Working From Home

yeah. I've never managed people before but I've been a project manager (two years). went from having a prodigious start where I took over a project before my training was completed and saved it from collapse, feeling confident, and loving my job for 2 years....

....to feeling dehumanized by nasty Executives and toxic business partners and having it wreck my mental health. i wasn't the only one - my peers were also miserable...and some left. was 100% the company, so maybe if I did it elsewhere, it'd go better.

"I'm being extremely lazy, my productivity is absolutely in the toilet. I don't give 2 fucks tbh.

Yeah lately I've just been phoning it in. If ever there was a time to do C minus work, this is it."

I genuinely think this is okay and is about looking after yourself.

I took the rest of this afternoon off. the assignment I was supposed to start on isn't ready, I didn't sleep well, and I would rather just nap

"Yeah I dont understand why Im also so fucking tired all the time."

This but ... it's crap working from home. I resent the lack of division between home and work. I resent work filling my brain when I've stopped. I could go for an hour's nap in the middle of the day and would still be actually working harder than any time I'm in the office. I miss the pottering to the work kitchen for a coffee and a natter. I miss going for a lunch break, even though my lunch break was only ever wandering around Wilkos and probably buying nasturtium seeds. I miss my colleagues, even the ones I only quite like. Also, alcohol starts at 1700 instead of 1800, now.

(Disclaimer: really grateful that I'm not being made to work in a risky workplace).

I held a Psych game night on Zoom for 4-5 people last week and one of my friends couldn't get in (issue with the link) and after 5 minutes I almost called it off cos it felt too much like work helping him troubleshoot. but he got in.

"I'm being extremely lazy, my productivity is absolutely in the toilet. I don't give 2 fucks tbh.

Yeah lately I've just been phoning it in. If ever there was a time to do C minus work, this is it."

I genuinely think this is okay and is about looking after yourself.

― djh,

^ this. I was trying extra hard the first couple of months but now I am slowing down a bit.

I'm still working too hard lol, nothing else is interesting to me rn

My org had some incredible things to say as the pandemic was hitting and we were working from home.

The HR chief gave a presentation and there was a slide with the following on it:

Working Remote - COVID 19 Principles
1) You are not "Working From Home," you are "At your home, during a crisis, trying to work."
2) Your personal physical, mental, and emotional health is far more important than anything else right now.
3) You should not try to compensate for lost productivity by working longer hours.
4) You will be kind to yourself and not judge how you are coping based on how you see others coping.
5) You will be kind to others and not judge how they are coping based on how you are coping.
6) Your team's success will not be measured the same way it was when things were normal.

I can't describe to you how much relief this slide gave me, and as a result, I became more productive because I wasn't stressing about how much I was fucking up during the pandemic.

I'm lucky to work where I do, but I hope that maybe some of you will be able to take a couple of these principles and apply them to your situation. Especially point #1, which is a reframing that helped me be a lot kinder to myself.

That's nice! We never got an explicit acknowledgement of this kind but I suspect managers received something to this effect, because they've been patient and hands-off throughout.

Ctrl-F "vodka," no results found. Hmph.

djh, your post - it me

yeah our company/HR have been very good to us around all this - they were ready to send us all home by the middle of March and hit the ground running on that front (new laptops, headsets, chairs, the lot).

We have weekly video quizzes and regular competitions (best pet, bakeoffs, that sorta thing). I havent felt micromanaged, we're all trusted to just Get Shit Done (this can be a bit deadly for me though, I can slide a little when someone isnt whacking me at least occasionally lol)

"Video quizzes" - to be fair, this would make me resign.

(Sounds good, otherwise).

My office is closed until April and there's discussion at the moment, within my team, as to whether we ever go back. Colleagues have taken the opportunity to move to the US and Europe and work closer to their families and there's not much of a pressing reason to make them come back. The interesting discussion is going to be, come April, what happens if half the team wants to work from the office and half doesn't. There's a fear that it could disrupt collaboration and the team dynamic if you have a core group who see each other every day and a bunch of people who don't. I imagine it'll be optional but the idea of forcing everyone to work from home to put them all on an equal footing has been mooted.

Where I work we’ve been told that wfh in another country isn’t on the cards for tax reasons. Some staff have ill parents elsewhere and would really like to be with them medium-term but it ain’t happening.

Hello. This is a Teams/Skype/Zoom etc question.

We're currently working from home and need to do some work via video conferencing rather than in person.

