Coronavirus prep
Replies
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Diatonic12 wrote: »Cafe Rio and St. George. Ayup. Sooo good. St. George has really grown.
Last night, I drove by our local yocal restaurants. They were cram jammed with pesky tourists from all over the U.S. Some of these buildings have been around since the 1800's and they're rickety boxes of wood. Now if you only knew that during the midnight hours that mice are running around the countertops and all over the tables you wouldn't be so gung-ho to go in there but wild horses won't keep the tourists away.
I wish they'd all go home but they won't. They're all blowing through here on their way to the big moto rally and they'll be baaaaack. They always come back and this time they'll be bringing 'Rona with them. Gives me a really big pinch. Sure does.
Can't help it. This is still my favorite meme.
Sorry you have to deal with lots of tourist. We do too although now our boarder is closed to the states with the most cases it feels safer for now. Zero new cases here again today.2 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness!
But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
Nobody uses video on our Skype meetings. In fact, when at the office, my computer is on the docking station and closed. I couldn't display video in that position anyway.3 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness! But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
I work in finance at a manufacturing company. The vast majority of Microsoft Teams meetings I'm in involve finance, engineering manufacturing and purchasing professionals. The meetings virtually always have a presentation to keep the meeting focused as well as present information for discussion/decision making. With the presentation showing the squares for each participants picture is at most an inch square. Really too small to be of any value.
IMO, remote training can work well for some clerical/support jobs but for professional/technical jobs where there are many factors going into a decision that don't fit neatly into a flowchart, the ability to turn around and have a discussion with a coworker, that is overheard by another coworker who joins in the discussion is critical. That was the point brought out in the WSJ article I linked.
Now if someone needs to WFH during an illness do so.
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We had a large departmental meeting today. The department head mentioned with all of us WFH, cases of eyestrain, neck, back, etc. pain are expanding exponentially. Small monitors, poor chairs, desks too low/high and so on.
Be careful out there.5 -
T1DCarnivoreRunner wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness! But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
Nobody uses video on our Skype meetings. In fact, when at the office, my computer is on the docking station and closed. I couldn't display video in that position anyway.
We use Zoom, I would say about 50% of the people use their video and 50% don't. There's been no direction or feedback for those of us who aren't using it (I usually don't have it on). Our meetings typically involve lots of presentations of spreadsheets, software details, or blueprints so that's usually what people are focused on.4 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness! But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
I work in finance at a manufacturing company. The vast majority of Microsoft Teams meetings I'm in involve finance, engineering manufacturing and purchasing professionals. The meetings virtually always have a presentation to keep the meeting focused as well as present information for discussion/decision making. With the presentation showing the squares for each participants picture is at most an inch square. Really too small to be of any value.
IMO, remote training can work well for some clerical/support jobs but for professional/technical jobs where there are many factors going into a decision that don't fit neatly into a flowchart, the ability to turn around and have a discussion with a coworker, that is overheard by another coworker who joins in the discussion is critical. That was the point brought out in the WSJ article I linked.
Now if someone needs to WFH during an illness do so.
Yeah, I'm talking about smaller, interactive meetings where people are expected to participate, not a presentation.0 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness! But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
I work in finance at a manufacturing company. The vast majority of Microsoft Teams meetings I'm in involve finance, engineering manufacturing and purchasing professionals. The meetings virtually always have a presentation to keep the meeting focused as well as present information for discussion/decision making. With the presentation showing the squares for each participants picture is at most an inch square. Really too small to be of any value.
IMO, remote training can work well for some clerical/support jobs but for professional/technical jobs where there are many factors going into a decision that don't fit neatly into a flowchart, the ability to turn around and have a discussion with a coworker, that is overheard by another coworker who joins in the discussion is critical. That was the point brought out in the WSJ article I linked.
Now if someone needs to WFH during an illness do so.
Yeah, I'm talking about smaller, interactive meetings where people are expected to participate, not a presentation.
We do a lot of working sessions where we are discussing material with 3D part prints, manufacturing layouts, tables of material prices being duscussed so concentrate on material not a small video of the people in the meeting.0 -
Could someone explain to me how they would do an 'elbow bump' while maintaining the 2 meter or 6 foot social distancimg?
Maybe some people could do it, I know my upper arms are not long enough
I was under the impression that we were talking about resuming greetings P.P., Post Pandemic.
3 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness! But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
I work in finance at a manufacturing company. The vast majority of Microsoft Teams meetings I'm in involve finance, engineering manufacturing and purchasing professionals. The meetings virtually always have a presentation to keep the meeting focused as well as present information for discussion/decision making. With the presentation showing the squares for each participants picture is at most an inch square. Really too small to be of any value.
