Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

almost everybody I have ever worked with at my company, me included, was way more productive working at home. and distractions were nbd because you could just flex time and make up lost time later.

yeah, I get distracted now and then, but when I was a requirements analyst, I routinely beat all of my deadlines by a week or more. in office, I usually still did, but people coming up to talk to me, and not being able to take mental breaks cos I knew I had a finite amount of time to work, usually made me slightly slower.

and the ceo made sure everyone knew it, too!

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, January 4, 2022 10:41 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha oh yes he did

all my salaried jobs have been 8 hrs/day with, i'll be honest, maybe an hour of actual work each day. having to playact in a cube or office like you're busy was so fucking bad for me and my mental health. and i'm just plain more productive at home. it's been absolutely wonderful to have flexibility, and i negotiated to continue to have flexibility based on a very positive review after some were asked to come back in. orgs/companies who can't keep up with this or understand will be the losers in the end i think

I mean honchos and execs think they know all, always, right?

there was a time where I had a salaried role and we were a shared service that processed request tickets. We were told we HAD to work 45 hours a week, that "studies" (no citation) showed that people who work longer hours are more productive.

I refused initially, until my boss gave me shit. so I did what everybody else started doing - just started working slower. Because I was already finishing my work early in a 40 hour week, and I was sitting bored in the office.

The practice ended quickly - but not because we proved to them it was useless.

Nope - the company got sued and agreed we should never have been salaried, and were made hourly.

suddenly, we were FORBIDDEN to work over 40 hours! productivity, who cares?!!! we can't pay OT!

xpost lol before I was a trainer, which complicates things (and my living sitch), I used to take trips out of state to go to concerts.

one time went to ATL to see Mayhem and worked out of my hotel the next day.

accidentally didn't put the right security on the video of me drunk at Mayhem, and my domain manager saw it.

and was like "someone went to a cool concert last night, I see" and teased me for how drunk I was in the video

> productivity, who cares?!!!

but the "studies"!

i had a manager who was fond of CORE HOURS - everybody had to be in the office between 10 and 4. so flexi-time was allowed, for some value of flex.

except it turned out it didn't apply to him and he'd fly back to scotland every friday at 12.

i've worked remotely in tech for 4 years. there's a ton of pro and con bullshit about "async" in this field. 100% agree that most of the con stuff is motivated reasoning disguising managers resenting the lack of control.

fwiw i highly recommend https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/673782/out-of-office-by-charlie-warzel-and-anne-helen-petersen/ for a vaguely leftist post-covid perspective on this stuff.

i think there's also a greater underlying fear is that this has shown everyone that everything they said was so important - meeting, structure, "management", being in an office, etc - actually HASN'T had an effect on the company's performance, profitability, or productivity. that, in fact, as much - if not more - is getting done even as people are more flexible and devote less time to work (time which they got back from not commuting and going through all the motions and rituals of the office)

Our office has had the most productive two years ever, but suits are still worried about the lost magic of "watercooler collaboration"/"just being able to pull someone into a meeting!"

I hate meetings. fuck meetings.

also being in an office is how I got more assignments, when I didn't have time to do them. the head of our dept would just have an idea and would be in my vicinity and say "Hey, Neanderthal, just thought of something I want you to work on....".

really though, it's more the hour or more back in my day, the gasoline saved, and ability to go to the fucking doctor or run errands and still work that make me like WFH

what about the magic of nobody being able to pull you into a meeting?

I’m back in 5 days and very happy about it. I missed the routine and the people and the separation of home and work.

Also I’m much more productive in an office. I just can’t focus otherwise.

As much as it pains me, I think 'async' would suck for my job, remote was fine but there's sort of a constant need for people to ask each other questions and pass info back and forth.

Sorry, I forgot to pluralize the days here -- they're going to do it EVERY Monday and Wednesday moving forward, for the near future at least.

― change display name (Jordan), Monday, January 3, 2022 4:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

:thumbsup: to that from me. should be happening in every school in the country.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, January 3, 2022 4:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Sure, the problem is that it's only the rich private schools who have the resources to do it.

