It’s Monday. For most people it is the start of the work week. For Canada’s civil servants it is another day closer to having to go back to work.

It’s not that they haven’t been working. It is just that they have been working from home. They have been told that will change this summer, that they will have to report for work at the office four days a week.

There has been wailing and gnashing of teeth since the announcement. Public servants seem almost unanimously to think this is an unfair requirement. Doesn’t the government know how much they like working from home?

I understand that. At home you can stick a load of laundry on, and don’t have to dress up for the office. And, the biggest factor in Ottawa, there is no commute.

Ottawa’s public transit system is a joke. And that is on its good days. The thought of adding tens of thousands of more riders daily to a broken system is enough to strike fear into the hearts of those who have no choice but to take the bus or train.

There’s also the question of office space. The Liberal government has grown the size of the civil service by 40 per cent over the past decade (with no corresponding increase in efficiency). Those hired after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic have only ever worked from home. They don’t have an office to go to.

So I have some sympathy for those civil servants who are about to face new working conditions. My advice to them though is to stop whining and suck it up. Do the jobs you were hired to do,

Anyone hired before 2020 was expected to go into the office every day. Those hired since should have been aware that work-from-home was not going to last forever.

If they don’t like the change, they can complain to their union. The public service unions should have already negotiated work-from-home agreements with the federal government. That they haven’t would indicate it really wasn’t considered a big deal.

Those who don’t like having to report for work in person can always quit if they don’t like it. The government is wanting to shed some of those Trudeau-era staff anyway. With no pandemic, we don’t need people to issue benefit cheques. Though we could use some people to recover the billions in payouts that shouldn’t have been made.

So it’s back to work Monday. The bus won’t be crowded this morning as most civil servants are still working from home.

I wonder if OC Transpo can fix the broken transit system before the return to work order kicks in.

It’s five months away. The odds are against it.