Working From Home

I have been taking FULL advantage of the ability to nap

I will miss these siestas

I'm an inveterate napper and am taking full advantage.

I think I'm actually missing the fitness center at my workplace--my back has been bothering me, maybe because I'm not lifting weights currently?

goblet squats!

definitely been taking advantage of the ability to nap during the day, easy enough to make up the difference with work in the evenings/weekends since there's no sports to watch anyway. i even canceled my Sling a couple of weeks ago because sports was the only reason I had it anyway, though I am already regretting it a tiny bit because now I can't watch the Jordan doc series on ESPN.

I went for a piss during a meeting today and no-one noticed.

Our Monday morning meeting always begins with 10-15 minutes of "how was your weekend?" talk, and always runs 30-60 minutes over time; it's supposed to be 9-10:30 and it sometimes ends as late as 11:30, wasting the entire morning.

This is indeed the worst. We have a department meeting every other week that is often interminable. It was originally scheduled for an hour, but it kept running way over. The organized bumped it up to 90 minutes for the invite and now we routinely pass two to two and a half hours. There's probably 30 minutes of good material every week, the rest is small talk, idle complaining and the rest of us essentially sitting in on conversations that should be one-on-ones. Unfortunately this is my entire department and run by my boss' boss, so little more than just grinning and bearing it every two weeks.

I hate small talk in meetings band often bail when meetings run over even if i don't have another scheduled after

I went for a piss during a meeting today and no-one noticed.

pro bathroom break tip: turn off your wifi and turn it back on when you return. "oh my wifi blipped"

do y'all work at places where it's not ok to say "sorry i need to step away for a minute?"

Oh yeah, we can step away - I do that during the current Zoom versions, and during the real ones. But since it's our entire department, it's really frowned upon to skip out on a portion of the meetings.

I write "brb" in the chat

do y'all work at places where it's not ok to say "sorry i need to step away for a minute?"

― call all destroyer, Monday, 4 May 2020 15:58 (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I could do that but two guys were talking at/past each other and with all the lack of social cues and accidental interruptions that audio only brings - so I figured correctly that I could step away unannounced.

But even when i forget, unless I'm on the agenda as presenting, nobody cares if i step away to take a leak. If somehow i got called on in the 2 minutes i was gone, i answer it when I'm back

My Webex app froze up today and I had to force quit - when I came back two minutes later nobody had noticed. I'm sure I could take a bathroom break and upon my return, blame technical difficulties, if needed.

The dude leading my webex infoshare right now has apparent never heard of consonants, so he sounds like he's chewing on taffy.

It got so bad Chief Keef joined the meeting to complain.

we're getting pounded right now due to COVID fucking up our staffing and upper management unable to accept that things can't be business as usual due to a global pandemic. We usually had a practice of having a week off of training whenever a class ends, to give us time to rest our voices, prepare for next class, special projects. And, this is typically our slow part of the season.

Instead, we've all been in back to back classes for over two months, were told we couldn't take any new PTO in March or April beyond what was already approved before shit hit the fan. and they told us not to expect it to slow down anytime soon, and filled our schedules up for May and June before most of us could find time to take PTO. I lucked out and am taking a week in late June.

by the time we get to busy season in September, we're all going to be gassed. thankfully travel is banned for the year due to budget.

I just can't take it anymore. I would take an unpaid leave at this point if fucking Florida's unemployment wasn't a mess. I've had to loan my mother $3k (no fault of her own) to help pay rent and bills due to FL DEO still not paying her correctly.

we keep getting thrown into these impossible situations where they mash 7,000 people into one class and where we'd normally have someone on site to help, we obviously can't, but no adjustment to the schedule is permitted, we still have to finish on time. So this leads to a bunch of people complaining during the training, results in more technical issues which means I have to be a babysitter and keep detailed logs on every learner who has a problem, and means multiple people interrupting me and barking my name all day. all fine during a normal time of year, but when my anxiety is already bad enough to where I am not sleeping well and breathing heavily all the time, I can't take the constant "brain fry" that happens to me every day where I mentally check out by 2 pm.

oh and our "busy season", starts next month, oh oh oh oh lovely

I've voluntarily come to the office three days in a row after nearly having a mental breakdown trying to work from home. Like the closest I have ever felt in my life to an actual breakdown.

probably a wise idea. i had one of those at work 5 years ago where I wailed on the floor and was having nonstop palpitations....not fun at all. also sometimes just good to see other people around even if they're 700 miles away.

