Bitch and whine about how COVID-19 is effing up your life

[emtee]

I'm pretty OK with everything (ask me in 3 weeks from now) except
for that damned Covid icon. That effing circle with the trumpets jutting
outward. Every segment on every story on every network starts with
a flash of that thing. Enough!!

[Lethean]

People need to learn during video or audio conference calls to mute themselves whenever they're not talking. That makes everything a lot better. I literally just unmute for a second or two before or after I talk and am muted the rest of the time.

This.  Working from home is amazing.  Snowstorm?  Your employees can still work instead of taking the day off or being late because they don't want to drive in it or schools are closed.  Employee is sick but doesn't want to take the day off?  They can work from home and not infect everyone else.  Or they can work part of the day if they feel up to it.  Employees don't have to commute, which means if they're coming up on a deadline and are so inclined, they have extra time to work.  Or they have extra time to themselves, making them a little happier and less stressed.  They have more money too since they're using less gas.  Oh and traffic is just that much better - good for everyone and the environment too. Sick kid?  They don't have to take the day off.  Etc etc etc.

Plus, you don't lose employees to go work for other companies that allow them to work from home when you don't.  This was happening to my company until they finally started a work from home pilot and then made it happen on a bigger scale.  They have a software that leaders can use to track idle time to ensure people are actually working.

You (general naysayers) want to lose all of that just because you're annoyed by dogs barking and babies crying?  And birds chirping?  Like lordxizor says, teach people how to mute.  And deal with those who don't have the discipline to work from home on a case by case basis.

Ok rant over.  I feel better now.

[lonestar]

Well, since my segment of the industry relies on all you guys working together in an office, I'd appreciate it if you kept on doing so after this blows over. Thanks in advance.

[MirrorMask]

Employee is sick but doesn't want to take the day off?  They can work from home and not infect everyone else.  Or they can work part of the day if they feel up to it. 

I never thought of this.  Actually this is a very nice idea, for those kinds of jobs that could implement this of course. There are many situations when you're unwell enough to travel and stay in an office, but lucid enough to do some work in the more relaxed comfort of your house.

The concept itself of me being sick but having to leave the house to go to the doctor to certify it is silly (at least here it works this way), of course there has to be a kind of check about one's health, otherwise anybody could just call in sick and binge a Netflix show instead, but "Listen, I have a small fever, I'll stay home and work as long as I don't get a terrible headache, if I do, just take 3 hours off my holidays count" could and should be an alternative when possible.

[Stadler]

People need to learn during video or audio conference calls to mute themselves whenever they're not talking. That makes everything a lot better. I literally just unmute for a second or two before or after I talk and am muted the rest of the time.

This.  Working from home is amazing.  Snowstorm?  Your employees can still work instead of taking the day off or being late because they don't want to drive in it or schools are closed.  Employee is sick but doesn't want to take the day off?  They can work from home and not infect everyone else.  Or they can work part of the day if they feel up to it.  Employees don't have to commute, which means if they're coming up on a deadline and are so inclined, they have extra time to work.  Or they have extra time to themselves, making them a little happier and less stressed.  They have more money too since they're using less gas.  Oh and traffic is just that much better - good for everyone and the environment too. Sick kid?  They don't have to take the day off.  Etc etc etc.

Plus, you don't lose employees to go work for other companies that allow them to work from home when you don't.  This was happening to my company until they finally started a work from home pilot and then made it happen on a bigger scale.  They have a software that leaders can use to track idle time to ensure people are actually working.

You (general naysayers) want to lose all of that just because you're annoyed by dogs barking and babies crying?  And birds chirping?  Like lordxizor says, teach people how to mute.  And deal with those who don't have the discipline to work from home on a case by case basis.

Ok rant over.  I feel better now.

Well, other than an oblique reference to "extra time to work" there's not much there from the productivity side or from the employer side.  I know for me, the challenge over the past decade or so has been to make sure that I'm not a voice over the wire and that people know who I am.   It makes a difference.   There are some things - reviews, negotiations, personal comfort  - that emails/texts/phone are just not as effective as face-to-face.   Technology won't - in my opinion - ever totally supplant human nature.   It also depends on the manager; I've noticed a big difference with my boss since he started working from home himself. 

[Orbert]

Relevant:  Our company has been sending regular emails with tips for working from home, encouraging words, etc.  Today's included some tips about teleconferencing, including being aware of the Mute button, when it's on, and when it's off.  It didn't suggest keeping yourself on Mute unless you're actually talking, but it did say that you should be aware of your surroundings, and how much background noise microphones can pick up.  They should have just said to keep yourself on Mute unless you're talking, but stopped just short of that for some reason.

