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[Tchu-Espresso]

This stereotype shit needs to fucking die

People working from home are still accountable to the same metrics they were before

People that are at home watching Netflix are the same employees at work jerking off all day in the stalls

There's no reason why many of these roles can't be done at home even during crunch, with some time in the office for times of true collaboration that can't be done efficiently at home

I work at a major international professional services firm and I agree. Last year I started going back to the office 2 days a week and now am doing 3 days in the office.

The bullshit about people not being productive from home is just that. Pure nonsense.

However, I'd concede there are benefits to work from the office during intense periods of collaboration.

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

I think people in here who are oddly pro office likely aren't allowed to work remotely - if they can't do it then they can cry that others can.

I agree.

 

[NinjaBoiX]

Makes sense, during your working hours you're at the mercy of whatever your employer asks you to do, within reason.

I'd say "being in the actual office" is absolutely within reason.

You won't stop me from thinking that full remote and productivity cannot belong in the same sentence.

Yup, 100%.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but almost all of the remote workers I know are constantly boasting about how much they get to slack off.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I think people in here who are oddly pro office likely aren't allowed to work remotely - if they can't do it then they can cry that others can.

I do hybrid and enjoy both wfh and office life.

It's not even just about productivity. But showing your face and enjoying talking to people. Let's face it, wfh makes everyone a faceless invisible drone. That's probably so many people feel like they are treated like a number. We'll, if you don't want to show up and interact with humans like an adult face to face then you'll get treated like a faceless worker.

I'm surprised so many people are so anti-social they work at jobs and don't even want to interact with them on a human level. But hey if people want to sit home and treat work and colleagues as simply emails and zoom calls that's on you.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

I work remote for a logistics company. It's a godsend in all honesty. If I had lived 3 hours closer last year I would have been called back to the office but I'm lucky.

In any case, my company keeps close tabs on performance metrics: throughput, call metrics and order accuracy. They're routinely addressed every two weeks. We found at my company that remote vs in office didn't really seem to have an impact on metrics. That said people were called back due to "preserving company culture", whatever that means.

 

[StueyDuck]

Is this classic Schreirer being a little weeny baby boy as usual because

Company *gasps* expects people to work.

 

[tusharngf]

I think people in here who are oddly pro office likely aren't allowed to work remotely - if they can't do it then they can cry that others can.

I doubt anyone here understands how IT firms work. Judging from comments all I see are fast-food worker mentality here. You need to be in the office this is no picnic lol. People defending rockstar games is such a bullshit. Strauss zelnick is the worst CEO out there. They never fixed the android version of GTA SA. Even the remastered version sucks. No 60fps patch for consoles. They dont give a fuck about anything. They made 8 billion dollars from GTA 5 alone and missed on SP dlc content. People should remember rockstar aint no saints.

 

[Jakk]

Is this classic Schreirer being a little weeny baby boy as usual because

Company *gasps* expects people to work.

Are you incapable of reading or something?

 

[MonkD]

Dang, did Rockstar / Take 2 even think about how will these employees be able to make a quick run to Target or Home Depot in the middle of the day now? How will they be able to go to the gym and then get groceries after stopping for lunch on a weekday afternoon? What about those who just want to get some errands done but not do it on the weekend while still getting paid for a full 40 hour work week?

Show some consideration for those poor WFHomers, Rockstar!!

Why are people on here so salty about those who can "work" from home?

 

[SJRB]

Makes sense, during your working hours you're at the mercy of whatever your employer asks you to do, within reason.

I'd say "being in the actual office" is absolutely within reason.

Yup, 100%.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but almost all of the remote workers I know are constantly boasting about how much they get to slack off.

This is such a poor take. You think people who sit in an office are productive 8 hours a day? You think they work in the highest gear, give it their A-game from 9 to 5 just because they sit in a cubicle? Five days a week? You think it is healthy to do so, or to expect people to do so?

The only difference is that in the office people hide their slacking by pretending to look busy. Or by making frequent walks to the toilet, or the water cooler. Talk a bit here, talk a bit there.

Working from home is about trust. Your employee trusts that you do your job without immediate oversight, and you do that job within the boundaries of reason. If both parties are rational and responsible, working from home works great. I can attest that productivity in the company I work skyrocketed during COVID when everyone was working from home. Why? People had way less distractions. They just did their job. Did a bit of laundry in between, so what. Employee happiness was the highest it has ever been, too. I wonder why.

