‘Fake commuting’ emerges as side effect of COVID-19 pandemic

HALIFAX (NEWS 1130) – Despite the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the time wasted sitting through long drives to the office, some people working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic appear to be missing the morning commute.

So much so that a phenomenon has emerged: fake commuting.

“When you hear the term ‘fake commute’, you kind of go, ‘Whaaaaat? What is that?'” says Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

“Basically, [those working from home] leave the house, get to the drive-thru, pick up a coffee, a bagel, a muffin, and come back to work — quote-unquote — at home.”

So the assumption people working from home are just rolling out of bed right before they clock in may be unfounded.

While there is no hard data to prove fake commuting is a thing, the lab says some HR professionals have noticed the trend. Sales at Tim Hortons also seem to support that people are commuting, even though they don’t have to.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, we were expecting a huge drop for their breakfast business of about 30 per cent. That did not happen. It dropped, but not 30 per cent, it dropped by 11 per cent,” adds Charlebois.

“Which means that even though people aren’t necessarily going to work, physically, or going to some place, people are still basically driving around or busing around to get their morning fix.”

Drive-thru sales at Tim Hortons have also doubled and even tripled at some locations since last year, according to the fast food chain.

While it may seem strange for people to willingly leave the comfort of their homes for such a thing, Charlebois thinks it’s an indication of people’s desire for pre-COVID-19 normality and freedom.

“A lot of people are struggling to physically distance themselves from their work. If they’re working from home, it’s very difficult to create that physical division between your personal life and professional life,” he says.

“Just to basically take some time for themselves if you need structure, if you need some sort of normalcy in your life, more and more people are thinking of doing that and I suspect that it’ll be more predominant over the winter months.”

Charlebois says a recent survey by the Center for American Economic Policy Research found that 35 per cent of employees who do telecommute used the time they saved by not commuting to do more work at home.

But according to the same survey, an increasing number of employees will go for a car ride or use public transit daily or weekly, just to get out of the house.

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