We want to do two things

a) Have conversations with clients, who can't have our email addresses

and

b) Have conversations with groups of clients, who can't have our email addresses or each other's email addresses.

In an ideal world, this would be free (but doesn't absolutely have to be) and very easy to use (particularly for the client).

Any obvious service?

A colleague had set up Skype accounts but it seems that once you've had a "conversation" anyone would have your address.

zoom is easy to use (and is there anyone in the world who hasn't used it through lockdown? oh you, apparently) and doesn't require email sharing (though you have to send them a link somehow); the free version is limited to 45 mins though.

Thanks Ledge.

Microsoft Teams looks like it's a bit more faff to set up but is also free, don't require email addresses for video con, and doesn't have the annoying 45m min restriction. Been using it at work and the collaborative working tools work surprisingly well ime.

Video quality on Teams is better than Zoom as well.

Teams is great

I liked Skype for Business (ex-Lync) a little more for ease of use, but I am okay with Teams.

I shall now go and ritually scourge my flesh onnaconna praising a product of the evil M$ corporation. Mea maxima culpa

We're supposed to be switching to Teams next year campuswide and a few of us are vaguely using a general space for it in the meantime. Reasonable enough from what I can see!

teams is very purple

MS Teams has been a learning adjustment but I like it 3 million times better than WebEx so far.

Skype for Business was easier for virtual training only because it was the one environment where few people said "I CAN'T GET INTO MEETING". we used Skype to message each other too, so they were already logged in, and they clicked a link, and boom, meeting open.

whereas WebEx, which we used after, was something people never used except when they were in training so half the time they'd click the link and it'd tell them "if program doesn't open, click here to install temporary file" and the average learner would react like someone was speaking Esperanto.

or....we had the year where our learners using Citrix to access their virtual workspace (FUCK CITRIX UP THE URETHRA OMG) had WebEx crash immediately if they accessed it within Citrix, which required them to access WebEx OUTSIDE of Citrix, meaning they had to spend all day toggling outside and inside Citrix whenever we did activities.

so yeah...I'm full on embracing MS Teams, lol.

Been WFH since March and I honestly don't know if I'll be able to handle the transition back to working at an office. It has been lovely basically just rolling out of bed, brushing my teeth, and "going to work" by entering the home office. We're using Google Meet for our meetings since our systems are all Linux systems and thus don't operate anything relating to Microsoft, but I'm also mandated to keep a chatroom up just in case any of our team needs to confer about a work issue and, let me tell you, the "chirpy extrovert" of the group (to steal from a beautiful turn of phrase a friend of mine uses to describe Facebook) has managed to infect that chatroom with her annoyingly chirpy extroversion. But since that is literally the only drawback to this whole set up, I honestly don't mind.

I'm realizing the reason I used to do so well working from home is it cut out my commute altogether, allowed me to unwind sooner, and then I was able to do more social activities during the week because i didn't have to be up as early the next day, so I could 'reward' myself after a tough day with fun activities, and then I'd get over it. or I didn't dwell on mistakes I made (cos I'm a massive perfectionist and I get embarrassed if I fail at anything)

without this 'reward' system due to COVID, I find my frustration just growing into a bigger and bigger ball to where I just feel worn out by the time the day ends...or I hyperfocus on my mistakes and get bad imposter syndrome. Likewise, even though I'm used to working from home, half the people we teach aren't, so our job got much harder and we just lost a full-time employee, so we're understaffed.

ultimately, the thought process of "look, people are getting sick and dying, it could be much worse" keeps me from despairing too much, and the knowledge that my family is financially secure. thinking maybe I should work a week from the beach or something.

Me, on Tuesday:

"Hey, the trainer in one of my classes is from Woodlands, Texas. Do we have a contingency plan for what happens if he loses power due to the hurricane? Because I can't take his place - remember, I'm leading a class in the morning and my afternoon is booked solid."

~silence~

Me, on Wednesday:

"So, it looks like the Woodlands, Texas will be spared the worst. However, I think it'd be a good idea if we come up with a backup plan in case the forecast changes. Is there a contingency plan?"

"That facilitator lives near me. Nothing's going to happen, we're fine."

"...ok. I gave him my number anyway."

Today:

~text message from facilitator~

"Hi Neanderthal. I lost power 10 minutes ago. The storm didn't really hit us, but because our energy company serves Louisiana, they're doing brownouts here to protect the grid. I don't know when my power will be back up".