 

[StueyDuck]

Are you incapable of reading or something?

I'm not giving schreier clicks.

the man has cried and attacked Rockstar for years because sometimes there's crunch.

Judging by the tweet and other comments this article isn't any different.

"Employees are maaaad"

I bet he interviewed like 4 people and they all had pink hair and were 20.

So it turns out, as someone who isn't even going to read the article. I was more capable of reading than yourself

 

[Hohenheim]

People here says working from home is all good, and in many jobs thst's obviously fine - but in this industry it seems pretty obvious that working like that adds a few huge challenges. Especially for a huge team making AAA games. Was this not the excuse for the last few years for every game delayed? "Because of covid and working from home".

Basement dweller Schreier makes it seem like Rockstar is going full Josef Fritzl for making the team come to work..

 

[Embearded]

As usual, posts against home office....

I am currently in hybrid mode but uses to be home office only for ~ 2 years.
It's true that engagement with the rest of the team was minimal, but i was and still am more productive when i am at home.
During release days or when i see that the need of overtime is near, i always work from home and its better for me and the quality of my work.

It's true though, that in big corporations with very big teams, people who were slacking in the office will be able to literally do nothing when working from home. This is a structural problem within the company and they should make teams smaller and appoint team leaders who know the workload of each team member, their level and can accurately estimate how much time they need.

 

[Hudo]

Man. So many middle managers and/or corporate cocksuckers in this thread.

 

[Puscifer]

Almost as if 3 hours less of commute would not free more time on your scheduled. There is a lot of envy here, but it works as for some people then life is sweeter when someone else is more miserable than before .

No I totally get it, I loved working from home but what I do for work now I'm terms of security I HAVE to be on site more often but at least only when necessary.


I just wish people would've learned the rule of >SHUT THE FUCK UP< when you have a good thing at work. No one knew I did all my work in 3 hours and just pretended the rest of the day and popping in when need be because the results spoke for themselves and I always was above where I needed to be.

But why oh why are people telling on themselves? Just go to work and be quiet when you have a good thing!

 

[cormack12]

Truth: Working from home doesn't work for every industry or profession.

Very simple example, we didn't empty our hospitals and say all doctors and nurses could work from home did we? And we didn't switch all hospital appointments to only video/phone consultations did we? No. So it's fair to say anyone with a brain can make that distinction or at least accept it as a universal truth in the discussion.

My personal situation is I've allowed myself and my team freedom to work from home 100% of the time if we want. However, after having done that all through Covid it was pretty apparent that their were shortfalls and gaps that could not be addressed. We all agreed having nominated days where people show up to the office (Mon-Wed) was the best thing to do. However, we wouldn't mandate it and still allow flexibility for outlying cases - like car maintenance, child support, poor weather. And I can honestly say the difference in the team is evident in spades. The amount of things you pick up through osmosis and just over hearing what your colleagues are up to, or catching things earlier because there's an overlap just can't be measured. And there is also the wellbeing benefit of actually seeing your staff and how they are coping, picking up on changes in behaviour. The lift in morale and building that team togetherness is a massive NET positive too. When you're in proximity, you can have multiple plates on the go as well, like 4 or 5 conversations about different things, remote working is very much about direct, sequential contact streams. Remote working has saturated the convenience and efficacy of 'instant messaging' thsat was once it's benefit.

I would take any study/polls with a pinch of salt right now as well (either for or against productivity). The baseline data is poor, the economic shift is making everyone miserable and isn't a true comparison of pre-pandemic levels. Currently any poll is just a referendum on whether people like WFH and if they want to keep it or return to the offfice full time - there isn;t even nuance on being able to pick apart hybrid working.

Most of this debate becomes polarised because people approach it from a individual productivity point of view. But really, it should be about efficiency and gains. MDT working is better together in an office. And we've tried to emulate that virtually - like have an open teams session with people on camera but it's just not the same, and it doesn't work the same. Put those same 5 people in an office with desks and the contrast is stark.

For those industries where it works, I don't think anyone is waving flags objecting to it. But those companies who choose to have staff return to work (either full time or hybrid) don't automatically become cartoon villains. At least not to anyone with any sort of basic grasp on logic and understanding. There are valid reasons for people to return to work, even more so if you're working at one of the most prestigious game studio's in the world.