IMO, remote training can work well for some clerical/support jobs but for professional/technical jobs where there are many factors going into a decision that don't fit neatly into a flowchart, the ability to turn around and have a discussion with a coworker, that is overheard by another coworker who joins in the discussion is critical. That was the point brought out in the WSJ article I linked.
Now if someone needs to WFH during an illness do so.
Yeah, I'm talking about smaller, interactive meetings where people are expected to participate, not a presentation.
We do a lot of working sessions where we are discussing material with 3D part prints, manufacturing layouts, tables of material prices being duscussed so concentrate on material not a small video of the people in the meeting.
Yes, that makes sense. I wouldn't think people not actually participating (i.e., taking advantage of the camera being off, as you said before) would be a big issue in an interactive session, though. If it's the kind of meeting where not everyone really has to be there (a pet peeve of mine is excessive and unnecessary meetings), then I wouldn't think it was that big an issue. But anyway sounds like your kinds of necessary meetings are quite different from the ones I attend. We never did video meetings back when everyone was in the office.3 -
Diatonic12 wrote: »Cafe Rio and St. George. Ayup. Sooo good. St. George has really grown.
Last night, I drove by our local yocal restaurants. They were cram jammed with pesky tourists from all over the U.S. Some of these buildings have been around since the 1800's and they're rickety boxes of wood. Now if you only knew that during the midnight hours that mice are running around the countertops and all over the tables you wouldn't be so gung-ho to go in there but wild horses won't keep the tourists away.
I wish they'd all go home but they won't. They're all blowing through here on their way to the big moto rally and they'll be baaaaack. They always come back and this time they'll be bringing 'Rona with them. Gives me a really big pinch. Sure does.
Can't help it. This is still my favorite meme.
Yah! Living in tourist zones is BGS ( Big Stress Zone). Boo!
2 -
Could someone explain to me how they would do an 'elbow bump' while maintaining the 2 meter or 6 foot social distancimg?
Maybe some people could do it, I know my upper arms are not long enough
That's true ElioraFR! Best if people just say hello I think.
Someone I know has a temperature, cough and is lethargic and it never occurred to them it could be Covid-19. Unbelievable to me. They are going to the doctor for another reason today so if it is Covid possibly spreading it in the doctor's office. I told them that we are asked when booking in if we have any symptoms but apparently isn't asked there and she didn't bother to mention it. *bangs head on keyboard!*
Friends of my husband's in Netherlands have the same response. Two of them are sick, they have chalked it up as a 'cold' and are not getting tests.
No wonder this pandemic is still spreading.
6 -
Could someone explain to me how they would do an 'elbow bump' while maintaining the 2 meter or 6 foot social distancimg?
Maybe some people could do it, I know my upper arms are not long enough
I think the idea would be to bump and keep on moving. No standing around for social conversation.2 -
Don't hand me no lines and keep your hands and bumps to yourself. Good decision, Tony.4
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janejellyroll wrote: »T1DCarnivoreRunner wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »baconslave wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »
Goodness, I don’t envy you having to enforce those rules, but good on you for trying.Theoldguy1 wrote: »
Which practices? The ones that many parents taught their children while growing up? Wash your hands before eating. Cover your nose when you sneeze. Wash your hands after using the toilet. Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands after touching money. Don't lie in bed with clothes you wore outdoors. By the way, did I mention wash your hands?
Why are normal civilized people no longer doing these things??
After returning to the office for 4 days this week, I’m pretty confident half my coworkers have spent their summer doing drugs or something else to wipe off all brain cells that carry learned human decency and guidelines. It has consistently always been the rule, first as general human decency and then as official HR policy, that you wash your hands with water and soap when you come in to any space from outdoors. We have hand sanitizer bottles all around the office, but at this point everyone should know water and soap are better and hand sanitizer should be used as complementary add-in or when proper hand-washing isn’t available. Some of the discussions I’ve had this week include:
”Please wash your hands first, you just came in from outside”
”But I only touched a few doorknobs”
”Still.” (Me in my head: yeah, you went outside, probably touched your face while smoking, and then used the doors and elevators in this 11-floor office building that has quite a lot of people)
”Please wash your hands with water and soap”
”But I’m using hand sanitizer”
”That’s great as an addition, but doesn’t replace soap”
”Huh, since when?”
”It never has...”
