Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is trying a unique strategy to get remote workers to return downtown: insulting them.

“I don’t know if you saw this study the other day,” Frey told an audience of 1,000 at Minneapolis Downtown Council’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “What this study clearly showed … is that when people who have the ability to come downtown to an office don’t — when they stay home sitting on their couch, with their nasty cat blanket, diddling on their laptop — if they do that for a few months, you become a loser!”

The comment was a “complete joke” and the study was made-up, the Minneapolis mayor’s office told Fortune, but there are serious facts to back up Frey’s worry about the impact of remote work on Minneapolis’ downtown economy.

  • karashta@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    It’s the same with a lot of us millennial people.

    I graduated into a job market still largely crushed by the dotcom bubble bursting, had my entire life and career path destroyed by the GFC, then another destroyed by covid.

    Let me just spend a third of my monthly food allowance on food I can make better myself to please the downtown economy god, I guess lmfao.