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.

  • bluGill
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    10 months ago

    It was obvious 30 years ago downtowns were in trouble because businesses ere moving to suburbs. They still haven’t made serious effort to change the root causes of that.

      • bluGill
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        10 months ago

        typing on my phone. I have never found a good keyboard for mobile. I turned autocorrect off long ago as it too often was changing what I wrote to something that was completely the opposite, at least without it you know I didn’t mean that can can figure it out (I hope). I’m using thumb-key which overall I like, but there are still issues with it.

        I have dysgraphia which means writing is already more difficult for me than most, combine that will small text boxes and random hitting of something I didn’t mean…

        I’m on a real computer now so I was able to run spellcheck and get at least the most obvious mistakes fixed.