After referencing these discussions the CEO gave me permission to start giving personal office bans at my discretion for those who can’t or won’t follow the hygiene rules. At this point being allowed to leave home and come to work at the office is a privilege and those who don’t follow the rules to make it safe for others won’t be allowed to use it. If people want to ignore hygiene and safety rules, they can do it in the privacy of their own home where they won’t risk their colleagues. They just have to deal with focusing on work with their kids jumping around etc., but life is full of choices and everyone is welcome to continue working from home if hand-washing at the office is too much trouble.
Wow!! I wouldn't want to be the one sending workers back home, but I guess you need to take action if people are so dumb.
In our workplace there are handwashing signs everywhere, and extra taps and sinks have been installed. It is also mentioned at every huddle or staff meeting. It just simply is the new normal.
Masks, distancing, and temperature checks are also part of the daily routine. Everything is being done to protect everyone else and keep the workplace safe.
IMO, to be honest, if grown *kitten* adults need to be told to wash their hands the train has already left the station and no amount of HR signs and announcements will do any good.
Yep. The thing that bothers me most about those discussions is that the reaction isn’t ”oh crap I spaced out, will wash immediately” but instead some sort of complaining about not wanting to do it for reason X.
The rules are in place for a reason, and as head of HR I will be enforcing them. It’s not fair to let the few idiots run wild at the office and risk those who want to come in, focus on their work without at-home distractions, and follow the rules to keep themselves and everyone around the as safe as possible. The office is not a playground for misbehaving children, it’s a workplace where people should be able to be safe and focus on their work like adults.
From HR viewpoint, people get used to signs so fast they are only useful for a day or two, after that they’re really just virtue signaling that we care and have plans in place, and they show the right message for the few guests that do come in. I’m hoping I don’t have to start actually banning people, hopefully having 1-on-1 discussions about rules being enforced and bans being issued for further non-compliance is enough of a threat.
(Yeah, I probably shouldn’t call my colleagues idiots or misbehaving children, but I’m human and they’re risking my health too.)
As I’ve mentioned before, I have been aware of other people’s germ-spreading behaviors for a while now, due to periodically being on immune-suppressing medication. It’s not a surprise to me that most adults don’t wash their hands, won’t cover their mouths during a cough or sneeze, and are downright hostile if someone suggests that they should avoid others while symptomatic. I work from home and don’t go out much, and caught four separate colds last winter due to others. I can probably pinpoint the exact person who gave me each illness, since they typically came on two to four days after being near the child with fever and a cough lying down on a restaurant booth during an adult drinking party because “I couldn’t leave him with a sitter when he’s sick,” or the lady with a rattling chest cough not covering her mouth and bumping me from behind in line at the grocery. Or the young fireman staring vacantly into space coughing constantly not covering his mouth in the packet pickup tent at a race. In each case I removed myself from the vicinity as soon as I could and it wasn’t good enough. I don’t have servants, it’s not possible for me to avoid all other people, so when a substantial number of them are determined to spread illness, I get sick.
If this epidemic has any silver lining, I hope it is that it becomes much less socially acceptable to kill other people with your germs. Because doing this kills people, and not just when covid is around. Fragile elderly and immune compromised people exist at all times, and your fever and lingering cough may be someone else’s death sentence.
One of my kids was sick recently and a doctor had to get involved. We had a conversation and I told her, that even though I am a very conscientious person, I really used to feel that getting sick was inevitable with my little germ-nuggets. And that I didn't think twice on going around when I had sick kids at home. Complete thoughtlessness! But COVID has brought home that though I'm not currently sick, I could be a carrier and spread it to others outside the family. So I will definitely be more careful in the future when illness is in my family to not be a jerkface carelessly spreading it everywhere.
One of my friends has a prematurely born daughter with lugn issues so regular flus were extremely dangerous to her as a baby. They couldn’t take her anywhere with public transportation because of the infection risk and every invitation to their home included a ”stay the *kitten* away if you have any symptoms whatsoever” reminder. I admit that pre-covid I thought smaller symptoms like a runny nose or a little cough weren’t a reason to stay home and isolate if I felt otherwise fine and was able to go on about my regular day, and things like her case were the exception. In the future I will definitely stay home with smaller symptoms, and I hope this pandemic permanently changes the current (pre-covid) culture where showing up was more important than knowing when to not show up.
Now that many workplaces have tried working from home and seen it can be done, I hope in the future ”I feel like I might be getting sick” is a good enough reason to stay home and work from there without employers questioning it. Unrelated, I also hope handshaking will become a thing of the past.
Saw something recently in the Wall Street Journal that WFH isn't as good as advertised.
Also, i disagree and hope handshakes, fists bumps etc come back when this is behind us. People are social animals and an appropriate touch is part of that socialization.
