Working From Home

one cheeky afternoon coming right up

"cheeky afternoon in the sun" is code for the affair you're having with a co-worker, right?

I am now worried that the bants I've been enjoying up to now have not been proper. Shit.

"cheeky afternoon in the sun" is code for the affair you're having with a co-worker, right?

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Thursday, 3 September 2020 20:58 (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Seeing your second family" is barely code

can really sense the creeping desperation as it keeps going

bull up your bants

man, if I'd have forseen this pandemic, I never would have moved to a position that involved talking all day.

Pre-pandemic, it was as cozy a job as ever, and it will be as well when it's over. but now I have to feign a level of passion I can't even remotely dredge up right now.

things have stabilize. we hired our own employees rather than using a partner site and class is going very well, with few to no technological issues, and the learners are great. my co-facilitator knows what she's doing.

now, in the absence of any actual issues, I have the yips. I guess having things going wrong to blame helped me be more relaxed as I knew I wouldn't get blamed for any fuckery, but now that that's gone, I feel immense pressure to deliver.

idgi. i've been here almost 16 years, I know what I'm doing, I'm a good speaker, the classes find me entertaining, and yet I find myself examining every word I say, I get us behind because I'm lacking confidence that the class is ready to move on, the one time my co-worker (incorrectly) corrected me, I felt beet red, even though I was technically not wrong.

I think part of it = we're using webcams. I used to teach in person all the time, and that is nothing for me - I use my theater background to get past anxiety. but I've taught virtually for so long that I've gotten rusty with it and also, I don't have a property desk setup in my room. my room has a mattress and a tv and not much room for much else and I never thought I"d have to use my webcam.

I'm getting a desk/new bed when I move into my new place but I have to contort myself into weird positions to look proper on the camera since I'm basically propping myself up on a pillow.

i think i'm just too mentally fatigued to actually work right now. when this election is over, maybe not.

actually I think I feel so under pressure to succeed in everything and feel so judged and seen by everybody now in all walks of my life (which is just a perception, not reality) that I just need a few days out of the public eye so my four days of PTO will be nice.

I think getting a desk will help. I just got myself a desk and set up my room with a little office corner, and it makes a big difference to how professional the whole thing feels.

Remote classes are just not as good as in-person classes, though, and that's hard for those of us who base some of our identity around being good at our jobs. Especially if you've spent 16 years being good at this particular job. I'm sure you're doing everything as well as it can be done w/the limitations of the tech, but it's hard to have an idea in your head of what a good class w/ high energy & student engagement should look like and not be able to reach it.

I looked up Graham Greene + burnout the other day because I was wondering if he coined the term (he did) and saw that somewhere he calls it "The long despair of doing nothing well."

Neanderthal, your training sessions need more ukulele

lol...i...could maybe do that towards the end.

xp - I wonder how much of that perception is due to a contraction in the scope of your life? Maybe yours hasn't ... mine has. I work more than I used to because I feel like there isn't anything else to do, and thus my work feels more stressful and important than when I had more balance in terms of creative fun, friends, etc.

perception re being judged, not perception re more ukelele ...

oh it totally has to do with that. full stop. without activities like theatre, singing at fundraisers, attending concerts, sometimes I get release or feel fulfilled, most times I feel preoccupied with work.

i've found more safe activities as a result but honestly I think we all just need the year to end. we've been told the busy period of our department, which has lasted since March, will probably go to next March. and we're a dept that usually has a manageable summer and a quiet winter. we're also running with 5 people in a 7 person dept

I can totally relate -- wait, I said that already, yeah? ... I think this whole thing has done a number on so many people's senses of time and work/rest etc. ... because a lot of my work involves individual clients, it's like I am "on call" 24-7 in terms of the texts and emails I get from clients, which, before CoVID no one emailed me or texted me at 7pm on a Saturday night. And I don't _have_ to respond immediately but it provokes anxiety and sense of obligation ... so then the sensible thing is to set times for myself where I don't look at email or messenger or texts, which used to be fine because I could go out to bars and parties and shows and see friends, but now, the phone and computer are also the mechanisms through which I socialize and it's harder to filter the work stuff.

xxxxposts to self

ok one thing that annoys me about my co-facilitator

she keeps saying AWESOMESAUCE.

it's been 50 or 60 times since Tuesday.