 

[Bert Big Balls]

Normally I'm all for wfh, but in this case, they are literally finishing up one of the biggest, most anticipated games ever created. I'd want my staff all in the office working together, collaborating, bouncing ideas off each other, testing and coming up with features, fixing bugs. A game like this WILL suffer from devs working from home.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Man. So many middle managers and/or corporate cocksuckers in this thread.

That's life.

We aren't the ones in the firing line first.

The ones who are are typically bad performers and redundancies first.

But if more cuts are needed, if there's two people who do an equal quality job and both are around the same budget. If one has to go and it's between a faceless wfh guy who doesn't want to work with anyone preferring to stay home as much as possible and another who shows up at the office and is a likeable person with a good personality, the invisible wfh guy who wants to treat everyone at the company like an email is gone first.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Guy had a side job building patios and doing landscaping. No wonder he wouldnt get back to me till the next day. People found out after he quit, as the handful of close coworkers told everyone after he left. You dont have office workers doing side jobs for half the day.

If he was on target it's none of everybody's business what he is doing. He can do in 2 hours what others do in 8 and go building patios? Kudos to him. You want him to work more? Give him commission accelerators .

You cannot have it both ways - you cannot go "work from 9 to 5" and "if you don't have results it doesn't matter how much time you put in". You have to pick one.

 

[GymWolf]

Lmao at Jasoy trying to depict this as some sort of slavery management gatcha moment, poor dude.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

If he was on target it's none of everybody's business what he is doing. He can do in 2 hours what others do in 8 and go building patios? Kudos to him. You want him to work more? Give him commission accelerators .

You cannot have it both ways - you cannot go "work from 9 to 5" and "if you don't have results it doesn't matter how much time you put in". You have to pick one.

Sure it matters. Because even he's not there it affects my job. Just because he hits his numbers or not as a sales guy in two hours work doesn't mean he can just disappear for the rest of the day for anyone else needing to get hold of him.

If I have a slow day and finish my stuff by noon, I'm not going to take a nap and tell people I'm done and call me tomorrow. It's my responsibility to be around during reasonable work hours since the company doesn't revolve around my work schedule.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

looking like Gaf all had the ability to work from home ripped from them or something?

 

[RickSanchez]

Getting a rude shock about GAFers after browsing this thread. Is it that people who are self-desciplined and professional enough to work properly from anywhere are avoiding this thread or are there no such people on GAF ?

i mean, what in the flying fuck ?

I have been working from home since the pandemic began in 2020. The few times i've been to office was to actually collect award trophies for my work-related achievements.......which i did from home. I have even managed to change jobs a couple of times since then. Giving interviews remotely, being onboarded remotely, then working remotely. And i have been productive enough the whole time to keep getting appreciations from bosses and clients.

All the anti-WFH takes in this thread are fucking ridiculous. If you work on a computer all day and all your interaction with coworkers can happen over emails and phone/video calls, then you can work from home forever. If there are people you know who are just boasting about slacking off at home during work hours, then that is 100% what they will do in the office as well. Hour-long lunch breaks, smoking breaks, endless watercooler chats, faffing around before and after the productive parts of a meeting - there are unlimited number of ways for people to slack off at the office.

If you or your team members are technically equipped to work from home but are not productive, then that's on you. It is not the rest of society's problem, you have to find a way to actually get work out of them, and simply having them sitting in a cube farm all day is not going to make it happen. You cannot expect others to conform to an antiquated idea of corporate real-estate when it has been demonstrated to be irrelevant for more than half the workplaces and professions out there.

Seems to me all the work-from-office shills here are either bad at managing their teams and need the excuse of their team members being in their line of sight to keep tabs on their work; or they live so close to their workplaces that they cannot imagine the horrors of spending 4 hours a day in traffic or a crowded bus/metro to commute. Or maybe you like wasting hours of productive time simply going to and from your office ? Or do you have a vested interest in corporate real estate ?

Jesus fuck. Wake up and get some perspective of the rest of the world.

