What are you guys paying for gas?

[FI460]

Would be funny to know how many here own businesses and how many are employees. I get the feeling we have a lot of employees in this thread based on the perspective.

All you have to do is convince UPS shareholders to pay drivers a full wage for working 4 hours without costing them profit. Then convince consumers to pay for the whole thing via higher rates to ship packages.
I personally do not see that as practical or realistic. My business sense tells me that would be really difficult to pull off in any labor based business model.

It just doesn't seem like you really understand how having everyone working part time but getting full time pay would function at somewhere like UPS where people work hard long hours and are rewarded for that drive and dedication. Shareholders and consumers would never go for that. But you are welcome to your opinion if you think it would work and if you ever start a business and are able to pull that off I will gladly admit you are an amazing business person.

I will be the fist to admit that I would struggle to find a job for most people where they could produce enough revenue to only work 4 hours a day from home and still make the company enough to pay them 8 hours, overhead, and profit. Many people don't generate any revenue at all at their jobs, let alone $100+ per hour it would take for the part time stuff to pencil out as profitable for an employer. But there are some people who do bring $200 an hour of value and could pull that off, they are few and far between though. Many of the brightest and most talented people are driven so they want to work more to make even more $ to progress their careers.

I expect within a few years the job, housing, car, etc market will correct and things will no longer be so out of whack. If not people are going to need to be paid $500 an hour for doing 2 hours of work just to pay for a million $ fixer upper and a 100k $ used SUV.

And to be clear, I like a lot of the ideas folks have from an employee perspective. I just don't think they quite understand the business side. Like in these examples trying to run a huge labor based business like UPS with part time employees getting full time $ form a shareholder or consumer perspective. Or the burden it would put on local governments and taxpayers having employees like trash men work less than full time costing huge amounts of $ from increased taxes required to pay more people to get the same amount of work done. Having to hire extra help so every city employee only had to work 4-6 hours a day would cost a fortune.


So the ideas are great, but how does this all get paid for. That's where the problem lies with the new ideas like this everyone works less and makes the same $ plan. Employees tend to overlook those parts when they have ideas because their focus is not on running a successful business or profit.

I think you're a little hung up on the UPS example here. More likely they're referring to Debbie over there in billing. If Debbie can complete all of the previous weeks billing reports in 3 days I dont see a point in having her sit at a computer for an additional 16 hours.

Certainly WFH and schedule flexibility for salaried employees won't work in every situation. I'm a research tech. I can't collect data from home. But, I can work with the data from home, and I do occasionally.

 

[Nick87]

I think you're a little hung up on the UPS example here. More likely they're referring to Debbie over there in billing. If Debbie can complete all of the previous weeks billing reports in 3 days I dont see a point in having her sit at a computer for an additional 16 hours.

Certainly WFH and schedule flexibility for salaried employees won't work in every situation. I'm a research tech. I can't collect data from home. But, I can work with the data from home, and I do occasionally.

I think they'll give debbie more responsibility and tasks and get more for there money. Side note working from home everyday would suck, I mean sometimes I'm sure it'd be nice, but it's not for everyone I don't think.

 

[Nick87]

$4.19 for gas
$4.93 for diesel

 

[Treeshark]

I think they'll give debbie more responsibility and tasks and get more for there money.

This. And if Debbie can accomplish more, is Kathleen’s job really necessary? Especially if Kathleen is older, get more vacation time and is more expensive to provide health insurance for? (Yes I know age discrimination is illegal, but it’s reality).

Employees have leverage right now. That won’t always be the case, I believe the pendulum will swing back in the other direction as it has in the past.

Gas was at $3.59 this am in my neck of the woods.

 

[noharleyyet]

Murphys today

Regular	Midgrade	Premium	Diesel
$3.52	$3.77	$4.02	$4.45

 

[Stocker]

$4.19 for gas
$4.93 for diesel

Wrong thread

 

[RobertD]

Bought for 3.45 this week, have seen some as low as 3.34 since. Not ideal but beats the heck out of four or five weeks ago prices.

 

[BoulderBulls]

Bought for 3.45 this week, have seen some as low as 3.34 since. Not ideal but beats the heck out of four or five weeks ago prices.

Going down here too. Was at 3.97, 3.70 now

 

[406dn]

I think they'll give debbie more responsibility and tasks and get more for there money. Side note working from home everyday would suck, I mean sometimes I'm sure it'd be nice, but it's not for everyone I don't think.

And, if Debbie gets more work dropped in her lap without a commensurate raise in pay, she will do one of two things.

One, she will slow walk her work to fill the time, so that more work doesn't land in her lap with no additional pay.

Two, If she is productive enough in billing to do what takes most forty hours to complete in twenty four hours...she will have no trouble taking hers smarts and productivity down the street to an employer who values her talents more fairly.

 

[Nick87]

Wrong thread

Your right.

 

[SAJ-99]

There are a lot of people who work hard, take risks, and work long hours. I think this new plan would be appealing to them, just a matter of how to pay for it.