I FUCKING TOLD YOU and gave you multiple opportunities to help me find a solution to avoid screwing me over and then the thing you said wouldn't happen happened and now I had to abandon everything I was scheduled to do this afternoon which now puts me half a day behind after I feverishly worked to catch up on Tuesday.

Feels like the President's brand of "wishing away bad news" is infecting my co-workers.

I wish I could find that faux-pamphlet from a few years back about an office building gradually turning into an overgrown post-apocalyptic ecosystem

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Thursday, March 12, 2020 6:13 AM (five months ago)

hahaha my friend made this actually --

but also, I have been thinking about the technical aspects of converting office buildings into affordable housing ... there would be regional issues in terms of different zoning/planning codes (as well as building/fire/health) ... things would also depend on the age of the building. ...

Neanderthal that sucks! wtf not understanding what the word contingency means durrrr

omg sarahell if you still have that could you ilxmail it to me?!

(to be clear, I'm not mad at the person who lost power, I'm mad at the leaders in charge that kept telling me they didn't need to help find a backup resource for him because "nothing is going to happen with this storm").

xxxxposts

https://packardjennings.com/2020/02/01/somepic2/

this is why you must become management

then you get to argue with other people in management on a regular basis ... uh

many thanks sarahell!

I'll say this. I was a project manager from summer of 2012 to winter (early) of 2015. first year or two, I loved it - I had a way to finally unleash my creativity on my projects, I was good at meetings and talking to clients and well I got to travel a lot of cool places for free. I was a favorite of the director of our dept. and my first few projects went well to where I was getting massive bonuses/performance reviews.

the place became toxic in a way I'd never seen before - micromanaging and intimidation/bully tactics, and my mental health went south and I started being irresponsible and drinking heavily and one night drove home drunk and totaled my car by driving into a wall after I blacked out on a turn. not sure how I didn't get a DUI, but I basically fled that role after that. and the entire department two years ago.

I could maybe return to it at a different company though........just need to gird up my loins and find a company that wins those "best place to work" awards and try it out there.

(not suggesting that work is to blame for me drinking and driving, cos that was my folly, but it did contribute to the mental downward spiral that I chose to medicate in the wrong way.)

Do you have the job security to call a dumbass a dumbass?

at this point, yeah, i'm a lifer (almost 16 years) and I didn't get disciplined over my "hot mic" incident so if they were willing to let THAT slide....

I don't mind trying to keep up to the standard we maintained in the office (allowing for the difficulties associated with remote work). But I do object to having to do a performance review. Especially considering that there probably will be no net pay increases. Is it true that performance reviews only serve employers trying to document a need to fire someone?

not necessarily -- depends on the workplace -- depends on the type of review. I've heard about performance reviews being part of the DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) toolkit in terms of improving the workplace's commitment and efforts to such principles.

we do one every year. I object to having to do a self-assessment though. I know what the purported benefit is supposed to be (you get to sell yourself, talk about how well YOU think you did), but it makes no difference in our final score, and takes too long to fill out during a time of year when we're already busy. if I want my boss to be aware of something for my review...I'll just email it to him.

Last year I flew to the Philippines for a month and basically supervised the training programs for Manila and Tarlac (which are two hours apart), 14 classes simultaneously, with little to no issues, while simultaneously teaching 3 classes. All with a laptop that wasn't functioning properly and outright died halfway into the trip. My boss tried to advocate for this as me 'exceeding expectations' and was basically told "ehh, so, he's expected to travel". first rating that wasn't "Exceeds" in more than 10 years with the firm, despite putting in more labor than probably any year previously.

I know full well I ain't gonna get a raise.

so I'm leading a class last week, teaching other business instructors about how to handle discipline issues in a class, what we're allowed and not allowed to do. I draw from experience and tell them about a time where a learner made frequent inappropriate sexual comments in chat in training and describe briefly how we handled it. no specific details or names, obv, I couldn't even remember who it was or what he said, exactly - it was almost two years ago.

wouldn't it be my luck that randomly, one of the 25 attendees of my class was the actual asshole who made those sexual comments. who appears to have cleaned up his act and has now been entrusted with training people.

I found out cos he outed himself to the entire class and admitted he was the guy in my story. that wasn't awkward! had a giggle about that afterward. only me.

omg they are gagging for us to return back to the office. “second family”? pic.twitter.com/udntfSVXSh

— mi🌿 (@helloalegria) September 2, 2020

I am hung up on "bants"

we brits love some proper bants