what YEAR IS IT

xpost I feel you on the "I don't have to reply but if I don't, I'll feel anxious until I get rid of it". when I was a project manager I got my emails on the blackberry and it would be too tempting not to look at them and reply to them. I was even at Gasparilla Pirate Fest replying to emails one weekend. and that was before COVID.

agree that maybe coming up with a schedule where you consider it "sarahell time" and dont' allow yourself to look at work emails is a good idea, but are these emails intermingled with personal emails, or separated? same with messenger/texts (ie do you have a work number and regular number or does everything go to your personal line?)

xpost - Oh god, we've had a third party facilitator working with us as we launch this new software system that will be rolling out over a few years, so we've had a number of training sessions and working groups with a grown ass person that says "AWESOMESAUCE" and "COOL BEANS" allllllll the time. It never fails to make me embarrassed about the whole thing.

For me, responding to an email on an evening or weekend is nbd because I let the work-life balance go in both directions. If work takes my "me time" I retaliate by doing my "me stuff" in the M-F 9-5 space.

Part of this is kids (especially small and special needs kids). If my kid needs my attention on Tuesday at 10 am, I feel exactly no guilt about providing it. And now that everybody's at home, much of my "work day" is consumed with chin-wiping and logging into virtual school and troubleshooting the math app.

In exchange, I typically move a lot of the concentration parts of my "day job" to off-hours and quiet evening time.

I need to manage the balance, but most of the time it has been a fair trade.

I did used to like reading emails on my off days so that when I came back, it didn't feel overwhelming.

and yeah being able to do personal stuff during work day does make it go down easier

everything goes to my personal phone and email ... some of my clients are also personal friends so there is added awkwardness there.

My closest colleague is a bit more "on trend" than yours, but I honestly don't need to hear "bonkers" anymore times ever. ... and because of CoVid, this colleague has become a much larger % of my interactions with other people

If you haven't enabled the setting to automatically join by computer audio, you can test your speaker and microphone before joining a meeting:

1. After joining a meeting, click Test Speaker and Microphone.

lol?

MS Teams seems to have broken my co-instructor. First, she rambles without a breath for about 15 minutes at the beginning of class, and she starts rambling on unrelated topics for 15 minutes, getting the class talking about the election and their benefits. I am getting agitated as I'm supposed to start going over a lesson and I have no idea why she is hijacking my time when she blurts out "I'm waiting for Rob to join, that's why I'm going over this", and I said out loud "I'm here." and in private snottily wrote "I've been here since 5 minutes before class started". Her explanation - she can't figure out how to use Large GAllery (it's literally the easiest thing), so she didn't see my webcam on, and didnt' see my name in the chat (probably because she looked in the attendee list, not presenters). EVER HEARD OF ASKING 'ROB, ARE YOU THERE?!"

also, she never checks her private messages, she keeps saying "she didn't see them". HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU NOT SEE THEM? I get that while you're presenting, yes, that's not where your focus is, but she doesn't even read them when she isn't presenting! and even when I'm presenting the MS Teams icon at the bottom of my screen flashes when there's a new message and a number of unreads so I can easily pop in there to check them at my earliest convenience.

Yesterday I kept sending her private messages and I couldn't speak them out loud because they are related to learner performance, which is private. I even started tagging her IN PRIVATE CHATS so it would make the 'bing' sound to alert her. nothing. hours after class ended, she said "oh sorry didn't see these". I've had to start sending messages in the MS Teams Meeting room's chat and say "please see your side chat" - because MS Teams doesn't have the option WebEx did where you can choose the audience for your message. side chat is the only option.

I don't get how someone can be this....dumb?

oh and I logged into WebEx Teams the other day, which we're not even supposed to be using anymore and find out she's been messaging me there. I'm not reading these messages because WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE USING IT, so I'm not even logging into it.

As far as doing personal stuff during work, I can do chores, but forget doing anything leisurely even if it's slow. The best I can do is engage conversation online but reading for information or leisure is (mostly) a no.

idk if people have different settings on MS Teams than me, but getting people to respond to side-chat messages during a meeting/training takes an act of God. My Teams flashes and shows me the number of unread messages, so if you message me even if I'm in a meeting/raining, I'll know I got one (yea, won't always be able to read right away, but before too long).

my training partner, on the other hand, I will send a message regarding something we need to discuss that the class need not see, at a period of time when she's not even presenting, and it'll go unread for hours, even if I send multiple follow-ups and go into the training chat and tag her and say "please see side chat". she always says "oh I just didn't see them".

