The Seattle Times is again masquerading advocacy as journalism. The goal this time appears to be to advocate for remote workers to stay away from the office, likely in response to a vocal group of staff opposing return-to-office policies.

Business reporter Jessica Fu laments the supposed financial burdens of returning to the office, blaming everything from gas prices to food costs. But instead of offering newsworthy insights, the article reads like a poorly veiled lobbying effort to keep workers remote. Fu even solicited specific stories to tell that fit what appears to be her personal view that remote working should be adopted by businesses.

And let’s be honest: this isn’t about household budgets—it’s about perpetuating progressive narratives that their policies are not to blame for the very affordability crisis they complain about.

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What does The Seattle Times believe is so bad about returning to work?

Fu frames the piece to be sympathetic to remote workers who don’t want to return to the office like adults.

The article, titled “Seattle-area return-to-office mandates strain household budgets,” centers around Jessica Poe, a 41-year-old divorcee who moved to Spanaway with her two dogs because she couldn’t find a spacious enough apartment with her $1,900-a-month budget. The house she moved to belonged to her brother, and consequently, her rent was just $750 a month.

Three months after the move, Poe was laid off but found a new job in Bellevue with what Fu calls “a catch” — like most jobs, it required staff to work in the office.

“Such a requirement may come as no surprise to workers in the Seattle area,” Fu bizarrely notes. No one is surprised by this requirement because it’s how the workforce has always operated until a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that remote workers took advantage of in order to stay home from work.

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Ignoring root causes

Fu goes on to note the stress of people like Poe, “who have organized their lives around working remotely.”

She took the job, even though it is in Bellevue. To get to work, she had to drive two hours each way, or more depending on traffic. Her costs ballooned massively. On gas alone, Poe was spending nearly $500 a month. Depending on how backed up her normal commute was, she sometimes opted to pay a $15 toll each way to take a faster route. On average, that added $300 a month or more, she estimates. The costs compounded quickly, eating into her annual income of $75,000.

The business reporter even complains about the depreciation of Poe’s car: “Each day, she would put another 100 miles on it. In three months, she had to get two oil changes.”

Of course, Fu conveniently ignores the root causes of these financial burdens on remote workers feigning outrage or surprise of having to return to the office.

Housing costs? Driven sky-high by Democrats’ policies that throttle development and overregulate landlords. Food and gas prices? Thank the Biden administration’s inflationary spending and, locally, Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, which voters recently declined to repeal. This law, sold as a climate win, has raised gas prices to some of the highest in the nation.

These are the very policies the Times’ staff and remote workers likely championed, yet now they bemoan the very predictable fallout.

The news report is missing any news

There’s no actual news in The Seattle Times article. It’s just a string of complaints from people who pretended they’d never have to return to the office.

Did these folks think the pandemic was permanent? Remote work was a temporary adjustment, not a new way of life. Employers, who’ve been paying for high leases on empty office space, have every right to call their employees back. And the rest of you, who’ve endured the traffic and rising costs throughout, are likely done hearing sob stories about how someone’s Starbucks bill went up because they’re commuting again.

The importance of returning to the office cannot be overstated. It’s an important detail left out of the advocacy journalism lobbying for remote workers.

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Remote workers should think about the economy

Beyond boosting productivity and collaboration (remember those things?), working in an office revitalizes local economies that have been decimated by the remote-work era.

Restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners, and countless other small businesses have been suffering because the workforce stayed home. Bringing people back restores vibrancy to our downtowns and helps repair the damage done by years of draconian COVID-19 policies.

The Seattle Times completely misses this bigger picture. Instead, Fu feeds into the entitlement of a remote workforce that doesn’t want to adapt to reality. Want to cut costs? Pack a lunch. Take public transit like progressives keep pushing on the rest of us. Or better yet, pressure the policymakers you voted for to enact reforms that reduce the cost of living.

A bunch of whining from remote workers

This report isn’t journalism — it’s advocacy-via-whining.

The Seattle Times is clearly siding with a particular agenda, hoping to shift public opinion against return-to-work policies. But their argument falls apart when you realize the hardships they highlight are self-inflicted wounds caused by the very leaders they defend and prop up.

If anything, this article should be a wake-up call to its readers: Democrats’ policies have created these burdens, and their enablers in the media would rather you work from home than demand better policies.

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