 

[MilkyJoe]

This ridiculous post pisses me off. Both myself and my wife work from home as developers, as do many of my friends and colleagues. All of them will agree with me when I say this.......I work way more from home than I do in the damn office. I am more inclined to start work early and leave later than my actual time to stop since:

I do not have to prepare for work every morning by getting dressed, looking presentable and commuting to and from
I do not have to spend an hour and a half every day shooting the breeze with the random that walks up to my desk (Including my management)
I do not have to spend an hour and a half going to what feels like a required lunch outing with my manager and coworkers eating stuff I know I should not eat.

The whole come back to work BS is a combination of quiet layoffs and and a political agenda to get people the spend money to stimulate the economy by paying for gas, clothes, food, etc.
That's why it seems like everyone is pushing this crap the same time.

You people piss me off. You're the reason so many businesses went under! An economy cannot sustain WFH wankers, all those that lost their jobs and businesses are now a burden on the welfare system! Your last line shows how clueless you are. Fuck my arse...

 

[6502]

WFH works for the self motivated or those where the work comes to you like a production line. I've seen a huge benefit in my team but had to deal with the odd person basically abandon their work for 90% of their time. Logs / productivity monitoring is essential for it to work for large organisations.

It is also much harder to get new people up to speed without that office environment where they can overhear others work / easily ask questions and have experienced staff looking over their shoulder. In my experience it has taken a year to get people where they would have been in 3-6 months before, but they do get there.

The best thing about covid was zoom. It saved so much time doing an hour long meeting in an hour rather than my hq dragging people across the country at huge expense and often with overnight stays.

The biggest gripe I hear from people being forced back, even for 50% of the time is the commute costs.

 

[RickSanchez]

You people piss me off. You're the reason so many businesses went under! An economy cannot sustain WFH wankers, all those that lost their jobs and businesses are now a burden on the welfare system! Your last line shows how clueless you are. Fuck my arse...

Please explain why, in a free-market capitalist system (like the one that you're supporting when demanding workers commute to office), would business not find other ways to find business and need propping up by people wasting precious hours of their lives in traffic jams and fast-food counter queues.

 

[nush]

That's life.

We aren't the ones in the firing line first.

The ones who are are typically bad performers and redundancies first.

But if more cuts are needed, if there's two people who do an equal quality job and both are around the same budget. If one has to go and it's between a faceless wfh guy who doesn't want to work with anyone preferring to stay home as much as possible and another who shows up at the office and is a likeable person with a good personality, the invisible wfh guy who wants to treat everyone at the company like an email is gone first.

It won't take very long for companies to realize that if they have so many WFH staff they might as well outsource those jobs to somewhere cheaper. In some cases I've read that's happened where the jobs are only advertised in the cheaper parts of the US. Or out of the country even.

Relationship building is very important in business and I've worked remotely and definitely got the feeling that I was just an email address and not a person. It makes it very easy for you to get laid off first if there's no emotional ties. Humans are very social after all.

years ago when it was just selected upper management that would sometimes "I'm working from home today" usually on a Friday. We knew damn well they were not actually working when Emails went unanswered, calls not returned. Where you would otherwise get prompt responses if they were in the office. It was a situation where us lower ranked staff knew what was going on but upper management kept the status quo.

Years later pre-pandemic I got the same privilege. Of course I slacked off and did the bare minimum but I knew promptly replying to calls and Emails kept the illusion that I was actually working. Reality was I'd have my email alert turned up loud while I was sitting on my couch playing Xbox most of the day with a beer. I even took a weeks holiday where I was chilling in a hot springs resort, I just moved my Email to my phone being sure to disable "Sent from my iPhone". Nobody knew and I didn't get fired.

Circle back round to the people posting "I'm more productive from home" how much time are you spending on GAF during office hours? Or like the old days I mentioned, are you just keeping the status quo like your boss is actually likely to read your posts?

 

[RickSanchez]

This ridiculous post pisses me off. Both myself and my wife work from home as developers, as do many of my friends and colleagues. All of them will agree with me when I say this.......I work way more from home than I do in the damn office. I am more inclined to start work early and leave later than my actual time to stop since:

I do not have to prepare for work every morning by getting dressed, looking presentable and commuting to and from
I do not have to spend an hour and a half every day shooting the breeze with the random that walks up to my desk (Including my management)
I do not have to spend an hour and a half going to what feels like a required lunch outing with my manager and coworkers eating stuff I know I should not eat.