LAUSD is doing it (weekly, not twice weekly) 🤷🏻‍♂️

Also I’m much more productive in an office. I just can’t focus otherwise.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Tuesday, January 4, 2022 12:30 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same! I'm a college instructor, though, so I can't speak to anyone else's legit denunciations of the malady of corporate obligations.

many many xposts, but good luck on your new gig OL. Sounds like you at least have sensible people to deal with. We do not end up working for the same place, fyi.

Today was my first day back in the office since before Christmas, you'd have no idea there even was Omicron going around. Butts in seats, in fact we are adding yet another new person to our open floor plan space starting next week. Thankfully we have a vaccine (and now booster) mandate for all employees, but I'm still baffled by the willful blind eye to what's going on.

I was lost for a while without the structure the office gave my day, but... I created a new structure at home, and it's way better.

well one thing I'll caveat - as a trainer, I don't train every day of the week obviously, so those days, I definitely prefer to WFH.

but I do much prefer in-classroom instruction. and miss it a lot

it's probably never coming back though. it was being phased out prior ot the pandemic

many many xposts, but good luck on your new gig OL. Sounds like you at least have sensible people to deal with. We do not end up working for the same place, fyi.

I am many years removed from dealing directly with bosses, but it seems to me the managerial class has faced something like an existential challenge in the past 21 months… is it not true that some if not many managers end up as such because they are disposed or driven to manage or rather control —or to be charitable "guide"— the managed… and so it would follow that the managerial class is super super pissed that the managed are not only not showing up to be directly supervised/subjugated, but that the managed are also getting away with doing the bare minimum, slacking, trying to get away with shit, not only compromising the ability of the enterprise to function and produce revenue, but are actively undermining the natural order… I would be really interested if anyone had any anecdotes re: how managers are out of their minds angered that the managed are getting away with being paid and not submitting to their authority in person… and then there's the great resignation…

― veronica moser, Tuesday, January 4, 2022 8:23 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not really sure how this is a "booming post" when it includes specious manager-speak about workers "getting away with shit." I'm not even a workerist leftist, but jfc, there is no crisis in workers "getting away with shit," there's a crisis in that many people have realized that working from home is better for their lives, that work is fucking dreadful bullshit that takes up way too much time and energy, and that managers are absolute trash, almost as a rule.

In a sense, the veil fell away, and from the worker perspective, there seems to be more possibility than ever. From the bootlicker managerial perspective, there is a total loss of control, plus the fear that workers will continue to demand actual *lives* be given priority after the pandemic has subsided.

Like, believing a *word* of what a manager says about workers "slacking" or "getting away with shit" or "doing the bare minimum" is a lesson in gullibility.

In a sense, the veil fell away, and from the worker perspective, there seems to be more possibility than ever. From the bootlicker managerial perspective, there is a total loss of control, plus the fear that workers will continue to demand actual *lives* be given priority after the pandemic has subsided.

That's....how I read veronica moser's post.

yeah table i think you're misunderstanding the post.

I guess I did! I read it as giving credence to both sides. My apologies, vm, I am feeling punchy.

In other news, my partner put in his two weeks at the Emergency Department where he has been working since fall of 2019. It is a weird a scary transitional time, but I'm really happy for him. Now to deal with his PTSD from seeing so many people die in the past two years

For the sake of you and your partner, tabes, that's great news.

I must've misread between the lines. But thank you! My direct supervisor is so the complete opposite of every shitty manager I've ever had that I want to cry. I feel like the neglected, mangy dog being slowly nursed back to health in one of those Dodo videos. 'Wait...you're actively soliciting my opinion on work processes? You're encouraging me to take breaks and leave on time and generally showing regard for my emotional and mental wellbeing?' While I just shiver in a corner until I'm trusting enough to take food from her hand.

Easily done, I work for a very similar institution, but when you posted about the quarter starting I knew it was a different one. Still, glad to hear you are being treated well so far.

No idea how to link directly to the graph in question, but the one that keeps bumming me out is the one tracking the projections for the pace of vaccinations that was originally, more optimistically going to track when "most people" would be vaccinated. The line just keeps getting flatter and flatter compared to previous projections, I half expect it to be replaced with a giant shrug emoji captioned with "probably never, idk".

the NYTimes graph, forgot that key detail

lol 75% of us were supposed to be fully vaxxed by September in the US. welp.

that was when we were averaging 3-4 million vaccinations a day which never was going to last

About 10 years ago I happened to be doing some consulting work for the U.S. General Services Administration. The head person (Martha Johnson) was a vigorous advocate of telework.