[Northern Lion]

I love working from home.  And it's pretty common where I work even before the pandemic.

We always have everyone mute themselves if they aren't talking.  You'd be surprised how much noise breathing can make through a microphone .  Or keyboard typing for that matter.  And if we have extra large meetings, everyone is automatically muted and you have to dial a code to unmute yourself, and then when you're done speaking you are immediately muted again.

[millahh]

I love working from home.  And it's pretty common where I work even before the pandemic.

We always have everyone mute themselves if they aren't talking.  You'd be surprised how much noise breathing can make through a microphone .  Or keyboard typing for that matter.  And if we have extra large meetings, everyone is automatically muted and you have to dial a code to unmute yourself, and then when you're done speaking you are immediately muted again.

You forgot to mention snoring  (yes, I've heard it)

[Orbert]

One of my favorites was a co-worker who took the call in their car, and for some reason had the tunes in their car cranked as well.  I can't even imagine how they could hear the conversation, but the worst part is that they didn't mute themselves, and their tunes were so loud that we couldn't even have the conversation.  It was just a conference call, no video, so we didn't know who it was for sure.  After a few minutes of people yelling "Hey, mute yourself!" and "Hello? Turn your music down!" I just hung up.  Frustrating at the time, but I get invited to calls that I don't need to be on all the time, so it's mostly amusing now.

[Northern Lion]

I love working from home.  And it's pretty common where I work even before the pandemic.

We always have everyone mute themselves if they aren't talking.  You'd be surprised how much noise breathing can make through a microphone .  Or keyboard typing for that matter.  And if we have extra large meetings, everyone is automatically muted and you have to dial a code to unmute yourself, and then when you're done speaking you are immediately muted again.

You forgot to mention snoring  (yes, I've heard it)

 

[Lethean]

People need to learn during video or audio conference calls to mute themselves whenever they're not talking. That makes everything a lot better. I literally just unmute for a second or two before or after I talk and am muted the rest of the time.

This.  Working from home is amazing.  Snowstorm?  Your employees can still work instead of taking the day off or being late because they don't want to drive in it or schools are closed.  Employee is sick but doesn't want to take the day off?  They can work from home and not infect everyone else.  Or they can work part of the day if they feel up to it.  Employees don't have to commute, which means if they're coming up on a deadline and are so inclined, they have extra time to work.  Or they have extra time to themselves, making them a little happier and less stressed.  They have more money too since they're using less gas.  Oh and traffic is just that much better - good for everyone and the environment too. Sick kid?  They don't have to take the day off.  Etc etc etc.

Plus, you don't lose employees to go work for other companies that allow them to work from home when you don't.  This was happening to my company until they finally started a work from home pilot and then made it happen on a bigger scale.  They have a software that leaders can use to track idle time to ensure people are actually working.

You (general naysayers) want to lose all of that just because you're annoyed by dogs barking and babies crying?  And birds chirping?  Like lordxizor says, teach people how to mute.  And deal with those who don't have the discipline to work from home on a case by case basis.

Ok rant over.  I feel better now.

Well, other than an oblique reference to "extra time to work" there's not much there from the productivity side or from the employer side.  I know for me, the challenge over the past decade or so has been to make sure that I'm not a voice over the wire and that people know who I am.   It makes a difference.   There are some things - reviews, negotiations, personal comfort  - that emails/texts/phone are just not as effective as face-to-face.   Technology won't - in my opinion - ever totally supplant human nature.   It also depends on the manager; I've noticed a big difference with my boss since he started working from home himself.

I did mention productivity with the bolded.  And that's only one of the ways they have to do it.  There are always people who will try to cheat the system.  But at the end of the day, there are ways to find out if they're not getting the job done.  I have meetings with my boss both by phone and in person.  There doesn't seem to be any real difference.  But for some people I'm sure there is - that doesn't mean no one should be able to work from home though.  I've heard from a couple leaders that the more team members they have working from home, the less time they have to spend on all kinds of B's issues.  Office drama goes down.  Dress code issues.  People wearing too much fragrance.  So there's some more productivity for the bosses.  Before working from home was a wide spread thing, they used to have individuals work from home when a big deadline for an important project was coming up.  Which clearly shows they were more productive at home.  Maybe because there's less talking about non work stuff.  Obviously if productivity went down during the pilot the company wouldn't have opened it up the way they did.  I get that not everyone would like to work from home, not everyone can handle it, and certain jobs aren't well suited for it.  But for jobs where people spend the majority of their time on a computer, it should be an option.

[The Walrus]

I'd rather deal with any of those issues than be under surveillance every minute of my work day especially through software. F that.

