Coronavirus prep

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  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    SModa61 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    I think my work just made a mistake. In order to strongly discourage employees from either traveling out of state or having visitors from out of state for Thanksgiving or Christmas, they are requiring 14 days of quarantine if you travel or have out of state visitors...that's actually nothing new...the new wrinkle is that instead of teleworking for those 2 weeks as has been done previously, you are now required to use your annual leave and get written permission from on high to either travel or have someone out of state travel to you.

    For the most part, from what I've heard around the water cooler and break room is that most people aren't planning on anything big...but so and so's kid will be visiting from Texas or so and so's husband's mom will be visiting from Arizona, etc...but by and large people don't seem to be planning large get togethers.

    The punitive nature of this new mandate is already causing problems, and it's only Monday afternoon. I'm in management and I'm already getting things like, "my husband doesn't care if I have permission or not, he told me that he's not your employee and his mom will be visiting from Texas for Christmas." We also have a lot of employees with grown children who live out of state and while not planning a big tadoo for the holidays, they will be visiting back home. One of those people is our primary IT guy and he's basically said, "fine...I'll use my annual leave, but don't bother calling, because my phone and email will be off if I'm on a forced vacation." Another employee is upset because his sister lives in state, but works in southern Colorado so she commutes out of state daily and as such is considered to be an "out of state" visitor.

    The bigger issue I think is that you're going to basically have a lot of people just lying about it and saying they aren't traveling or hosting out of state visitors when they really are and thus avoiding any quarantine period whatsoever, when in the past they would have complied with the quarantine period and just teleworked. On the other side, you're going to have people comply...and fully comply in that since they are on annual leave, they will not be available and responding to emails or phone calls.

    We also have some new questions on our form that we fill out daily whether we are teleworking or coming to the office. Any yes answer on the form requires the employee to get a covid test and self quarantine for 14 days (can telework if their work can be done by that means)...the two added questions are do you have a runny nose or diarrhea? Fall allergies here are pretty common and just about everyone has a runny nose in the fall...that question alone just put about 70% of our workforce into quarantine starting today. I'm also hearing some chatter of people possibly using this as a work around for having to quarantine for 14 days using vacation time for having out of state visitors in that they see it as a responsible thing to quarantine...but instead of saying it's for visitors, they'll just say they have a runny nose so they can still work at home while responsibly quarantining.

    I think the higher ups made a bigger mess of all of this than it already was...I'm hoping they might walk back some of it.

    I am constantly shocked about how people/companies/government don't always foresee the potential unintended responses they trigger with their edicts.

    Yeah...I talked with my boss yesterday about this as I have more interaction with the rank and file and told him that we went from having a pretty compliant workforce with overall positive morale to a defiant workforce with about zero morale overnight. We already had pretty strict requirements in place...but making people who can otherwise work at home in quarantine use their leave pissed everyone off.

    I'd be interested to know what your boss's response was, because they don't always seem receptive to input from anybody.
  • AlexandraFindsHerself1971
    AlexandraFindsHerself1971 Posts: 3,106 Member
    Yeah, it was the nurse from South Dakota.

    It's not the welding mask they're skimping on, but there's a degree of interaction when the welding isn't going on and some classroom time, and that's when people aren't masking cause they don't believe in it. (sigh)
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    Well, son of a biscuit, dh just got a call back from his dr. and he tested positive. :( I think he was as surprised as I was. I'm hoping and praying the viral load he received during exposure was very little. So far, he's had a low grade fever 2 days, and a cough that hasn't been too bad. He started with symptoms last Tuesday night so keeping my fingers crossed it doesn't progress into anything worse.
    So now I'm waiting for a call from my dr. so I can schedule a test.

    I think the worse news that dh got was he cannot return to work until after the 25th and he has to have 3 days of being symptom free. He's going completely nutso being home and being with me.

    Yes. That's apparently one downside of the virus for some people. Having to spend too much time together. Can't say I really understand it myself, but everyone's different I suppose.

    You can only understand it from your own personal perspective. For instance, we were told to stay away from each other and always wear a mask within 6'. Sounds simple enough right? Unfortunately, 1. we have a small house 969 sq.' so not a lot of options of places to hide. 2. we have 1 bathroom 3. we both have to use the same kitchen, bathroom, living room, etc. 4. considering all the places our hands touch it's unbelievable how often I'm wiping down, cleaning, etc. throughout the day. and 5. my spouse coughs everywhere while wearing his mask around his chin, he's constantly touching his face, nose and washes his hands *maybe* 2x a day. :/ So yeh, even though I've told him, even his kids have told him and he should know better, he still either is clueless or too lazy to do all that he should. First a.m. he got up with a fever and was coughing, I watched as he coughed all over the kitchen counter. :( It's in his personal hygiene make-up; maybe it was his upbringing being 1 of 8 kids and the parents both worked so never had the time to teach properly. IDK.