She said, refreshingly, that rather than having workers make the case as to why they should be "allowed" to work remotely, the burden of proof should be the other way round: managers should have to make the case as to why a job needs to be done in the office. Further, she believed that if you need to be "eyes on," you're not really managing: you're babysitting. Management should be about work products rather than time spent in a specific chair.

Unfortunately she was pressured to resign due to a stupid scandal that wasn't even her fault, but so it goes sometimes. I do wonder if she'd been able to stick around, whether there could have been any traction on those views of work life. Had those ideas spread through GSA and over to OMB, they might have had a chance of spreading through the Federal workspace, and possibly leaked into the private sector as well.

In my own work (to the extent that I can control anything) I try to spread the gospel that the product is what matters and how/where you spend your time is not my concern.

Unfortunately most organizations still measure work as units of time, which is pretty much the worst way of measuring intellectual work. We just haven't figured out a good alternative.

She said, refreshingly, that rather than having workers make the case as to why they should be "allowed" to work remotely, the burden of proof should be the other way round: managers should have to make the case as to why a job needs to be done in the office. Further, she believed that if you need to be "eyes on," you're not really managing: you're babysitting. Management should be about work products rather than time spent in a specific chair.

This is refreshing, however in my very recent experience, the boss simply has to say, "because it's important to me for my staff to be on site" and, welp, argument over, get those asses in seats. I hold little hope of this ever changing since only the most myopic bootlickers who can most quickly and efficiently yank the ladder up after themselves are the ones promoted in large organizations, it's a self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing system. One of the most consistently disappointing things I've learned in every single job I've ever worked is just how much of "management" is driven by the manager's fear that any drop of their kudos might accidentally splash onto the staff below without sufficiently greasing their own path up the chain first.

Every time I've been threatened with promotion, I have found a way to avoid it. The long story of my career is of striving to remain a doer of stuff (an "individual contributor") rather than a person who tells people to do stuff.

My theory is that the pressure to rise to management, which suffuses white-collar workplaces, is at least partly because relatively few people would want to do it if it weren't better paid and richly rewarded with praise. Managing is stupid and boring. It's hard to do well, and easy to do badly, and it exposes you to scrutiny for things outside your control. Like, the one time I had a staff I hated it, because every time someone made a mistake it was somehow my fault for not preventing it. Fuck that. I'd rather just do the work myself, so that if I do well it's on me, and if I do badly it's... also on me.

Getting rather far afield from the thread topic, though, sorry. I think there is a tombot thread somewhere about being a boss

Every time I've been threatened with promotion, I have found a way to avoid it. The long story of my career is of striving to remain a doer of stuff (an "individual contributor") rather than a person who tells people to do stuff.

yo sho right bruh. I did enjoy being a project manager for two years or so, but that was cos my reports did what they were supposed to and the people up top let me do my thing. the moment Executives above start interfering and the people below you start not doing their job, it's frustrating like...why won't my words make the work happen? why did they tell me they did the thing that they didn't do? why did you cut my budget in half and tell me I still need to meet the deadline? why are you threatening me?

lots of stuff being said about work here but i would just say that i'm willing to bet a lot of organizations were like my own, where by any reasonable measure you want to look at (raw hours worked, throughput of tickets or stories or whatever), people worked more and got more done in 2021, but at considerable expense to their health and well-being. commuting time was replaced by additional time logged in, and the stasis of the pandemic and our lives at home led people to extend their working hours into what used to be personal time, not take paid time off, and continue to feel bad about their jobs and themselves. i'm just pointing this out because WFH vs. return to the office isn't really the point so much as the need for a fundamental shift in how organizations relate to workers and their work.