(Although, if that's the case, I'm likely being watched at the office anyway, which means it's a job I don't want  )

[Lethean]

Well at my company there's surveillance anyway.  Now bosses are able to get reports - so if you're idle for four hours watching TV, they'll know something is up and can ask IT for more spying.  But they could do that before as well.  I don't like the idea of it, but if they did before anyway, then it doesn't really matter.

[The Walrus]

I think surveillance in the work space is a blight upon workplace morale personally. I'm just here to complain about it  I have always enjoyed my employment with small business owners because every one I've worked for never gave a crap about what you did during the day as long as your work got done. I think you build better trust between employers and employees that way.

Although certainly in a time of pandemic working from home is a brilliant solution and we're lucky to live in a time we can utilize it, so I guess you just suck it up and deal with the spying

[Orbert]

I guess I'm fortunate that (as far as I know), they don't monitor us like that.  I've been working from home since last year, and my manager didn't even know that for months.  I drove up for the meetings, but otherwise, whether I'm in a cubicle five miles away or at home 15 miles away didn't make a bit of difference.  She only found out when she drove over to my building for a meeting and I wasn't there.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure they don't monitor us because I still work maybe 20 hours a week, but I get all my work done, even get kudos once in a while, so I guess everyone's happy.  And now of course everyone works from home.

[TAC]

I guess I assumed that working from home was generally task based. Like at my work in down time, while you're on the clock, you can always clean something.

How does that work when you're home based? I mean they can always run an audit trail right?

[Orbert]

I'm a programmer/developer.  There are ad-hoc data requests that get routed to me, and a number of systems I've built over the years that I still support, but if there are no requests and no one needs anything changed/updated/investigated, I don't have anything immediate to do.  I have weekly meetings with my manager, and it's her job to make sure I'm earning my pay, not mine.  As far as both of us are concerned, if I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, I'm fine.

Blatant non-humble brag: I've been told that I work faster than pretty much any other programmer anyone has ever seen.  Two years ago, they cut my group from four programmers down to two, and six months later cut the other guy, leaving just me.  I've been supporting all the systems, and doing all the ad-hocs, ever since.  And I still spend half my time on Facebook or DTF.

Basically, the shit's getting done, everyone's happy.  If I can do the work of four people and still goof off half the time, more power to me.  If the shit wasn't getting done, they might check into it.  I make sure that that doesn't happen.

[KevShmev]

If I may do a blatant non-humble brag as well, I always work fast.  A big part of it comes from wanting to get stuff done so I am caught up in case a barrage of new stuff comes over.  I mean, if you told me, "This is the all of the stuff you will have today," I would space it out and take my time, but the nature of my job dictates that I get it all done quickly.  Plus, I used to tend bar, which was a job where working fast was a must more often than not, so it is ingrained in my head now to work fast and get shit done.

[Cool Chris]

I would be appalled if more companies did not allow for more telecommuting when we come out of this. Some people definitely need to work in the office, either because they need the supervision, or can't stay focused working from home. I worked along side several people (and by people I mean middle aged women) for whom I believe the office was their entire social sphere. But to require every employee to physically be in the office full time in 2020 is just silly.

[JayOctavarium]

re: bosses keeping tabs on people working from home...

. I know that in our system, everyone on the team (and really in the company overall they they are logged into the system) can see everyone's productivity. The thing is... There's so little coming into their queues, there is more idle time than work time.

In my case, I was told to stretch my work as much as possible.. So as long as I get get the number of boxes of shit processed that they ask for each day, as long as I clock in and out and clock my lunch, text my manager when I go "on the clock", and drive over to the office every few days, I'm good. I'd gladly do more work, but they won't give it to me


After pulling my second full 8 hour shift from home, I've found that it's far from as annoying as I thought it would be.

I do miss doing actual stimulating work though.

[jingle.boy]

Just need to jump in here - particularly for Marc - on the topic of flight refunds.  I just got mine from JetBlue because we were supposed to go to Disney at the end of the month.  US based airlines are required to offer refunds if they cancel or severely alter the itinerary.  One of the few countries that do that.  Dep't of Transportation just reminded them of it earlier this month.  Doesn't matter if the reason is outside of their control.  The below links specifically reference COVID, and that they are required to offer refunds.

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-issues-enforcement-notice-clarifying-air-carrier-refund
https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2020-04/Enforcement%20Notice%20Final%20April%203%202020_0.pdf

Carriers have a longstanding obligation to provide a prompt refund to a ticketed passenger when the carrier cancels the passenger’s flight or makes a significant change in the flight schedule and the passenger chooses not to accept the alternative offered by the carrier. The longstanding obligation of carriers to provide refunds for flights that carriers cancel or significantly delay does not cease when the flight disruptions are outside of the carrier’s control (e.g., a result of government restrictions). The focus is not on whether the flight disruptions are within or outside the carrier’s control, but rather on the fact that the cancellation is through no fault of the passenger.

