Coronavirus prep

hipari wrote: »

Here in Finland the discussion around both infection surges and rule-breakers has been very much about young people in the media. There’s currently a big surge that’s being traced to a student dorm with shared kitchens - obviously the virus will spread there if people are confined in and can’t leave, they still have to use the shared kitchens to prepare the food they eat. Students are still called reckless because they, well, eat while quarantining. Bars were closed a couple months ago again, and it was largely blamed in the media on ”reckless 20-somethings who force us to not have nice things”. Even in the USA-centric media the discussion has lately been dominated by spring breakers. Then again, when other age groups do something irresponsible, they are allowed. Last week there was a large anti-restriction protest here (mostly middle-aged people who identify with the political right, to say nicely) that broke several laws and restrictions about how many people can gather, wearing masks etc., and the protest was allowed to go on without police interference. About two years ago there was a large climate protest (mostly young people) that broke zero laws or restrictions, but was broken up by police and some of the protestors were injured due to violence.

I do think some (not all) are definitely suffering because of the restrictions. For many young people, their most important social circles are outside the home. Young people also don’t typically have ”family rooms”, at least not here. Instead, many live alone in tiny apartments, trying to make it through the day/month/year without social interactions or money (since their jobs are typically in the service industry) while the media calls them reckless and stupid because the ones that do -unjustly- take matters into their own hands ruin it for everyone.

Humans are social animals, socializing with others tends to be important to us. Mental health is important too and suffering isn’t limited to physical pain. My own alma mater completed their study in December and up to 60% of all students are experiencing burnout symptoms. The university has about 35 000 students, 60% of that is 21 000. That’s a big number of students with mental health issues for just one university, and burnout symptoms tend to linger and cause problems later in life.

I’m absolutely not saying that students and 20-somethings are somehow special snowflakes. I’m saying they’re treated unfairly in the media and their circumstances and suffering are not taken seriously, at least compared to many other demographic groups.

How much the restrictions are violated can also depend on the infrastructure in which people are living, I think.

For all on-campus housing we have reduced density (everyone is in singles), maximum bathroom ratios (no more than 6 people per bathroom), hand sanitizer and disinfectant/paper towels in all common spaces, and occupancy limits in all common areas like lounges and kitchens. We sanitize every surface 2x a day, 7 days a week. Each suite is its own pod, and if someone in the pod comes up positive, the entire pod is quarantined. And they have been really good with following the rules.

“Gatherings” of two or more people are not permitted, unless they’re sponsored (by us) events.

Penalties for violating COVID policies, especially the Gatherings policy can be severe. More severe than students throwing a party in the past due to the public health implications.

It’s hard on the students. A lot of our people would not be able to be in college if they weren’t on campus. Mostly due to internet that can’t sustain their online work, but also due to too many people at home (multi-generational households) to focus, or due to safety issues in the gone.

But that doesn’t mean the experience is ideal. Far from it, even for some of my more solitary engineers. It’s very different when the isolation is not a choice and you can’t go hang out with people anytime you feel the need. As a blessing and a curse, almost no students live on their own because housing is ridiculously expensive here. They’re packed into tiny apartments. Also not ideal under COVID. We trade one demon for another.

I like going into work, because I get to see people. (I’m single and live alone.) my students don’t really have that. We only allow 4-6 people in the “family room” all physically distances with face-coverings on.

There are very few folks in campus. I see more of the dining delivery robots (Starbucks, Panda Express) than I do humans when I go for a walk. And more bunnies. Oh, the bunnies. They’ve multiplied during the pandemic and seem to be running in herds. 🐰 Not gonna lie, they kinda scare me now. I knew watching Monty Python as a kid could scar me.

Our counseling center appointments are booked. By students on campus and off.

We’ve only recently begun to be able to do in-person events (with face-coverings and physical distancing) outside. From November to a couple weeks ago they weren’t permitted due to county virus conditions (restrictions put in place by the state).

The biggest issue we have is the asymptomatic carriers. Because they feel fine, they’ll get in a car and go somewhere, especially now that things are opening up more. Someone’s positive and they all get it, and then their suites are quarantined with 1 or 2 more coming up positive sometimes. Most of our students don’t have their own car, more than 50% are low income and they’re not supposed to carpool or share an Uber. And we do weekly testing, down from twice a week when things were really surging.

All we can do is the best we can and know the limitations of today will help more us make to a healthier tomorrow (someday).

