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.

  • kellyaster
    link
    fedilink
    809 months ago

    He sure has a lot of boomer energy for a guy who’s only 42.

    • @BetaBlake
      link
      639 months ago

      Boomerism is more a state of mind than it is an actual age

      • SuperDuper
        link
        309 months ago

        At least actual boomers have the excuse of being 90% lead for most of their childhood.

        • @Misconduct
          link
          149 months ago

          As an elder millennial I apparently got exposed to healthy doses myself and I refused to turn into one of those entitled twats. My family has strict instructions to put my ass in a home the second I tell them anything remotely resembling “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. I refuse to be an emotional burden like so many boomers are on their kids/those around them. I would rather die alone in the cheapest home they can find or even on the streets before that happens

      • kellyaster
        link
        fedilink
        159 months ago

        You’re 100% correct, and it’s kinda sad, really… for so many members of a generation to be so consistently and relentlessly stupid toxic that its name becomes synonymous with “douchebag.” What a fuckin accomplishment.