Working From Home

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

I find lawnmower sounds quite comforting TBH. Dont hear them anymore living in an inner-urban hood with tiny yards. The sound reminds me of childhood summers in the backyard.

Also, LADS.

Take sides: lawnmowers versus the air conditioner on the Russian Embassy grounds next door. Bonus: screams from the playground in the embassy compound.

"screams" eh.

an asshole hedge fund billionaire in texas who was somehow involved in enron convinced my city that they needed a propeller plane to fly in circles all day to take pictures of crimes happening. it makes one revolution every 7 minutes. it's supposed to fly at a greater height than it is. every day there is obnoxious propeller plane noise, all day, but intermittent. zero crimes solved in the several months of pilot (heh) project. oh and it only flies during the day, so this stupid waste of fuel misses most of the real crimes. lawnmowers have never bothered me but this is so, so annoying.

if u wanna be happy when you're mowing the grass
never let a Tombot eat your whole ass

zero crimes solved in the several months of pilot (heh) project

just wanted to humilitybrag about dealing with the worst of both worlds w/r/t getting both constant development/renovation noise AND lawncare adjacency noises.

my ground-floor studio apartment is strategically located in the corner of an old (for this city, i.e. 1920s) three-story apartment building of tiny 1-bedrooms and studios in an urban neighborhood just across the interstate from downtown, with construction going on right across the street. the building's dumpsters and recycle bins are located three feet from my kitchen window on the north side, and the entry/exit gate to the complex is located three feet from my bedroom window on the east side, directly adjacent to the sidewalk of the street with the construction site on the other side. hella noise every few minutes on both sides. in the summer I basically have to choose between privacy or ventilation, as it heats up pretty quickly with no fencing or awning or vegetation shading the facade, and the ceiling fan can only do so much and is pretty noisy itself (can't have it on while trying to sleep).

I'm not really complaining, it's the cheapest apartment available within a ten-minute walk of my downtown office ($940), and I chose it for that reason, but GODDAMN is it not an office and nowhere near ideal for focusing on spreadsheets and word docs and permit applications and having Microsoft Teams meetings and conference calls for eight hours a day. my upstairs neighbor's 100-year-old hardwood floor is basically one and same as my ceiling and I hear EVERY tiny bit of her contact with it whether or not she wears her clogs (and she always wears them) and she's a hairdresser who's been out of work for the last three months and physically cannot sit still by the sound of it. much cracking and creaking and stomping about, all the time. the resident manager lives nextdoor to me and he's been staying busy with his circular saw and nailgun and hammer on some sort of tiny garden planter project he wants to install in the perpetually shaded narrow space between our wall and the noise-collecting concrete retaining wall between our building and the taller building nextdoor. it's been in progress since Memorial Day, a little noisy bit at a time, four or five feet from my window.

anyway, in addition to all this, our gardeners, the nextdoor building's gardener's, and the other nextdoor building's gardeners all come on their own individual weekdays to trim our respective shubberies with their two-stroke clippers and leafblow all our trash into the street for twenty minutes a day. landscaping is important for a property management company, they want these shitholes looking nice. and then the garbage trucks too, and also the recyclable trucks, can't forget those, they have their own days too. they're always laughing their asses off when they come to wheel the dumpsters out from three feet from my window when I'm having a 12-person Microsoft Teams meeting with all the windows open. I should've known better than to leave them open! suffocating in a 10'x10' box without fresh air is totally cool!

so yeah I like offices. they're good places to work for people like me to who live in squalor. and I've had more than a few conversations with coworkers who are like "ummmmmm yeah I'm loving this working from home situation! in no great rush to get back to the ol' office!!!" and who can blame them, cause they're successful humans who are comfortable in their own homes and can get stuff done there. shoot, my department hosted their quarterly forum online for the first time last month and it featured endless slideshows from the various dept section people showing off their swanky living room workstations. one guy was even douchey enough to share a photo of his laptop perched next to his hottub on his deck at sunset with a frickin cocktail thrown in for good fun. these people are proper people.

I'm only a five minute bike ride from my office so I'm still making trips downtown once or twice a week to get into the office to do stuff I can't do from home on my laptop, printing and hardcopy permit package submittals and whatnot. It's cute though that the department policy as of two months ago is that my remotely-working section head has to do a facetime "screening" with me no more than ten minutes prior to my entering the building where he asks me if I have a fever or a cough or a headache, and I say no, and then says "great, you may enter the building."

