Working From Home

i keep working with people who can't seem to work out that they need to occasionally toggle between the meeting room and MS Teams chat. just about every co-instructor I work with gets tunnel vision and only looks the material they're presenting, so if I discreetly try to message them on the side, they don't see it, and they don't see it when I write it in the meeting chat, even if I tag them to make it 'ding'. so then I'm forced to do the thing I don't want to do and interrupt them out loud in front of the class to tell them what I wanted to tell them (or ask them to read their messages, if it's not something I can share in front of the class).

For the most part I think Teams works pretty well, except for this. I really wish that if someone started chatting with you while you're on a meeting that this would somehow be on the same screen as the one having your meeting on (I guess make it optional, because it could be annoying I guess). I do have dual monitors and a message will generally pop up on the other screen so it is easy to miss if I'm focused on the meeting.

yeah. it was a major adjustment for me to get used to as well. for the non "new" look of MS TEams, it's embedded within the MS Teams meeting so you can easily jump back and forth, but for some reason the 'new' look felt that was too convenient and separated the two.

problem is I need the 'new' look because it's the one that gives me Large GAllery mode.

scheduling training classes in December = everybody has mentally checked out, especially the managers. a quarter of our hires' managers aren't even here, and have already begun PTO, so the hires come to us instead (cos they don't see on the out of office message who their managers' backup is or feel comfortable msging them). likewise, 2 of them didn't even show up today for the manager checkpoint, having backups lead them in their place - which defeats the entire purpose of a manager checkpoint.

on the plus side...this class ends tomorrow.

Is the two screens thing worth it? I teach language, so conversation is really important, and I want to be looking straight at my students while I talk. It seems like it would be hard to have a second screen without looking to the side all the time.

I feel like it depends on what you're used to. I'm a guy who used one screen for 16 years, and they gave me a two screen setup in a training class, and it broke me - completely threw me off, and I refused to do it again. it felt like adding extra steps and the process of dragging things from one screen to another aggravated me. had I been on two monitors from day 1, would probably have gotten used to it.

I guess it depends on what you do exactly. I've been working with two screens for a long time now and briefly going back to a single screen at the beginning of the pandemic really affected my productivity. Even for meetings, it's pretty useful for when you need to look up something while still keeping the meeting on screen.

The trick is to make one screen your main screen and the second one a secondary that you use when you need to have more than one window open.

i feel like yeah, if you're doing task based work rather than presentational work, that could be a much bigger benefit. when i was a project manager, it would have been a godsend

I've discoursed elsewhere on why I don't use two screens, I have a 27" 4k(?) monitor and I still only look at one thing at a time on it. I have limited range of motion in my neck and even eye saccades to the extreme corners of the screen can tire me out a little bit so I just look straight ahead.

Have found it very hard to go back to one screen, but that is v much the nature of my work

I work with a minimum of three screens these days - the laptop’s built-in screen, another big screen driven by the laptop, and the screen of my iPad Pro which I use for meetings and calls. If I’m working on other things that don’t require access to the official VPN I’ll also have my MacBook screen. I also juggle Signal, iMessage and Slack on my two phones. It’s sort of fun as long as I don’t have to sustain it all for very long periods of time.

Ive had moments where its laptop for mails, monitor for RDP into server or w/e (i have, but it doesnt play nice size wise and needs to be put away every evening so i dont often bother) and tablet for the pdf or zoom alright, i think the latter is p great actually, would incorporate going fwd

Having a dedicated tablet screen for videoconferencing is unbelievably valuable once you have it

like, dear all organizations: take a vanishingly small percentage of what you’re about to save on real estate going forward and buy all your teleworking staff some very nice tablets, it’s so worth it you don’t even know

otm

Even just let yr employees go in to the office and take one or two of the dozens of slightly outdated monitors that you have languishing in a supply closet

We were allowed ransack, its just that i havent the tabletop real estate at home to justify the setup

the most hilarious thing about our office is they do not have any clue who has what equipment. prior to them outsourcing our IT, if they gave you a piece of equipment on loan or to manage, they never officially 'signed it out' or had any clue who had it, so shit would just disappear to various corners of the floor, and it was kind of like a scavenger hunt, whatever you find and take out of the building is yours.

now, however, they don't have guest computers anywhere like they used to, and there are few other options for desktops to use on a temporary basis if your laptop dies.

there are a bunch of classrooms with computers that nobody can use because they're on our old company's software which was inexplicably never migrated, so it uses a server we no longer have access to. so if your laptop dies, you're basically not doing any work until you go into the office and get a new one and...they don't always have one available! pre-pandemic, you could commandeer somebody's desk who was out of the office, but uhh that ain't gonna fly now.