Got Pfizer vax #2 about 4 hours ago. So far, the only side effect was that (after the shot) my upper arm stung a tiny bit, not as bad as a bee sting (non-allergic), but it only lasted a few minutes, feels normal now. Otherwise, nothing yet.

I got my first vaccine on Tuesday (Moderna) and other than a sore arm and some body aches the next day was fine. Already scheduled for my 2nd shot. Going to be really glad to be fully vaccinated.

My workplace has already said they plan to return the office to pre-covid staffing levels by the end of April. Will they lose employees to more flexible employers? Probably, I know I've been putting in applications for any remote jobs I'm qualified for because I really don't want to go back. Do they care? Seemingly not. The company is run by an elderly man who literally said "it just doesn't feel like a family when you're not all here in the office." Someone needs to tell him his "family" has 6,000 people and most of us are just there for the paycheck, not the socialization.

I've been in the office the whole time. Our organization only permitted work from home under very limited, exceptional circumstances for upper management so they weren't prepared when the pandemic started. They ran out of laptops fast and if you wanted to work from home you were required to use your own computer. For some people that meant sharing devices with a WFH spouse and kids who were doing virtual learning. If you reside too far out of the metropolitan area your internet might not be adequate. I need too many basic office resources like printing/faxing/scanning that I couldn't do from home. One woman in a similar role to mine had to put in a day at home because of childcare needs and said it took her more than half a day to pre-prepare a day's work that she could actually do outside the office. That's horrendously inefficient.

However, with less of us there, I've always felt very safe. Everyone is fully compliant with masking and distancing. And it looks like I'll probably qualify for vaccination by occupation before I qualify by age.

I've been "working from home" since last March, with a small break in the summer when cases were low and we went back in the office half-staff alternate days. There are only 7 of us. Since the last shutdown in December we have all been working from home - but the problem is we are not paperless so we each have to go into the office to pick up/drop off files and documents. With the latest surge we are only allowing one person in at a time so scheduling office time is a *kitten*, and we are an accounting firm so this time of year is insane. My office time is Tues and Thurs 7-10 AM, and Sunday 8-12 - so that's fun. It is really wearing on me at this point, last year we got through it, but a whole year has gone by and the push we felt last year to buckle down and get through it has faded. I just hope that we get a tax deadline extension, we did last year, it's just going to be impossible to get everything filed on time with everything going on.

Our governor (Minnesota) just announced that, beginning Tuesday (3/30) all Minnesotans, 16 and older, are eligible for covid vaccine.

hipari wrote: »

The_Enginerd wrote: »

I'm hesitantly elated because I don't know how long it will take once the surge in demand hits. On one hand I am excited to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but also somewhat sad to see the return to the office coming.

Has your workplace signaled they will start requiring on-site presence again? I personally find it absurd that any company would be able to force their staff to return to 100% on-site office work again, at least not without significant amounts of personnel leaving for more flexible employers or without very compelling reasons why being physically present is an absolute necessity.

Yes, I know I’m probably biased (my workplace has always been very flexible about time and place), but I can’t think of any good reason for regular office jobs to require on-site presence unless there’s a task-related need or a team-building/social interaction perspective to some event. Even before covid, my workplace (an IT company) only required on-site attendance for customer meetings when customers requested it and we sometimes had an office day with company meetings and the idea that everyone will be there on the same day so people can chat freely and get to know each other. People have been doing things like jetting off to Spain to work from there for a month, and we’ve been cool with people working from wherever they want as long as three criteria are met: they stay within the EU (due to data protection laws), have an internet connection and don’t make their time zone a problem.

I’ve been chatting with colleagues lately to hear their thoughts on what they want to do when we return back to ”normal” and most say they will continue working mostly remotely and will only come to the office when they see some extra value in it (like social interactions, brainstorming with colleagues, company events or meetings where in-person presence adds value). The only people who say they want to return 100% to office are the ones who go there daily for some personal reason even now.

From this perspective, large-scale return to requiring on-site office work seems very absurd, especially as people have proven in the last year that they can work remotely just fine.

This is not disagreement in any way, I'm just using your post as a taking off point since it seems to have started a sub-thread on the workplace topic.

There's a range of things that could apply to this choice rationally (nature of the work, for example), and IMO aspects of management practice, workplace culture, and even the surrounding socio-cultural milieu that could influence this.