Pretty sure the airlines count on people not knowing this to force them into "credits".

Back on topic, I don't anything meaningful to complain about, so I won't.  I'm very fortunate and grateful that the jingle.household hasn't been terribly disrupted.  I'm not trying to brag, just not going to "bitch and whine" about trivial things (and I don't say that as a shot at anyone's previous posts... AT ALL).

[dparrott]

I think surveillance in the work space is a blight upon workplace morale personally. I'm just here to complain about it  I have always enjoyed my employment with small business owners because every one I've worked for never gave a crap about what you did during the day as long as your work got done. I think you build better trust between employers and employees that way.

Although certainly in a time of pandemic working from home is a brilliant solution and we're lucky to live in a time we can utilize it, so I guess you just suck it up and deal with the spying

I've worked for the same small business for 23 years.  My boss comes into my area sometimes, but otherwise no monitoring.  I used to watch sports games online, peek at social media, whatever.  Same with working from home.  As long as work gets done in a timely manner.

[Orbert]

Got a call from John last night.  It was time to talk about the thing that we all knew we had to talk about sooner or later, but nobody has brought up so far.

Because of David's condition, and the fact that he is looking at months of recovery time, and will likely not fully recover anyway, we need to think about finding another guitarist.

We love the guy.  He's been in the band for three years and is not the most gifted guitarist, but he's good enough for bar bands and easily the coolest guitarist we've ever had, probably the coolest guy the band has ever had.  COVID-19 and its complications have taken away his ability to play guitar, and we need to deal with that.  We don't know when the lockdown will be lifted, or modified or whatever.  We don't know when venues will open up again.  But when they do, they will need bands to play, our agent books all the main venues around here, and he likes us.  He told John flat out that once there are gigs again, we will be getting gigs.  He's already booked the first half of 2019 for us before all this shit started.  Agent Dude has never heard anything except 100% positive about us, from owners, fans, even other bands.  He said bands like us are what will be needed to help get things going again, once things get going again.  And we will need another guitarist.

[dparrott]

So California is still charging 10 cents per grocery bag AND we are not allowed to bring our own bags.  Nice.

[mike099]

So California is still charging 10 cents per grocery bag AND we are not allowed to bring our own bags.  Nice.

That is not right.  They should waive that charge until they allow reusable bags to be used.

Let us talk local/state tax structure.  In Tennessee we have no state income tax and rely on one of the highest sales tax rates in the U.S.  This works ok for the state to fund programs, workers, etc. except when the economy takes a sharp/extended downturn.

I am a state worker and we can save funds on payroll and benefits by letting some people go.  I know we will have a hiring freeze, but more cost savings can and need to occur.

How is your state or country funded and how is this economic downturn going to affect services?

[JayOctavarium]

So California is still charging 10 cents per grocery bag AND we are not allowed to bring our own bags.  Nice.

I thought we could bring our own bags if we bag our own items? That's how at least Grocery Outlet around here is saying.

[dparrott]

So California is still charging 10 cents per grocery bag AND we are not allowed to bring our own bags.  Nice.

I thought we could bring our own bags if we bag our own items? That's how at least Grocery Outlet around here is saying.

It was like that a couple of weeks ago, now they don't want you to even do that. 

[dparrott]

Gas is $3 or less per gallon here for the first time in many years.  My gripe is this just shows how much gas stations rip people off when they really need gas. 

[Adami]

Gas is $3 or less per gallon here for the first time in many years.  My gripe is this just shows how much gas stations rip people off when they really need gas.

Holy crap, 3? In New York I just got gas for 1.99.

[King Postwhore]

My wife filled up for $1.59 next to her work.  Crazy.

[lonestar]

I filled up the other day for 2.35, lowest I've seen in I have no idea how long.


As to the bags, some stores are still charging, and some aren't, even within chains. I think it's a matter of who is paying attention more.

[JayOctavarium]

The cheapo station down the street from me (the kind where you avoid using your card and just pay cash for reasons...) was just below 2.70 last I looked.  I'd be stoked if it wasn't for the whole... Not going anywhere lol

[dparrott]

This sucks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html

[lordxizor]

My wife filled up for $1.59 next to her work.  Crazy.

The station closest to me has been $1.59 for a couple weeks. I wish I could stock up somehow!

[jingle.boy]

This sucks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html

Goddamn.  The indirect effects of COVID are staggering.