Some workers think LIC sucks, others love it

“It’s far and it’s inconvenient,” said one particularly dissatisfied female employee who has worked in the building for 10 years and lately commutes an hour and 15 minutes from New Jersey every day. She said that the building management once did a survey on the time employees spent commuting to the office and found the average was 90 minutes each way.

“Then you get here and can’t get things done. You can’t go to the drug store, can’t pick up a birthday gift,” she said from the aforementioned coffee shop in One Court Square’s lobby.

The Local: Work Life In Long Island City

Though the peace and quiet in LIC is penetrated by the near constant din of construction these days, a UNFCU employee who started working at their new building just a couple of months ago after six years in Manhattan prefers the new neighborhood. “I like it better here," he said. "The city is too congested."

Most of his colleagues who’ve recently moved over to Queens appear to feel the same way, he said, but there are a few who feel that the outer-boroughs are beneath them. “A friend of mine who works next door hates it,” he said. “She said she didn’t go through all that college to work in the ghetto.