This is the article discussing the perhaps WFH isn't as good on a long term basis. Fine for when people are sick IMO.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-start-to-think-remote-work-isnt-so-great-after-all-11595603397
It's popping up behind a paywall now but I was able to read it a few days ago.
Headline:Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After AllProjects take longer. Collaboration is harder. And training new workers is a struggle. ‘This is not going to be sustainable.’
Re: training new workers. We had 4 new employees start during lockdown, and 4 started less than a month before lockdown started. All 4 who started during lockdown and completely from home said it was surprisingly easy and they felt actually more connected to their coworkers since Teams communication and video meetings require people to be more intentional and present than at the office where you can more easily ignore your surroundings. Apparently it’s also helpful to NOT meet everyone on your first day, because you can actually get to know colleagues one by one, and even in large meetings everyone automatically has their name displayed so there’s no awkwardness about being expected to remember the names of all 30 people you were introduced to on your first day.
2 of the workers who started just before lockdown are entry level. They struggled more because they need more hands-on guidance and training about the actual work than more experienced professionals, and they’re also less confident to speak up and ask in Teams if they’re struggling or need more advice.
Interesting. Where I work (multi-billion $, multi-national corporation) standard practice is people have the camera off/piece of Post-It Note over the camera so all that is seen in a Teams meeting is the material being presented and pictures of the participants from our corporate directory or blank space. A person in a Teams meeting could be doing Lord knows what and nobody on the meeting would know. Meeting "live" in a conference room it's pretty easy to see who is really engaged IMO.
We do Zoom meetings, but everyone is visible. It would be considered weird/not acceptable to cover the camera. We don't do lots of meetings in general, however, and lots of team stuff is handled by phone (and pretty easy to tell who is participating, as everyone is supposed to be contributing to the discussion).
We also have a new lawyer who started just before the stay at home order, who had been a judicial clerk before. It's been pretty impossible to give him the kind of feedback/training he would have received in person in the office.
Nobody uses video on our Skype meetings. In fact, when at the office, my computer is on the docking station and closed. I couldn't display video in that position anyway.
We use Zoom, I would say about 50% of the people use their video and 50% don't. There's been no direction or feedback for those of us who aren't using it (I usually don't have it on). Our meetings typically involve lots of presentations of spreadsheets, software details, or blueprints so that's usually what people are focused on.
I'd been working remotely since 2011. We didn't have formal presentations per se, but we always had a screenshare of the computer of the person driving the meeting, and never used video of participants.5 -
Oooo @kshama2001. Just look at the fun thread you've created. I've had a whale of a good time here.1
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Theoldguy1 wrote: »We had a large departmental meeting today. The department head mentioned with all of us WFH, cases of eyestrain, neck, back, etc. pain are expanding exponentially. Small monitors, poor chairs, desks too low/high and so on.
Be careful out there.
I would have expected this the first week or two, but surely there has been plenty of time to get decent chairs, desks, monitors, etc?
When I moved in 2011, I got a used computer desk on craigslist before I got a washer and dryer. I had the chair, computer, and two monitors from work.0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »We had a large departmental meeting today. The department head mentioned with all of us WFH, cases of eyestrain, neck, back, etc. pain are expanding exponentially. Small monitors, poor chairs, desks too low/high and so on.
Be careful out there.
I would have expected this the first week or two, but surely there has been plenty of time to get decent chairs, desks, monitors, etc?
When I moved in 2011, I got a used computer desk on craigslist before I got a washer and dryer. I had the chair, computer, and two monitors from work.
I think sometimes people don't realize, until the damage is done. Thinking back to the early days of workstation ergonomics at my job, we'd been having quite a few problems (i.e., people injured, some worse than others; workers' comp reports; etc. - bad consequence for both people and organization). We sent a smart, conscientious employee off for detailed training, and put a remediation program in play, starting with the already-affected, moving to others who volunteered, and finishing up with recommendations for the resistant ( 😆 you can lead a horse to water . . . .). The ergonomics-checker person was pretty much empowered to order what was needful, from a long standard list of stuff, with other things possible after discussion. There was a huge positive impact, and problems went to near zero from then forward.
I think now, people don't realize their home set-up is a problem at first, then the cumulative stress injuries start turning up. Even then, I'm betting some blame generic "stress" or something else, and I'm guessing some don't have a good handle on what adjustments to make, or can't afford to make them at home.
It'll take a while, sadly, for this stuff to sort out.7 -
kshama2001 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »We had a large departmental meeting today. The department head mentioned with all of us WFH, cases of eyestrain, neck, back, etc. pain are expanding exponentially. Small monitors, poor chairs, desks too low/high and so on.