Short form, way oversimplified, and somewhat speculative:

Some companies have bad (suspicious, authoritarian, etc.) management. Some of them have been angered at forced "let people work remotely" orders, and suspicious that employees are screwing them over and slacking off, even in the absence of the slightest evidence. (No, I wouldn't want to work there, either.)

Some managers & companies that have been on the fence about remote work will have observed good results, and will be more willing to continue it going forward.

Some companies (via either poor management or poor local culture) have a "stick it to the man" attitude among employees, i.e., poor workplace culture that values minimum productivity via interpersonal cues at the worker level. In those cases, the results of remote work may not have been positive at all, and it would be rational for management to want people to come back under closer supervision. I would hope those cases would be uncommon, but I'd bet they exist. (I've run across workgroup-sized pockets of that sort of thing in my past.)

Where there's good management (up and down the line), and the results have been acceptable to perhaps even improved, I would hope this pandemic period would foster some new and more flexible approaches to work. I'd further hope there may also be an understanding of the need for new and better systems (not necessarily computer systems, but approaches to coordinating/performing work) to help people be more productive in a more flexible, less in-person setting.

In practice, I'd be betting on a mix of the above, and more, in the world at large. (Truth in advertising: I have no workplace, because now retired. I spent time in multiple workplace cultures, including some years in first-line and middle management, in the 30 years or so when I was working, as well as a good bit of relevant formal education, so I don't think I'm waaaaay out in speculation-ville to talk about this.

We are to maintain minimal campus operations through June 30.

For a large college campus, where I work, we are trying to figure things out. Equity regarding time on campus and remote work is important and they will set guidelines for us as a whole so schedules are set based on job functions and business needs, or who is the manager’s favorite in a particular department.

Some of our classes will be online next academic year and some will be in-person. We don’t have the facilities to have a 400-450 person class in-person while keeping everyone six feet apart. And we have a lot of classes that size. My guess is those will be online and the smaller discussion sections taken along with them could be in-person. However, classroom space was already at a premium. It will be even worse now, especially with many faculty wanting their classes to meet between 10am-2pm. 🙄

It’ll be interesting. My department has maintained on-site operations the whole time, and we’ve figured out how to make things work for us. Some of our folks are fully remote, some fully on-site, and some a hybrid (me). And I can’t always plan when I have to be on-site. Facilities emergencies (water main break, power outage) and student crises (counseling for sexual assault or suicide ideation are more effective in person than via Zoom) require me to come in whenever needed, as does managing the needs for the quarantine/isolation students. They need things they forgot in their rooms, they need packages and medication dropped off ...

There are lots of things to consider for who comes back on site and what our “new normal” is. For one thing, parking is super expensive and the folks having the “must be” on-site jobs generally have the lower paying jobs on campus (custodial, maintenance, food service). Parking fees have been suspended since April 2020, they’ll resume July 1 of this year. If some people are fully remote or hybrid, meetings seem like they would stay on Zoom as it doesn’t seem feasible to coordinate a meeting for a day and time when everyone is on campus. I don’t see people being able to call in and participate to an in-person meeting; it never worked well before.

Some people seem to like remote work because they can avoid interacting with the students/parents/public. It has been frustrating to hear from students/parents they can’t reach anyone when they have concerns or questions and ask a fully remote office for help. I get that things were chaotic last spring, and there’s no excuse for that now. I hear from my past students as well as my current ones about never getting a response back. And when they forward emails dating back to last summer they sent to their academic advisor for which they have never received a response, it completely irritates me. Some problems I can fix myself (such as registration eligibility for a required course). And others I can’t, which makes me reach out on campus to get the student the help they deserve. I can be very motivating. 😈

I’m so sorry you were treated with suspicion. It bothers me that we set rules and establish policies for the lowest common denominator of human behavior. Even if we haven’t seen it. There’s no excuse for creating more and more rules to respond to performance management issues. You respond to the people with the problem, not over legislate and punish all employees for what a few are doing.

I trust my people to do the work. And almost all my remote staff are salaried, not paid hourly (like me) and we’re used to working the hours it takes to get the job done. We get paid for a full day regardless of how many hours we work. Which you’d think would be prone to abuse, and I’m sure some do, but I haven’t seen that. Time and again, I have seen my staff go above and beyond.

I think this crisis has opened up new doors for remote work for roles where it previously wouldn’t have been considered. I hope you find something that works for you soon! 💖