I have a huge collection of stuff from the office, most of which I don't even use

I took my giant monitor home, and keyboard and mouse. Makes my tiny laptop much more bearable. I rotate the monitor so I have a giant code/mail screen and keep meetings on the (raised, for a flattering video angle) laptop so I look at the camera.

I wish I’d grabbed my chair but I didn’t want an ugly computer chair in my living room! If I’d known in April how long we’d be here though.. ugh

yeah, my back started spasming yesterday and I realized it's time to upgrade :/

That sucks. No proper pain yet thankfully but I’ve forgotten what it feels like not to squirm a thousand times a day!

Yesterday I was on a brief call with a coworker and he had to get up from his chair for a sec and I saw the headrest said RESPAWN on it and realized oh yeah all the millennials are just buying gamer seats for their home office setup

my company gave everyone some cash for WFH equipment or expenses so i upgraded from my laptop screen + 1 monitor on an arm setup to a dual-monitor rig + laptop screen. i have so much stuff open most of the time that i'm really liking the extra real estate.

nice!

I use my home screen plus the 4k screen I got from work by abusing the hardware catalog options at my desk. also been gaming on the 4k

coming back to work after the Christmas break (the university were I work closes between Christmas and new year, we get paid without having to take vacation) was so much easier because I didn't have to traipse out in the shitty rain and instead just rolled out of bed and started answering emails with a cup of tea.

I never want to go back to the office

on the other hand, i started at a co-working place yesterday and even though i had to walk through rain that was just above freezing for about 20 mins to get there i felt like the hallelujah chorus was my soundtrack. i have two kids (9 and 12) and a partner at home, all supposedly working and doing schoolwork. we have three usable desks in our house, tops. and i just.... walked away from it, for several hours. god it felt good.

my brother got me a high-end bluetooth speaker setup for christmas so can listen to music in my home office on good speakers instead of thru shitty laptop speakers

feels like a whole new workspace :D

except i am an old lady and auxed-in my 160gb ipod to it instead of bluetoothing

Bluetooth is crap anyway

My 160 iPod Classic was one of the casualties of 2020 and I am still in denial

Xp

coming back to work after the Christmas break (the university were I work closes between Christmas and new year, we get paid without having to take vacation) was so much easier because I didn't have to traipse out in the shitty rain and instead just rolled out of bed and started answering emails with a cup of tea.

I never want to go back to the office

― Fenners' Pen (jim in vancouver),

Yet because there's no one around at my uni I always want to return to my office. It's better than the oppression of home. I revel in the fiction of routine: picking out a nice shirt, driving to campus, parking, getting tea in the middle of the day, home by 4 p.m. I realize not everyone can do this, but if you can, by all means.

I was rehearsing my monologue for Buffalo Bill in the Shakespearean Silence of the Lambs my friends and I are filming. Y'know..."I'd fuck me".

We shoot tonight and i was rehearsing my monologue while my co-instructor presented. I was on mute the first 10 mins, but I was lying on my back due to the recurring back problems of late. So I guess somehow I accidentally hit the unmute button on my headset.

After I'd said the final line a few times ("Were I two people, I should fornicate"), I noticed I was unmuted.

I don't think it was audible as I'd actually taken the headset off by that point but close call nonetheless

I hate nothing more when I"m put in charge of designing a new tool that I don't even believe in myself (I think it sucks). I have no say on format, so when of course the complaints come in, I agree with them, but have to defend this piece of crap.

I also do not care rn given teh state of things in the States rn

allen wrenches do kinda suck but so many things require them ... idk ... or is it a different kind of tool?

unfortunately "tool" in this context probably means "website"

hahaha. more of a 'reading' tool.

we basically have taken the proprietary customer service procedural tool that has been in place since before I started here (2004) and replacing it with something new and drastically inferior. the old tool was more of a call handling checklist which you could scroll down sequentially to help you structure your call.

the new format is some FAQ-esque bullshit which isn't even ordered in order of steps (it's alphabetized) - it forces people to click in twice the number of places to do things. no idea why they're forcing this through right now.