Be careful out there.
I would have expected this the first week or two, but surely there has been plenty of time to get decent chairs, desks, monitors, etc?
When I moved in 2011, I got a used computer desk on craigslist before I got a washer and dryer. I had the chair, computer, and two monitors from work.
I think sometimes people don't realize, until the damage is done. Thinking back to the early days of workstation ergonomics at my job, we'd been having quite a few problems (i.e., people injured, some worse than others; workers' comp reports; etc. - bad consequence for both people and organization). We sent a smart, conscientious employee off for detailed training, and put a remediation program in play, starting with the already-affected, moving to others who volunteered, and finishing up with recommendations for the resistant ( 😆 you can lead a horse to water . . . .). The ergonomics-checker person was pretty much empowered to order what was needful, from a long standard list of stuff, with other things possible after discussion. There was a huge positive impact, and problems went to near zero from then forward.
I think now, people don't realize their home set-up is a problem at first, then the cumulative stress injuries start turning up. Even then, I'm betting some blame generic "stress" or something else, and I'm guessing some don't have a good handle on what adjustments to make, or can't afford to make them at home.
It'll take a while, sadly, for this stuff to sort out.
Yep definitely cumulative. I've had several shoulder operations and both thumb joints rebuilt along with numerous issues of hip/back pain due to years in an office environment. It can take a while for issues to manifest.
Our location at least (don't know about the entire corporation) had told us it's fine to take extra computer monitors office chairs home during the WFH time (have to transport anything on your own though).4 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »We had a large departmental meeting today. The department head mentioned with all of us WFH, cases of eyestrain, neck, back, etc. pain are expanding exponentially. Small monitors, poor chairs, desks too low/high and so on.
Be careful out there.
I would have expected this the first week or two, but surely there has been plenty of time to get decent chairs, desks, monitors, etc?
When I moved in 2011, I got a used computer desk on craigslist before I got a washer and dryer. I had the chair, computer, and two monitors from work.
I think sometimes people don't realize, until the damage is done. Thinking back to the early days of workstation ergonomics at my job, we'd been having quite a few problems (i.e., people injured, some worse than others; workers' comp reports; etc. - bad consequence for both people and organization). We sent a smart, conscientious employee off for detailed training, and put a remediation program in play, starting with the already-affected, moving to others who volunteered, and finishing up with recommendations for the resistant ( 😆 you can lead a horse to water . . . .). The ergonomics-checker person was pretty much empowered to order what was needful, from a long standard list of stuff, with other things possible after discussion. There was a huge positive impact, and problems went to near zero from then forward.
I think now, people don't realize their home set-up is a problem at first, then the cumulative stress injuries start turning up. Even then, I'm betting some blame generic "stress" or something else, and I'm guessing some don't have a good handle on what adjustments to make, or can't afford to make them at home.
It'll take a while, sadly, for this stuff to sort out.
Yep definitely cumulative. I've had several shoulder operations and both thumb joints rebuilt along with numerous issues of hip/back pain due to years in an office environment. It can take a while for issues to manifest.
Our location at least (don't know about the entire corporation) had told us it's fine to take extra computer monitors office chairs home during the WFH time (have to transport anything on your own though).
Same here, we are allowed to bring monitors etc home. Still, that’s just part of the solution. Many live in small apartments where they don’t have proper office spaces, enough room to put an adjustable desk in (even if they could figure out how to bring a desk home from the office), and the lighting isn’t planned for office work. For example, I only have a small desk at home and no room for a bigger one, it’s not adjustable and it’s at the wrong height for working long periods of time, and it’s in the darkest corner of my apartment because I can’t fit it anywhere else. Plus, it’s in the same room as my husband’s desk so if one of us is having meetings we have to either put on headphones and blast music to drown out the meeting noise or one has to go work on the bed or bedroom floor.
There’s also the issue of human laziness. If given the option to work from your own couch in pyjamas, many people are going to take it.4 -
I have been working from home since March and have only just (this weekend) sorted myself out with a desk and monitor rather than using my laptop on the kitchen table. Part of it was not knowing how long it was going to last, and part of it was not feeling too bad. But then I started racing time trials again which puts a bit more strain on my back/shoulders and I really started to feel it while working so decided to do something about it.
In theory I could have got a monitor from work, but on the basis that when we go back it may not be full time at first, and I cycle to work, I really can't transport it backwards and forwards every day so it made more sense to buy my own. Not to mention that it would have involved going in to the office, which I have no other real reason to do at the moment.7
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