My boss just told me the office is re-opening Monday and I’m expected to be there. Great. Despite the fact that the county still has a SIP order in effect.
That seems… problematic if not illegal?
I’m in my second week back. We had a bunch of safety measures in place. I don’t think anyone is paying them much attention beyond limiting people to two in the kitchen.
We’re here all day. If someone is infected and asymptomatic for a few days among us, some of us will get it. I don’t see how we can avoid it. Small company at least. I sit in the dunce corner away from everyone too, for some reason. I don’t know why I got put here but now I like it. I get a window view too!
Similarly I was asked to do an in-person interview this week. I asked if we could keep it to video. Because fuck, come on.
I’m remote until after Labor Day at least.
I do like this company.
RichVR
1914
So the wife was called in to work. This was Monday. Today there were still only a few people there. A lot of people were cleared to return. Very few did. How the fuck does this work? Some people just ignore the rules?
If they feel safer at home, or have a risk factor, maybe.
I am sure a few are using sick days and PTO.
RichVR
1916
So does my wife.
If you mean certain medical issues, maybe. But then they were not called back.
No.
Are you sure? A lot of people are pressured to come to work, despite having underlining risk factors. Wasn’t there a story about a dental aid asked to come back, but wouldn’t because her son was immunocompromised?
Keep in mind, a lot of owners are just assholes who have little or no empathy for their employees. They might believe that am employee is well enough to go back to work, without realizing that the employee has family members at home that have a high chance of dying if they got sick.
RichVR
1918
I’m pretty sure that my wife has a good understanding of what goes on at her job. Are the owners assholes? Certainly. Are they oft times clueless? Guaranteed. What is your point?
Huh, obviously don’t know what’s going on there. I do know that if my wife’s employer tried to force her back right now, first she’d try to negotiate with them and if that failed she’d quit. I know other folks don’t have that luxury, of course. Employers that don’t value their employees health can fuck right off.
orald
1920
I’m one of the very fortunate ones in that the CEO of our organization takes her employees welfare very seriously. She implemented a work from home order in mid-March and we are all on an optional 4 day work week through August. No pay cuts and the organization is looking to bulk purchase 50,000 masks for staff and staff of our affiliates. With all the shifts from field outreach for census and voter registration that we support to phone and online programs, we are raising money to purchase cell plans, hotspots and updating laptops for the small army of volunteers we work with.
And this week at our department heads meeting the CEO talked about establishing a ‘no meetings’ week in July so that we could all focus on the work we need to do.
I’ve had some bosses who couldn’t organize a three car funeral and I appreciate our CEO so much.
So, working from home turns out to be slightly impractical when your internet provider “Down” indicator looks as follows:
Only been going on for 4 hours. That’s where having a decent data plan for tethering might have been helpful…
Or, just take break, get some exercise. Enjoy yourself a bit.
They keep teasing me. They brought the network back up for 20’ while I was having lunch. I got back to my home office, logged in… And it went back down within a minute.
I would normally do those healthy things you suggest. But, first, my boss is weird about those things (and will at best let me take the day off while encouraging me to find alternatives) and because, second, we have a big release for an external customer who doesn’t care about Virgin Media in 3 days and the small team I’m leading is in charge. I really could use the time to get the final items on the list crossed off. Good times.
At least, when things break down while in the office, you blame IT, go for a cup of coffee with your colleagues who are in the same situation and still get paid. No point stressing about what you can’t control. At home, we are IT.
Oh God, the tease. There is nothing worse then the tease. It keeps you at your desk, stressed out. It shackles you. I have complete empathy with you.
I do wish you the best of luck. I was lucky, my bosses really only cared for results, so as long as I worked my 8, I could be somewhat flexible about it. Also, as the lowest on the totem pole, I rarely got phone calls, just back office work.
So, the COVID quarantine diet / light exercise regimen has done its work. I’ve lost right around 20 pounds since the middle of April and am a couple of pounds over the weight at which I graduated from high school (160).
I didn’t really set out to do that. We just quit going to restaurants (of course) and rarely even order takeout or delivery. We’re eating what I feel like shopping for and preparing, and that gets pretty boring after a while, so naturally we are eating less. After I realized that I was losing weight I started to worry about losing muscle mass (I’m 59) so I started doing light stretching, planks, and some mild crunches every day. I’m still fighting some stubborn fat around my middle, so I guess I’ll keep it up.
Awesome!
I have also lost weight, maybe about 10 lbs. not changing anything with my exercise routine (daily 30 min walk with dog) but my food intake has changed a LOT. No more swinging by the drive thru, or going out to eat. Mostly cooking food from home, some delivery.
I also find that working from home, I just don’t snack as much. At work we would always have lots of free snacks, people bringing in treats, leftover catering, etc. I find it much easier to eat less.
Thanks for the tips. I grabbed that book as well as Complete Calisthenics a couple weeks back and put together an exercise routine for myself. Convict Conditioning is as silly in its prose as the title indicates, but the way it advances the difficulty of the exercises seems pretty great so far - for all the fronting and trash talk, the exercises are well geared for beginners. I merged those with the mobility/flexibility exercises from Complete Calisthenics and feel like I’ve got something to work with for a while. I even installed a pull-up bar in my basement. I’m only doing this a couple times a week so far, but at the moment my body feels like I got beat up in an alley so I assume it’s going well for me. If/when that passes I’ll probably see what Overcoming Gravity has to say - that seems to be another popular book for this type of training.