STOP MOWING UR LAWN U CNUTS

I live by the port,train tracks,and while my apartment faces away from the very busy road I live on,it is on the corner of the building,so sirens and trucks going by are very loud. I'm inured to it but the other day a student I was talking to on the phone (I work at a university) said it sounded like I was outside lol

Oh yeah I also have two fans going on constantly (apartment is small and hot)

so yeah I like offices. they're good places to work for people like me to who live in squalor. and I've had more than a few conversations with coworkers who are like "ummmmmm yeah I'm loving this working from home situation! in no great rush to get back to the ol' office!!!" and who can blame them, cause they're successful humans who are comfortable in their own homes and can get stuff done there.

Yep. I don't miss the bus ride to and from downtown. But I miss the company-paid air conditioning. I miss the fitness center, and not just because of the tension of whether or not I would see Nick, and would he and/or I be in a mood to talk. Working in shorts and a t-shirt is nice, but I miss putting together an outfit that wouldn't be destroyed by the bus trip. (I'm sewing stuff in anticipation of this fall, but who knows if the area will open enough for me to go out and wear these things.)

just wanted to humilitybrag about dealing with the worst of both worlds w/r/t getting both constant development/renovation noise AND lawncare adjacency noises.

High 5! I got constant construction noise plus leafblowers and fireworks minus actual lawnmowers

however, I am currently devoid of police sirens and flashbang grenades and news & police helicopters after two straight weeks of it --

though speaking of construction -- when we were on full lockdown -- which meant no construction with the exception of affordable housing -- the neighborhood was eerily quiet, it felt like the suburbs. It also grimly demonstrated that next to no affordable housing was under construction near me ... which is an area where they should be building affordable housing.

that's surprising that residential development would drop off so dramatically like that under a temporary construction moratorium, considering that most new residential developments (at least in major California cities) are required by local ordinance to have at least some of their units be dedicated as "affordable." I guess every city implements their rules different. We're still shovel-ready & shovel-willing down here.

I miss the fitness center, and not just because of the tension of whether or not I would see Nick, and would he and/or I be in a mood to talk

this sounds like some juicy Nick drama that I think we all deserve to know! spill those deets here and now!

Juicy, no. Tedious, for me at least. He's a classic Washington white collar type, in this case working for a lobbying firm while I work for a Federal contractor. We would cross paths at the fitness center, and sometimes get to chatting. I tried asking him to a free screening of Christmas Vacation during the holidays, but his mother died that very day.

Officially I don't even miss Nick as much as I miss occasionally seeing interest in men's eyes (not that I was ever able to capitalize on any such interest).

Chevy made Christmas Vacation for two reasons and two reasons only: to make more money to buy more cocaine, and to console through laughter those grieving over the loss of a parent. Nick should've known this, and therefore he sucks.

I'm getting server time-outs literally every 15-30 seconds. Like I can't complete a sentence of an email without every one of my apps freezing and glitching out. I assume this is currently the case for all of my coworkers, as well. I still have quite a lot that needs to get done (including, what, six letters that need to be drafted and sent out) before the three-day weekend which, for me, starts in 90 minutes. Oh well!

xpost: Occasionally I bless my fairy godmother (whom I believe to be the late Dorothy Parker) for steering me away from boyfriends who aren't worth the salt in my tears. But sometimes I fear she might also be steering me away from men who might be worth a tumble.

Point of clarification: She died the day of the screening, and as Nick didn't have my contact info, he couldn't get in touch with me until after the holidays.

Also, officially I miss the gym because my back has been hurting.

that's surprising that residential development would drop off so dramatically like that under a temporary construction moratorium, considering that most new residential developments (at least in major California cities) are required by local ordinance to have at least some of their units be dedicated as "affordable." I guess every city implements their rules different.

here as well as in San Francisco, what is common is that new developments can either designate that required percentage/amount as affordable OR they can pay additional "impact fees" essentially paying into a City-administered fund that theoretically is used to build affordable housing elsewhere in the City. ... In practice, very little affordable housing does get built and the City is sitting on a bunch of money and builds no affordable housing, and, in addition, the City doesn't even collect from developers the entire amounts of the fees they are obligated to pay, which assumedly, also results in next-to-no affordable housing being built.

Another problem is that the City isn't terribly imaginative when it comes to affordable housing developments in terms of type of units and scale of development. They tend to wait for the perfect big project that checks all the boxes, which haha, rarely happens, rather than commit funds to a larger number of small projects, often involving renovation and/or conversion of existing non-residential structures. These smaller projects tend to be less expensive per unit, to boot.

and now this thread has gone from being about Working From Home to Working On Homes -- sorry

Went to the office today to actually bring my computer home (had been sshing in) and it made me sad! I like the office!