff you would have virtually no exposure to if you were working from home all the time.

  In my first couple of jobs it was that stuff that really let me learn about the company and the products and how things work. It’s also how I stayed relevant and remembered, given I was sometimes a team of one and therefore easy to forget about if I wasn’t physically present.

• MarcG 14:01 on 2026-04-05 Permalink

  I’m definitely using the hybrid term ‘co-wonkers’ going forward, thanks Kevin.

  (I’m current torturing my wife by using the annoying business-speak “going forward” as often as possible).

• Ian 14:06 on 2026-04-05 Permalink

  It’s a big ask, but nimble pivots like adopting as-needed vocabulary is an all-hands action item.

  co-wankers is right there on the table

• Blork 16:47 on 2026-04-05 Permalink

  @MarcG, it’s torturing me, too. 😉

• Kate 20:05 on 2026-04-06 Permalink

  Blork, you remind me of one of my failings as a co‑wonker: I never smoked. I’d look up from my computer, mid morning or afternoon, and desks would be empty, everyone would be outside, smoking. After a point I became aware that it was in the smoking area that the real tea got spilled, but I wasn’t willing to take up smoking to become more integrated with the crowd.