I don't know if I'd even go in if my class was in Orlando, given how many people are probably coming to work sick.

everybody keeps talking about how we're in a crucial period (cos we lose so many clients) and it's like, do they really think any of us are focused on what we're doing right now? even in a less fucked-up work scenario, our attention would be divided, but throw in my company's bullshit of overloading everybody while dangling the diseased carrot of layoffs in front of our noses , and most of us have just snapped.

even one of the most kip colleagues yesterday flipped out on her class for being disrespectful, which at least told me it isn't just me.

what does your company teach? what are the classes? ... I have a complex mix of jobs right now (some due to PPP loan issues) and I do have an office to go into, which has helped, because I get to interact in person with a couple of colleagues who are also personal friends. ... Though the location of the office has made it such that sometimes it is not a good idea to go there because it is right near where many protests take place.

like, one of my great fears is driving to the office and having to extricate my car from the middle of a crowd after work and losing my shit because "I just wanna go home ..." ... so on the days when major demonstrations are planned, I either work from home (most of the time) or park somewhere a few blocks away where people are less likely to congregate/march.

we administer health, 401k, and pension benefits for companies who outsource the recordkeeping to us. I'm responsible for teaching people health, 401k, and pension. I like the job, hate my company, but 15 years brings me a salary and benefits here that I'm unlikely to get elsewhere.

I'm good at it and know the material front to back and in normal circumstances, I usually make it a fun experience for all, but right now, it's hard to put on a faux cheery demeanor when I'm miserable outside of work. and stressed out by the endless disorganization of my firm, who is just hiring hundreds of people to start on the same day without realizing that requires like 4 or 5 people to train them (and there's only 6 of us).

on the plus side, at least my job ends at a specific time each night. fuck being salaried during COVID....so happy I'm hourly.

one of my great fears is driving to the office and having to extricate my car from the middle of a crowd after work and losing my shit because "I just wanna go home ..."

lol otm, I used to hate that

Sympathies to Neanderthal and man alive.

For me, working from home with small kids (who are on track to be out of regular school for at least a year) is the main hurdle. If I am on a conference call, my non-neurotypical son gets jealous and will follow me around screaming for attention. If I go to a room with a lockable door (of which we have precisely two), he will park outside the door and pound on it, screaming. So I stay on mute until I have to say something, and then whatever I say includes an undertone of anguished screaming. Or I go outside, and whatever I say includes an undertone of traffic and birds.

In the past, much of my work was writing, which I could do at night after the kids were asleep. Now a lot of my work is managing and collaborating, which still tends to take place within traditional business hours.

Obligatory acknowledgment of privilege: my wife and I very privileged to be the kind of workers who can work from home. We are privileged to have decent jobs in the first place, and to have as many resources and options as we do. But it is still a challenge.

xp oooooooh does your company also do the thing where they are the employer of smaller companies' employees (I am momentarily forgetting the acronym)? ... A few of my clients work for small tech startups and their w-2s list a corporation in Florida as their employer ...

Trinet! that's the Florida company

yeah YMP I feel that. my 5 yo son gets really excited to see people on a call & he loves to fight with his sister whenever I've got something going on. WFH & WFH with small children are two totally different things, not comparable in the slightest

ha speaking of that -- one of my colleagues has a 4 year old -- he was working from home one day and I called him, and there was silence and then the sounds of footsteps and then a loud high=pitched squeal (this was after a few minutes) ... the child had picked up her dad's phone and had answered it and was presumably trying to "be like dad" by walking around carrying the phone.

no need to acknowledge your privilege, YMP, anyone on this board who would try and toss that at you given what you're dealing with is a fucking asshole.

during our (fairly informal) team meetings there are frequently pets in the background, which my kids of course get very excited about, which leads to everyone on the call showing off their pets, which leads to my kids thinking every call is full of people who just wanna show them their dogs

xp well that sounds actually one notch harder than working from home with my two kids who just like attention a lot like most kids

no need to acknowledge your privilege, YMP, anyone on this board who would try and toss that at you given what you're dealing with is a fucking asshole.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Wednesday, July 1, 2020 12:45 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I'm a bit tired of the internet scolds sounding more than a bit like mom reminding you there are kids starving in Africa -- sometimes it's ok to just express your unqualified frustrations

I appreciate your considerate replies, evol and man.

