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.
Frey isn’t going to last long here. Lots of Minnesotans dislike him across the political spectrum, for obvious reasons.
Its a shame, because by and large it looks like his politics don’t suck. But the guy just can’t help but get sucked in by corporate real estate tycoons because… that’s how you get the money to run for Mayor, I guess.