I’m not sure I even understand the rest of your post, but I will focus on this. By “new plan” I assume you mean working from home. Job are different. Some you can WFH, some you can’t. You may have pointed this out but most studies showed people work more and get more done while WFH. I haven’t read a study yet that said people are less efficient, so open to reading. The problem is that the people are always at work. Wake up at 6am, at work. Nothing on TV at 8pm, go into the office and work. A lot of these jobs it is hard to define what the task is because they are not physical jobs, but rather revolve around ideas or service.

As you said, you can tell by responses what people do. There are many jobs in this country that can’t be directly measured on a daily basis. I don’t know what you mean by “paying for it” in your example. If on UPS driver is better, give him a bonus. I can tell you for sure if the number of packages being delivered drops the drivers will be let go. Every job has risks except CEO. A lot of people that start their own business do so because they are insufferable human beings that other employees can’t stand. Hence why 70% fail within 5yrs.

 

[FI460]

And, if Debbie gets more work dropped in her lap without a commensurate raise in pay, she will do one of two things.

One, she will slow walk her work to fill the time, so that more work doesn't land in her lap with no additional pay.

Two, If she is productive enough in billing to do what takes most forty hours to complete in twenty four hours...she will have no trouble taking hers smarts and productivity down the street to an employer who values her talents more fairly.

And that's what happened. She moved on and since we were already so lean and mean there never was a Kathleen. So now production has slowed while the rest of us cover the billing/ procurement/ expenses duties, which is not in any of our PDs. We would have been better served retaining Debbie. Now our work is impacted and we have to find somebody new to train.

 

[diazjm2378]

Just curious to see what anybody else's gas prices are lately, paid $3 here yesterday. Propane jumped from $1.09 in December called two weeks ago $2.50 hoping to make it into spring without a fill up, currently sitting at about 35% .

5.59 CA at Costco. Over $6 at the regular gas stations.

 

[SAJ-99]

What do you think the #1 reason people come to work is?

Sorry, forgot about this originally. There is no employment without pay. So sure, pay is the top reason people work. But there are societal examples that show other factors are equally powerful and certainly not why people quit.

Powerball numbers: Why do lottery winners keep working? - CSMonitor.com

www.csmonitor.com

 

[hank4elk]

$3.68 for 86. Highest prices in state.
...and no work, except the highest priced outfitters in the state...oh,their not from here.

 

[BuzzH]

Your right.

You're

 

[Treeshark]

Debbie gets more work dropped in her lap without a commensurate raise in pay, she will do one of two things

Or perhaps Debbie realizes there is no future in medical billing for her, finally succumbs to destiny and moves to Dallas to begin a brand new career.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

@Cogreeny and @PrairieHunter

The larger point that I think your are overlooking or perhaps where we are missing each other is at the macro level. I don't disagree with either of your specific points, but I feel like we are having entirely different conversations.

I'm talking about reducing nationwide fuel waste, not productivity of a single person.

The fortune 500 employ about 13.5 million Americans. Let's say 90% of those employees can't work remote, 10% can. Let's say they went fully remote that means, 1.35 million less folks on the road.
The average commute for American's is 39 miles (round trip)
Average fuel consumption for the US auto fleet is 24.9mpg so the average person uses 1.56 gallons per day.

So for work days you are reducing fuel usage by 2,106,000 gallons.
That's ~105,300 barrels of oil a day.
So about 1/6 of what we imported from Russia.

and that's just 10% of the employees of the fortune 500.

There are 157MM people employed in the US, let's say only 5% are doing remote capable jobs, that's 7.85 Million people or 612,300 barrels of oil a day or about what we imported from Russia.

About a 7% total reduction in US gasoline consumption.

Further, to your point @Cogreeny about productivity. There are all kinds of companies that lose money because their trucks are sitting in traffic, I imagine if you looked at the books of a lot of firms they had a productivity bump in 2020 because they got to sites in about 1/3 the time. Further reduced loss from accidents, etc etc.

@PrairieHunter you are absolutely correct, a UPS drivers job would not change and it would be absurd if it did, but UPS has massive corporate offices. Huge accounting, logistics, data, IT, etc etc departments. Many of those folks could work fully remote or on a hybrid model.

Pleas don't misconstrue my thinking, when I talk about efficiency gained through remote workers it is absolutely with the understanding that a huge portion of the workforce is incapable of remote work, maybe 5 -15%, but those jobs are clustered. Billings or Laramie, probably not a noticeable difference maybe only 1% of local company employees working remote, but in downtown Denver, Chicago, NYC, etc. it might be like 60%.

 

[DouglasR]

Or perhaps Debbie realizes there is no future in medical billing for her, finally succumbs to destiny and moves to Dallas to begin a brand new career.

Or she says f this, I’m not laying drainage tile in gloomy pos Illinois for $12 an hour, sells her house, buys a 20k teardrop camper, moves to vail, works at a ski resorts for $20 an hour and lives out the rest of her life illegally camping at trailheads happily ever after.

 

[Treeshark]

If Debbie can do Dallas, you can do Vail.