But at the same time I can't stop thinking about people who a) aren't working at all or b) can't work from home.

I see a lot of glib "just stay home, mfers, it's not difficult!" stuff from people who haven't appeared to consider how difficult that might be for someone whose family's financial survival depends on e.g., a in-person service-sector job. Not here on this board, but certainly in my social media orbit.

i have found some of the "stay at home, assholes" msgs come from people who turn out to not have stayed home themselves.

not like, going out partying per se at packed bars, but a few I've known have taken out of town trips or gone to bars. with masks, distancing, etc, but that's kinda why I don't bother lobbying grenades when I know I haven't had a spotless record (even though I largely barely leave the house).

and the people who say "Universal Studios should't have reopened", well.....you aren't wrong, but you're also telling my brother he shouldn't have gone to work, and he's been wracked with anxiety of losing his job for months and needs the money.

because we don't have a government that takes care of its people, it's pretty difficult atm.

theyve just re-locked down the areas near where I live cos we've had a big community outbreak. I barely leave the house anyway but it looks like I'm WFH for at least another month at this rate.

Funny side effect: my long-sight vision has gone to shit because I'm only ever staring at walls/items in my house. I need to sit on the balcony and stare at faraway trees/clouds more or somehting.

My wfh strategy has involved a lot of slacking off, which is only possible because of my particular role in my organization, but I’m still feeling frustrated because I personally need to feel more involved in my work like I’m engaged in making a difference and changing things for the better (according to me, of course). Skating by on just responding to emails (i.e. only speaking when I’m spoken to) has gotten way the fuck old.

I have a couple things to work on now that should be bigger than that, looking forward to them coming to fruition and being paid attention to by more than just yours truly.

One side effect of WFH that I did not anticipate was getting used to the constant drone of lawn mowers in our neighborhood. I think between Monday and Friday there is less than five hours per week when there isn't an audible lawnmower running on our block.

i have found some of the "stay at home, assholes" msgs come from people who turn out to not have stayed home themselves.

not like, going out partying per se at packed bars, but a few I've known have taken out of town trips or gone to bars. with masks, distancing, etc, but that's kinda why I don't bother lobbying grenades when I know I haven't had a spotless record (even though I largely barely leave the house).

― I hear that sometimes Satan wants to defund police (Neanderthal), Wednesday, July 1, 2020 5:34 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I saw a great tweet around the beginning of this madness to the effect of "everyone who is slightly less precautious than I am is a science-denying death cultist, and everyone who is slightly more precautious than I am is a virtue-signalling ninny." I try to keep that in mind, though I do find myself rolling my eyes more at the latter group, which is only a reflection of my own anxieties, obviously I would rather be misjudged as being too safe than not safe enough.

xp yeah, there is an insane amount of lawn care in the summer if you live in a neighborhood with lawns. i can almost predict it now--today was wednesday, so there's a service that comes at 7:30 am and fires up a bunch of stuff to do a lawn a few houses down.

"everyone who is slightly less precautious than I am is a science-denying death cultist, and everyone who is slightly more precautious than I am is a virtue-signalling ninny."

Similarly "everyone driving slower than me is an idiot; everyone driving faster than no is a maniac."

What I like is erotic; what you like is kinky; what THEY like is perverse.

*than me

Anybody who doesn’t live in a city full of constant development and renovation can eat my ass about lawncare noise

it's more an observation than a complaint

Maybe I should document some more observations then

Tombot how do you eat ass about something

I’ve never had to tbf

Ask esby