Your Boss Wants You to RTO But Your Spouse Needs You to WFH?
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a super salad of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions, by Jessica Karl . Sign up here .
Today’s Agenda
A Spouse in the House!
Traditional wedding vows go something like this:
I, Blah Blah Blah, take thee, Bladdy Blah Blah, to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live …
But after reading Sarah Green Carmichael ’s latest column , I’m thinking we need to make a crucial revision:
I, Blah Blah Blah, take thee, Bladdy Blah Blah, to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as neither of us is employed by a company that imposes a rigid return-to-office policy, leading to a gradual buildup of resentment until that fateful day when, after forgetting to check the parent portal for carpool arrangements, you find yourself in tears in the Walmart parking lot, reminiscing about your previous job, the one where knowledge of hand, foot, and mouth disease was not a requirement.
In the US at least, “the return-to-office tug of war is playing out not only between bosses and employees but between spouses,” Sarah writes, as stricter policies are forcing parents to show up at the office. Covid-era WFH policies gave two-career couples a chance at creating a more equitable work-life-balance for the entire family. Spouses were able to commute on the days they’d like and establish routines that allowed them and their partner to divvy up chores — organizing a playdate, picking up a prescription, cleaning the air fryer — more evenly than ever before . “But as executives demand more days in the office and set stricter team schedules, the ebbing of flexibility is creating a mounting sense of alarm that the future will look an awful lot like the past,” she warns.
Since the dawn of Corporate America, women and men have often filled two buckets. Women sat in one, doing most of the unpaid household work. Men sat in the other, which was cushioned with fatter paychecks. Covid, in many ways, flipped all this on its head: Men realized they enjoyed spending more time at home with their children, and women reached new highs in labor force participation. But as strict RTO policies return, so too does the prospect of work-life conflict with your spouse. At the heart of that battle sits your employer, who has the power to grant (or deny) your requests for flexibility, Sarah writes. If you’re denied, paying $15,000 to $20,000 a year for child care might be your only option.
For single parents, the stakes for RTO are that much higher, Kathryn Anne Edwards argues . “Suppose a mother with young children wants to work. Can she, if nobody else is willing or able to stay home with the kids?” Finding affordable care won’t be easy, considering half of the country is classified as a child-care desert . “America needs a comprehensive zero-to-five policy,” she writes, advocating for a proposal that looks like this:
“At all levels, all families are covered, and all can choose whether to participate,” Kathryn explains. It’s a worthy goal, but until then, “til death do us part” just might need to come with a caveat about who’s willing to return to work, and when.
Super Salad
If you claim to be “above” going to a casual restaurant such as Olive Garden, shame on you. Not only are you denying yourself unlimited breadsticks, you’re turning down an opportunity to be a Great American Equalizer. Economic researchers used geolocation data to examine encounters across class lines, and they found that restaurant chains à la Applebee’s and Red Lobster are way better at bringing the rich and the poor together compared to places like museums, churches, schools and parks.
Consider one of America’s most prestigious universities: Harvard. The opening page of the school’s website is a line about how Harvard’s “dynamic student community” comes “together to advance education and foster change in the world.” But here’s the thing: More than two-thirds of Harvard undergrads come from the top 20% of the income distribution, while only 4.5% come from the bottom 20%. Where’s the dynamism in that?
Now maybe you’re wondering: How was Olive Garden able to unlock an achievement that not even an Ivy League school can touch? “These kinds of restaurants manage to mix the rich and poor by creating an environment in which a lot of the traditional status markers are absent,” Tyler Cowen says . Olive Garden attracts both the middle school basketball team and Bethanny Frankel , not because it’s trying to be “fancy,” but because it’s ceding cultural control. There’s only so many places on this planet that can claim to be a backdrop to your engagement , your wedding and even your funeral , and the Italian restaurant chain cosplaying as a Tuscan villa just so happens to be one of them.
You see, Olive Garden charms everybody, no matter how many zeroes are on your paycheck or what kind of car you drive. It’s an iconic puzzle piece of Americana, nestled snugly between the Exxon Mobil and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Whether you’re in Times Square or Tennessee, the hostesses are always friendly and the waitstaff is willing to endlessly grate parmesan on your pasta. Even if you don’t love the food — and Tyler notes it’s not his favorite — you have to admire the atmosphere.
Political Polling
Yesterday I asked readers to send me their end-of-the-world predictions , and a solid number of you alluded to the current mess that is American politics. Before last week, Trump’s role in the upcoming election was as solid as cement: Barring “some health-related problem before the convention,” his nomination was settled, as Charlie Cook put it . “But polling following the first debate among Republican presidential hopefuls shows that while Trump is the most likely nominee, there’s still plenty of uncertainty,” Jonathan Bernstein says (free read).
At first, that small sliver of a possibility sounds like a good thing. A presidential election unmoored from Trump and all the legal baggage he brings would do wonders for the nation’s mental health. But when you realize who’d likely replace Trump — namely, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy — the picture gets murkier. Ramaswamy, for one, “is trying to build the same sort of populist fa?ade that Donald Trump painstakingly constructed in the decade prior to 2016,” Mihir Sharma writes , arguing that he comes across “as slick and superficial.” As for DeSantis, well — he just got booed at a vigil for the Jacksonville shooting victims. The Republican race is just beginning, and it’s not likely to get more uplifting from here.
Telltale Charts
For the last 20-plus years, China has lived and breathed carbon pollution. But if President Xi Jinping’s economic model continues to fall off the rails, David Fickling says (free read!) we might be about to witness “the most dramatic reduction in emissions the world has ever seen.” What would be a disaster for China’s leadership and population would be an unexpected victory for the rest of the planet. David points to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as proof of such transformation. Although nobody was really considering the climate implications at the time, Russia’s “CO2 output dropped by more than a third over the subsequent decade,” he writes, a pattern that China may be destined to repeat.
领英推荐
Uhhh, I am no expert at filing S-1 forms, but if Instacart’s grocery delivery orders were this flat in the first half of the year, why, exactly, is it filing an IPO now? “There’s a cheap joke to be made about how long Instacart’s initial public offering has taken to arrive,” says Dave Lee , considering the years of pent-up anticipation that investors have had to endure. At this point, he writes, the pandemic hype has all but died down and Instacart’s two main business channels — grocery sales and ads — are looking vulnerable.
Further Reading
Banks need more capital, not a new 1,087-page rulebook . — Bloomberg Opinion ’s editorial board
3M’s lawsuit over its defective earplugs is just the start. — Brooke Sutherland
Los Angeles is an economic boomtown. — Matt Winkler
Bitcoin walked so the AI industry could run. — Tim Culpan (高燦鳴)
The US economy is running hot , and Jerome Powell knows it. — Jonathan Levin
How come bonds are securities and loans aren’t? — Matt Levine
ICYMI
Companies are quiet cutting .
Floridians are bracing for a hurricane .
Schools are building housing for teachers.
Anti-vaxxers are pet owners .
Kickers
The Aperol Spritz is getting werid.
Suburbia is a kingdom of golf carts .
The world’s first brain worm .
Botox, for the boys: Brotox .
Men think cocktail glasses have a gender.
Notes: Please send “manly” glassware and feedback to Jessica Karl at [email protected] .