    You see why *I* have a personally hard time being with him 24/7?? I can only obsess and do so much cleaning up after him, I've given up reminding him because then *I'm* a nag, and hoping for the best but my own personal situation brings out the resentment in me. :(
    Just a vent for the day. :blush:

    Ouch!! That's not nice. When I was at home with my wife for 6 weeks during our working from home phase, neither of us was ill, so those issues didn't specifically arise. I believe the whole point in stay at home orders is to keep everyone within the same small group and not exposed to other people.

    But apart from his bad hygiene habits, I'm hearing of lots of other people with relationship issues, who are glad for a normal work day out of the house away from their partners. That's really sad.
  • MikePfirrman
    MikePfirrman Posts: 3,307 Member
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    Well, son of a biscuit, dh just got a call back from his dr. and he tested positive. :( I think he was as surprised as I was. I'm hoping and praying the viral load he received during exposure was very little. So far, he's had a low grade fever 2 days, and a cough that hasn't been too bad. He started with symptoms last Tuesday night so keeping my fingers crossed it doesn't progress into anything worse.
    So now I'm waiting for a call from my dr. so I can schedule a test.

    I think the worse news that dh got was he cannot return to work until after the 25th and he has to have 3 days of being symptom free. He's going completely nutso being home and being with me.

    Yes. That's apparently one downside of the virus for some people. Having to spend too much time together. Can't say I really understand it myself, but everyone's different I suppose.

    You can only understand it from your own personal perspective. For instance, we were told to stay away from each other and always wear a mask within 6'. Sounds simple enough right? Unfortunately, 1. we have a small house 969 sq.' so not a lot of options of places to hide. 2. we have 1 bathroom 3. we both have to use the same kitchen, bathroom, living room, etc. 4. considering all the places our hands touch it's unbelievable how often I'm wiping down, cleaning, etc. throughout the day. and 5. my spouse coughs everywhere while wearing his mask around his chin, he's constantly touching his face, nose and washes his hands *maybe* 2x a day. :/ So yeh, even though I've told him, even his kids have told him and he should know better, he still either is clueless or too lazy to do all that he should. First a.m. he got up with a fever and was coughing, I watched as he coughed all over the kitchen counter. :( It's in his personal hygiene make-up; maybe it was his upbringing being 1 of 8 kids and the parents both worked so never had the time to teach properly. IDK.

    You see why *I* have a personally hard time being with him 24/7?? I can only obsess and do so much cleaning up after him, I've given up reminding him because then *I'm* a nag, and hoping for the best but my own personal situation brings out the resentment in me. :(
    Just a vent for the day. :blush:

    My youngest is like that when he's sick. He's just disgusting. And coming from a guy, that says a lot. But he was also a wrestler and now does MMA, so he's a bit of an animal. And I'm like a germaphobe, so we're like the Odd Couple. His mom literally would spray him with Lysol when he was sick out of aggravation. She doesn't take any guff. I think she trained me the way she liked me. Worked with me, not so much with my son. Completely whipped my rear end into shape. Maybe he's more stubborn, like her?
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    ReenieHJ wrote: »
    Well, son of a biscuit, dh just got a call back from his dr. and he tested positive. :( I think he was as surprised as I was. I'm hoping and praying the viral load he received during exposure was very little. So far, he's had a low grade fever 2 days, and a cough that hasn't been too bad. He started with symptoms last Tuesday night so keeping my fingers crossed it doesn't progress into anything worse.
    So now I'm waiting for a call from my dr. so I can schedule a test.

    I think the worse news that dh got was he cannot return to work until after the 25th and he has to have 3 days of being symptom free. He's going completely nutso being home and being with me.

    Yes. That's apparently one downside of the virus for some people. Having to spend too much time together. Can't say I really understand it myself, but everyone's different I suppose.

    You can only understand it from your own personal perspective. For instance, we were told to stay away from each other and always wear a mask within 6'. Sounds simple enough right? Unfortunately, 1. we have a small house 969 sq.' so not a lot of options of places to hide. 2. we have 1 bathroom 3. we both have to use the same kitchen, bathroom, living room, etc. 4. considering all the places our hands touch it's unbelievable how often I'm wiping down, cleaning, etc. throughout the day. and 5. my spouse coughs everywhere while wearing his mask around his chin, he's constantly touching his face, nose and washes his hands *maybe* 2x a day. :/ So yeh, even though I've told him, even his kids have told him and he should know better, he still either is clueless or too lazy to do all that he should. First a.m. he got up with a fever and was coughing, I watched as he coughed all over the kitchen counter. :( It's in his personal hygiene make-up; maybe it was his upbringing being 1 of 8 kids and the parents both worked so never had the time to teach properly. IDK.

    You see why *I* have a personally hard time being with him 24/7?? I can only obsess and do so much cleaning up after him, I've given up reminding him because then *I'm* a nag, and hoping for the best but my own personal situation brings out the resentment in me. :(
    Just a vent for the day. :blush:

    Yikes! I think I would be walking around with a can of disinfectant spray and just spraying everything... light switches, cupboard handles, sink handles, doorknobs, etc.

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