The whole come back to work BS is a combination of quiet layoffs and and a political agenda to get people the spend money to stimulate the economy by paying for gas, clothes, food, etc.
That's why it seems like everyone is pushing this crap the same time.

Fuckin A

 

[Bkdk]

Good to know, it's hard to imagine how work from home would work for any AAA games, especially in the final crunch stage, I always suspect the biggest reason for starfield's disappointment is due to work from home, that's why that game feels like a few different games forcefully glued into 1.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Working from home would be the way to go whenever possible IF people were 100% responsible and disciplined.

The thing is, that's not a realistic scenario. Too many managers are not fit for the role and many employees will not be as productive. That's the real world. So, working from home should be applied on a case-by-case basis.

 

[RickSanchez]

Years later pre-pandemic I got the same privilege. Of course I slacked off and did the bare minimum but I knew promptly replying to calls and Emails kept the illusion that I was actually working. Reality was I'd have my email alert turned up loud while I was sitting on my couch playing Xbox most of the day with a beer. I even took a weeks holiday where I was chilling in a hot springs resort, I just moved my Email to my phone being sure to disable "Sent from my iPhone". Nobody knew and I didn't get fired.

Circle back round to the people posting "I'm more productive from home" how much time are you spending on GAF during office hours? Or like the old days I mentioned, are you just keeping the status quo like your boss is actually likely to read your posts?

Are you even thinking about what you are writing ? You're saying you and your managers got to slack off, even boasting about it like it is an achievement, but if others do it its wrong, so they should go to the office. And if i am indeed being more productive or productive enough to get my work done and hit my targets from home, then i can damn well spend the rest of the day masturbating or arguing with strangers on GAF if it so pleases me.

 

[Joramun]

If you don't like the conditions of your employment then work elsewhere.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I'm a corporate ass licker because nothing brings me satisfaction quite like human suffering

 

[MrRibeye]

Crunch + Work From Office = Success

 

[FunkMiller]

I think people in here who are oddly pro office likely aren't allowed to work remotely - if they can't do it then they can cry that others can.

I work from home. And I'm freelance.

People hate me.

It's wonderful.

 

[nush]

Are you even thinking about what you are writing ? You're saying you and your managers got to slack off, even boasting about it like it is an achievement, but if others do it its wrong, so they should go to the office. And if i am indeed being more productive or productive enough to get my work done and hit my targets from home, then i can damn well spend the rest of the day masturbating or arguing with strangers on GAF if it so pleases me.

I've seen both sides, there's no contradiction.

 

[thefool]

We might eventually educate a generation of young kids who grow up to be responsible enough to work from home, sadly we're not there.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

 

[Lunarorbit]

Getting a rude shock about GAFers after browsing this thread. Is it that people who are self-desciplined and professional enough to work properly from anywhere are avoiding this thread or are there no such people on GAF ?

i mean, what in the flying fuck ?

I have been working from home since the pandemic began in 2020. The few times i've been to office was to actually collect award trophies for my work-related achievements.......which i did from home. I have even managed to change jobs a couple of times since then. Giving interviews remotely, being onboarded remotely, then working remotely. And i have been productive enough the whole time to keep getting appreciations from bosses and clients.

All the anti-WFH takes in this thread are fucking ridiculous. If you work on a computer all day and all your interaction with coworkers can happens over emails and phone/video calls, then you can work from home forever. If there are people you know who are just boasting about slacking off at home during work hours, then that is 100% what they will do in the office as well. Hour-long lunch breaks, smoking breaks, endless watercooler chats, faffing around before and after the productive parts of a meeting - there are unlimited number of ways for people to slack off at the office.

If you or your team members are technically equipped to work from home but are not productive, then that's on you. It is not the rest of society's problem, you have to find a way to actually get work out of them, and simply having them sitting in a cube farm all day is not going to make it happen. You cannot expect others to conform to an antiquated idea of corporate real-estate when it has been demonstrated to be irrelevant for more than half the workplaces and professions out there.

Seems to me all the work-from-office shills here are either bad at managing their teams and need the excuse of their team members being in their line of sight to keep tabs on their work; or they live so close to their workplaces that they cannot imagine the horrors of spending 4 hours a day in traffic or a crowded bus/metro to commute. Or maybe you like wasting hours of productive time simply going to and from your office ? Or do you have a vested interest in corporate real estate ?