My sis got a small promotion years back where she ended up overseeing others a bit more, and concluded pretty rapidly she was happier back at the level she was given the tiny amount of pay increase set against what the job actually involved. And she's happily been in her chosen spot ever since. As for me, I'm about where I would want to be as well, but a small factor will always be what the union is able to negotiate in terms of further pay increases each time a new contract comes around in five years. (New negotiations happening now, if I and my colleagues all get lucky again in this cycle and the next then I'm pretty well set for where I want to be assuming retirement is actually a thing for anybody in ten years.)

also, maybe it's possible that you all work for retrograde taskmasters but i would say the primary motivation i am seeing for managers to get back into the office is not for the ability to directly supervise (most managers here have teams spread across multiple sites anyway so physical supervision has never been 100% possible). what i do think is that most managers, being a little older and generally considering themselves to br professionally successful, found that success in the office environment and hold a belief that offices continue to enable that success for them and will do so for their teams. which is dumb but understandable imo, people wildly overrate the frequency and value of hallway conversations and other things like that.

I find that going in once a week is perfect for catching up on those conversations I want/need to have in person, I don't need more than that

(to be clear, that one day a week is very helpful at times)

that's the other thing! it doesn't have to be all or nothing. purposeful time in the office can be great. there are certainly times in the last 18 months where i would have loved to get in a room with my colleagues and a whiteboard and figure something out and it would have been well worth the commuting time and other hassles.

> ...not take paid time off...

additionally I've not had a day off sick in two years because I'd only be sat here feeling ill in exactly the same seat as usual, might as well type something.

hopefully they'll stop using the phrase "back to work" eventually. we ARE at work.

my company expanded the "sick time" to be wellness time including mental wellness and let us take off for burnout and mental health and things like that. it did coincide with the pandemic but just about every day I took off using that time was one of those last year cos I was pretty much never sick.

My theory is that the pressure to rise to management, which suffuses white-collar workplaces, is at least partly because relatively few people would want to do it if it weren't better paid and richly rewarded with praise. Managing is stupid and boring. It's hard to do well, and easy to do badly, and it exposes you to scrutiny for things outside your control.

otm ime

that said wfh is here to stay in my country/sector and managers are usually just ppl with jobs as managers possibly it wouldnt translate

i'm v happy with my current work situation. the head of our department told us right before christmas that everybody gets a paid "research day" in january in which we are not to check email or open our computers. instead we are to just do whatever will make us feel good. binge a tv show, go to a museum, whatever. no need to book it into the leave system. and if we want to we can share what we did with the department but if not, not.

we're wfh all the time now obviously but the goal will be 1 day per week. which seems just about right to me.

Every time I've been threatened with promotion, I have found a way to avoid it. The long story of my career is of striving to remain a doer of stuff (an "individual contributor") rather than a person who tells people to do stuff.

another PSA from former ilxor kate78, who is an RN in Seattle:

PSA: If you're doing an rapid test, don't forget to swab your throat for 15 seconds before swabbing your nose.

There's a growing body of literature (and anecdata) suggesting that omicron virally sheds earlier in throat and saliva, relative to nasal secretions. I have told numerous folks to try this after testing negative with just a nasal swab and they've all tested positive with the throat.

― chaos goblin line cook (sleeve), Monday, January 3, 2022 6:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Think I might have to do this. Almost a week ago, I came down with a sore throat and cough. For two days in a row, my at-home (nasal swab) test was negative, so I figured it was just a cold. I've mostly shaken those symptoms, but now I'm super-congested and have a weird bitter taste in my mouth. Of course, it could still be a cold, but given that my wife just had COVID, it wouldn't be crazy that I would have it now, too.

I think there might be something to the throat thing.

Covid is burning through our high school at a seemingly impressive clip. My daughter with symptoms and positive test is already at home, but my other daughter (no symptoms, negative on test) was at school yesterday and said two of her six teachers were out, and each class had a few kids zooming in. And today, her English teacher (who was there yesterday) is also now out sick, and someone who sits across from my daughter in that class tested positive, too, and is out. And a neighbor down the street who is in her psych class is now out, too. And those are just the people directly connected to her in school. Have another family that we're good friends with whose kids tested positive a few days ago but mom and dad kept testing negative (despite, erm, bad cold symptoms). Yesterday the mom finally came up positive, so the dad assumes he's positive, too.