last night, I needed a student to attend a short meeting, so I private messaged them three times, tagging them each time, and when they didn't reply, I messaged three times in the training and tagged her, and no reply. she said she 'missed' the messages.

today, a classmate msged me when I was in the bathroom, and I replied when I got back, and my reply sat unanswered for over a half hour, even though they were on break and I replied twice asking if they still needed my help.

it doesn't feel that hard to me, but it seems like pinging people on the side during a meeting (which is often necessary) is near impossible without saying out loud "see your private messages", which is like calling someone to tell them you emailed them. this never happened to me on other chat clients to this degree.

yesterday it was annoying because I needed to know if she could stay late with me to help give one-on-one help to two students and I didn't get a response until 5 pm, when class ended.

teams is terrible at this, I generally agree

but I feel like this is really just the difference between “people who try to dutifully manage their notifications/unreads” and “people who have given up”

a large part of it, too.

I'm the only one on my time with just one monitor (everybody else uses dual, I'm old school, plus I was never issued one). they asked "how are you so smooth in keeping up with everything with only one monitor" and my smug response was "I can multi-task"

My heterodox opinion is that dual monitors are for people who don’t know how to alt-tab

I also have a limited range of neck motion and turning my head is fatiguing

i tried dual monitors once and it wasn't for me.

my teammates have all called me the 'tech guru' and that is such bullshit, I know nothing about IT stuff at all, I just...listen to and know how to read instructions. very low bar to clear these days.

it's more annoying though cos then they think I can actually solve real problems and, well, no, I can't. i'm not IT!

Yeah knowing more about computers than everyone in your immediate vicinity is a trap

I have only one monitor and I have never heard of alt-tab and I'm only vaguely aware that MS Teams, which I use every day, has a private message function, ask me anything

correspondence (i.e. outlook and now teams) is such a huge consumer of my bandwidth that I feel it’s a lot better to dedicate a screen or two to that, and then have another reserved for “actual work” as I like to think of it.

We've had ongoing construction near our house for the past two and a half weeks, so our house has been noisy and constantly vibrating from about 7:30 in the morning until 3:30 every day. In non pandemic times, we probably wouldn't even have known, but it's been really, really frustrating. I've been on work calls where I can't hear, even with headphones, and my son has been STRUGGLING to focus on classes with his desk vibrating.

This morning we had the ongoing construction noise and vibration and six (SIX!!) leaf blowers running within four or five houses of ours. I almost lost my shit completely.

My heterodox opinion is that dual monitors are for people who don’t know how to alt-tab

― The Bosom Manor Michaelmas Special (silby), Tuesday, November 10, 2020 9:00 AM (eight minutes ago)

agreed! or just ... get 1 (one) bigger monitor

I have a 27” 4K monitor and I only look at, like, the top-left of it

dual monitors are a must for writing/editing sry

that sucks dude

xp to jon

I kinda wonder about people who prefer one monitor vs. dual monitor people and whether there is a correlation with different vision issues and/or attention issues.

Can I defend the dual monitors folks? Working in architecture and project management means I very, very frequently have building plans up on one screen while I do something on the other. Most commonly, I am tweaking plans in AutoCAD while also referencing PDF plans that have been redlined and marked up - that would be an absolute nightmare to alt-tab constantly, especially since I'm often drawing plines in AutoCAD that require one continuous command while I compare to the redlined plans. Secondarily, I then have to review and edit spreadsheets with room schedules to compare to floor plans, again a ceaseless headache were I to have to constantly alt-tab between the two.

to be clear - I do think there are plenty of valid reasons for dual monitors. I just don't think most of the people at my company need them.

i'm teaching today on webcam and trying to look happy and not mega-stressed. my co-facilitator and I clearly don't gel together and everybody is driving me nuts and I look fat on the cam :/

ha I actually spent a fair amount of time in the past weeks reviewing and editing spreadsheets with room schedules to compare to floor plans and making a list of things to redline in architectural plans (25 units -- none of them are the same, none!!!) -- and I get the dual monitor thing if you are running AutoCAD at the same time. I generally just print the planset and do the mark-up review with a LOL red mechanical pencil.

xpost thank goodness for 3 PTO days bookending a weekend

... or I print the room schedule out and compare it to the planset on the screen (which is actually easier because I don't have a large-format printer at home)

I love having so much monitor space that I lose my cursor, 2screens4life