Jesus fuck. Wake up and get some perspective of the rest of the world.

Get some perspective? Wfh people need to get off their high horse. If wfh works for you fine but people who go into work are tired of the whining and gnashing of teeth. Y'all sound like petulant children sometimes

 

[MonkeyClaw36]

Awesome, in your vast experience what games have you published?

Oh you're just speaking on things you know nothing about in that industry. Oh ok that makes sense.

Actually he shows more knowledge than you.
Any massive project which requires multiple teams to collabarate will be done faster is the people are ad-hoc. I've seen this multiple times during the pandemic at a software company I worked for.
Progress was stalling. Then came the Covid guidelines for working safely in the office and guess what?

The project got traction much faster because people couldn't ignore Teams calls and such because they were physically in the office.
It's about distractions when working from home. Everyone has them. NO exceptions.

He is right and you're just being an asshole.

PEACE!

 

[MilkyJoe]

Please explain why, in a free-market capitalist system (like the one that you're supporting when demanding workers commute to office), would business not find other ways to find business and need propping up by people wasting precious hours of their lives in traffic jams and fast-food counter queues.

Because the hospitality industry doesn't come to your house.

The amout of pricks at my work that came back kicking and screaming only to complain their favourite sandwich shop or bars and restaurants are closed down, they don't want to hear it's their fault!

 

[nush]

I work from home. And I'm freelance.

The fundamental difference is you're running your own business. Which probably isn't that case for many people. I've put more effort into my side gigs than my main job at times because I actually earn more for myself that I would doing unpaid OT in a salaried job.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Oh I'm sure it stimulates the economy. I just don't believe companies would want to stimulate the local economy at the expense of their bottom line.

See @Men_in_Boxes, I feel posts like the below show that politics are involved in these decisions. I fully believe that not only do people in power at these companies believe this way, but they are also heavily influenced by city and state government.

You people piss me off. You're the reason so many businesses went under! An economy cannot sustain WFH wankers, all those that lost their jobs and businesses are now a burden on the welfare system! Your last line shows how clueless you are. Fuck my arse...

Responding to this though, at some level you're right. Also, I can see how having so many people immediately working from home so fast broke the world. But like all things in life, the world will eventually adjust. With that being said, I do think that wfh everyday cannot be abrupt, but working 5 days a week when you can properly work from home is absurd to me. A hybrid approach is probably the better answer. For mental health and the economy.

 

[tomato shrub]

Good to know, it's hard to imagine how work from home would work for any AAA games, especially in the final crunch stage, I always suspect the biggest reason for starfield's disappointment is due to work from home, that's why that game feels like a few different games forcefully glued into 1.

I dunno, Starfield feels like any other soulless AAA Western game from the last 10 years.

 

[RickSanchez]

Because the hospitality industry doesn't come to your house.

The amout of pricks at my work that came back kicking and screaming only to complain their favourite sandwich shop or bars and restaurants are closed down, they don't want to hear it's their fault!

And in much the same sense, customers have no obligation to come to the hospitality industry. Restaurants and bars can find a way to be where people are, or give good enough service that people want to visit them without any other reason than to visit them.

 

[RickSanchez]

there's no contradiction.

only hypocrisy and reaching then ?

 

[RickSanchez]

Get some perspective? Wfh people need to get off their high horse. If wfh works for you fine but people who go into work are tired of the whining and gnashing of teeth. Y'all sound like petulant children sometimes

What a compelling argument

 

[Bert Big Balls]

Are you even thinking about what you are writing ? You're saying you and your managers got to slack off, even boasting about it like it is an achievement, but if others do it its wrong, so they should go to the office. And if i am indeed being more productive or productive enough to get my work done and hit my targets from home, then i can damn well spend the rest of the day masturbating or arguing with strangers on GAF if it so pleases me.

Shouldn't you be in the office?

 

[RickSanchez]

Shouldn't you be in the office?

No

 

[MilkyJoe]

And in much the same sense, customers have no obligation to come to the hospitality industry. Restaurants and bars can find a way to be where people are, or give good enough service that people want to visit them without any other reason than to visit them.

They don't have an obligation, you are right, but a stable economy is symbiotic and changing the status quo so abruptly has had a massive knock on effect that affects us all.

ps not to mean the effect on mental and physical health.