I had no trouble authoring the new tool as my background was in doing stuff like this before I came here, but many of the other authors haven't done this before and are completely lost.

it does yes u r right

because I do this stuff people think I'm an IT tech person and I don't have an utter clue how things work. I just know how to quote people who do.

I set up my philips hue bulbs in my bedroom so now I can have cooler light temperatures during the workday, which is nice for feeling awake imo

light is so important

unfortunately "tool" in this context probably means "website"

― Canon in Deez (silby), Tuesday, January 12, 2021 12:11 PM (one hour ago)

hahah sigh -- so basically it's a checklist on a website? This stuff never ceases to amaze me ... probably because I'm old or something. Like, isn't the point of your company or division or whatever to train people so they know what they're doing and don't need someone to make a checklist for them?

this also reminds me of almost 20 years ago when I taught income tax school for a company that basically had software that the preparers were supposed to follow line by line in terms of interview questions/procedure ... which in some ways was good, but in other ways was dumb. ... like a lot of clients don't understand the questions or they think they understand but they don't, and it also is a bit dehumanizing, and really the key thing to being good at this stuff is being able to communicate well with the client, both in terms of explaining/asking as well as listening and understanding what they're saying/asking. ...

I think software has improved a lot since then, but people are going to misunderstand/misinterpret things in checklist form but will do so less if they understand the purpose of the questions/tasks. ... And then they get to the point where the prescriptive checklists are annoying AF

hahah sigh -- so basically it's a checklist on a website? This stuff never ceases to amaze me ... probably because I'm old or something. Like, isn't the point of your company or division or whatever to train people so they know what they're doing and don't need someone to make a checklist for them?

― sarahell, Tuesday, January 12, 2021 4:29 PM bookmarkflaglink

the strategy is to have them memorize the concepts, use their tools as a reference to refresh them of their client's rules. and for Pension, it's kind of necessary, because there are often hundreds of grandfathered formulas. but lots of seniors do 'memorize'.

ultimately though the challenge is when I was hired back in 04, I got 5 weeks of training in a classroom with my teacher. It was fantastic. Most people get 2 weeks now, virtual, and the technology is twice as hard to use as it was when I was hired because we overcomplicated things.

truly was a dream job back in 04-05. we had a cafeteria that provided free breakfast/lunch/dinner, all beverages were free, snacks were free (cookies, ice cream), and my HMO plan cost $20 a month and covered 100% of my claims.

oh those were the days.

and for Pension, it's kind of necessary, because there are often hundreds of grandfathered formulas.

oh god ... true ... one benefit (lol groan) of capitalism's victory over organized labor in the last 50 years or so is that this stuff is becoming obsolete as those workers die off and almost everyone now has defined contribution plans instead of pensions ... capitalism wins again

unless you are dealing with government workers/retirees ... I had a client (retired teacher from NYC) who would always complain how horrible California is because they tax her NY teacher's pension, whereas NY does not. ... and, I don't think she ever got it fixed so they took out CA state tax. Anyway ... She recently moved back to NYC

yeah most of our clients that have Pension have frozen it by this point.

my company has never had one in the time I've been there. and the 401(k) has been modified over time to suck more and more

most of the people at my company can't write an SOP to save their lives, but on the rare moment one of them actually nails it and writes a good one, I'm also realizing just about nobody here can follow them.

three colleagues given a task which had an SOP developed by an outside department and it's actually quite good....all three have done it completely wrong AND completely differently from each other.

i'll probably wind up doing their shit for them....again.

first work from home downside appearing for me. my wife has class during my work, our apartment is really too small for her to be on a Zoom call and me to be on one also, or on the phone. I mean it's not impossible but it gives me flashbacks of working in a call-centre in the 00s which i don't like.

I've been in the bedroom for any courses/calls, same situation

that is rough, yeah. i've worked from home for 8 years, and truthfully the only time I was able to fully control and mitigate background noise were the two years I lived by myself.

sound bleed's bad enough when it distracts you from doing your thing, worse when it actually bleeds onto your call and people are hearing it.

right now my parents are so deaf I hear the 50s Perry Mason reruns blaring in my room when I work some days. usually have to walk out to ask them to turn down a lil.