Working From Home

Obviously not a shot at those of you itt silently judging, none of you have a wildly popular Twitter platform that has legit made some people feel really bad!

if i had lost the Order of Canada i wouldn't dare show my face on zoom!

aw i think it’s pretty good-natured. at least the ones i’ve read. the whole idea of rating anyone’s zoom background is absurd on its face.

room rater reminds me of that website that critiqued the decor of gay friendfinder ads or something like that ... i think John Waters did a guest post once? ... I forget the name, but the image of the middle aged guy holding his dick and a vacuum cleaner with heavily upholstered floral furniture will stick with me for quite a while

xpost - I can't remember who it was, but there was some reporter that had his background called a "hostage video" (iirc) and he genuinely felt upset by it. I think it started out good-natured, but it seems like it got a little too into shaming people for not being rich enough to have nice art of tons of cool things in the background.

I started out with bookcases behind me, but I've since switched my office around so I just have plain white curtains, and honestly I prefer that. It may not impress anyone, but it doesn't distract anyone either.

We don't have to use a camera on WebEx meetings thankfuckinggod. Yet some people choose to. A fascinating psychology to me.

I take most calls by phone from wherever I can find quiet. If my son finds out I'm on the phone, he tends to get jealous and follow me around, shrieking. If I'm in a room with a locked door, he will stand outside the door and pound on it. Sometimes I go to sit in the car. Fun!

For those times when I have to do a video call, I have an office that is also the music room (and game room and art room and storage room), with guitars on the wall. Lolburbdad.

Just found out my employer is closing its physical office in DC, which I have never been to. Tomorrow I am interviewing for a job based in Minneapolis. I'll probably never go there. Surreal shit all around.

My home office is the same room that my very good boy doctor ben* passed away in last January. Some of his stuff is still in there in boxes on the bookshelves - HE is still in there, in an urn. I think I hadn’t really realized before why this makes the office into a place I prefer to only spend a couple of hours in at a time. Not usually a problem in an office building office!

* Life Of Doctor Ben In Pictures

xp - my co-worker's daughter does this to him as well -- he will sometimes go for a walk around the block in order to have a quiet phone call.

having one's face up close for examination during meetings like this is a little different when you're trying to hide impatience, exasperation, etc. i've had to really commit to poker face.

that's really hard actually!

I have a hard time finding a neutral face

btw this commercial makes me die laughing every time, only because I inadvertently speak like this to learners in class when they make a mistake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0yT5XWjldo

I needed a new USB headset as my old one had a frayed cord and would keep losing connection. so I ordered one through procurement, and of course, despite being in a pandemic, our policy doesn't allow shipping the products to our houses, which would make too much sense. No, we have to have them shipped to our office.

To visit our office, we have to go onto a special app and certify that we have no symptoms and haven't been around someone with them for 14 days...which I did, and it tells me I'm cleared to go into the office. I arranged in advance to pick up my product today with the IT team.

I haven't been in the office for 11-12 months, but I get to the door, and my badge works just fine. Yay!

I get to the third floor, which also belongs to my company - badge does not work. After 15 minutes trying everything possible, I had to go home empty fucking handed because I only had a half hour free to pick it up today. Now I have to try again Monday.

stupidest fucking thing. I thought maybe they deactivated my badge due to non-use for 6 months or more, but I was told that practice ended last year, and usually when they deactivate your badge, it doesn't work at the front door either.

why didn’t they just.... activate it?

apparently we have new security now so I don't even know where to go to do that!

i should have asked before I went "what do I do if my badge does not work"

well maybe. but you work there and have a documented reason to be there. reception should have got security to activate it, surely!

well, apparently my badge shows 'terminated'. they asked me if I was a rehire. I haven't had a break in service in 16 years.

seems like I won't be getting it fixed today! :/

what a way to find out you're fired am i right

Lol

They did wind up fixing it.

god I've just remembered I have a nice plant in my office and the last time someone mentioned watering the office plants a few months ago

Oh that’s terrible

rip

Rotting indoor plant

guilty lol

god I've just remembered I have a nice plant in my office and the last time someone mentioned watering the office plants a few months ago

― Politically homely (jim in vancouver), Friday, December 4, 2020 1:54 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

A coworker who had a desk next to mine had a plant. When I went to the office last summer to get some stuff, there was a huge brown stain on his desk where the plant used to live.

did...he shit on the plant?

I don't tend to judge people by their Zoom backgrounds, but I met a former colleague last week, we were pretty decent work friends, and he's a pretty cool guy. So when we decided to catch up on Zoom, I tried not to quietly judge the fact that he had a framed print of "The Singing Butler" behind him. I mean, I know we have a lot in common, but also have very different lives, so he's allowed to have different taste in art.

Thank goodness he revealed he was staying with his mother-in-law due to some renovations at home, and I was not the first person to comment on the print that day, so he was going to take it down for future meetings.

I'd never have brought it up! I used to have a colleague who loved Vettriano, nothing worse than having to be polite about someone else's bad taste.

biggest pet peeve is sending people an Outlook invite and 25% of them insisting they don't have it when I can see on their calendar they did get it and either accepted it and don't know how to access the calendar, or didn't accept it and it's still sitting in their email

it's because we don't actually teach people how to use OUtlook before they start so some figure it out, some don't

I only mentioned it after he mentioned they were staying with MIL and he had to do all his calls in her spare room

Often I'm reminded of grad school where I took classes in tv broadcasting and we had a unit on "visual perception and cognition and why from certain angles, things in the background appear to be sprouting out of people's heads"

this happened this morning -- my co-worker had a plant on a shelf above his head but the angle of the webcam made it look like he was wearing a jaunty hat like the Pied Piper

i am so burnt out my chest is in knots every morning before daily class. gotta get to January. they have me training people on New Year's Day ffs

jesus, I know sometimes it's easy to forget you're muted, big whoop, but I have heard the same individual for four consecutive days eating, muttering to themselves, breathing heavily, belching, etc

I've stopped asking them to mute and just started manually silencing them. i don't even have to look to know who it is

you're *not muted

we are supposed to assess learners who are not up to speed so we can stay late for an hour a day and give them a one on one learning plan.

yeah, this is a class of 45 people, I'm not doing that 4 days into class. everybody passes

do we think the ideas in this thread are likely to come to pass or is this guy full of shit?

I've spoken to 1,500+ people about remote work in the last 9 months

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge before 2030

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) December 4, 2020

Varying degrees of bullshit depending on the prediction. I have optimistic takes that align with some of his. I don’t think no-code stuff has any particular correlation w remote work. Most people suck at written communication but I’d be delighted if we all just started communicating in memos. I think lots of places will wind up offices with hotel desks, private offices for a few who have no wish to work from home, conference rooms with higher-end video conference setups, and a few middle managers who are way too squirrelly about what people are up to all day. I think many places will continue to expect most people to be available during usual business hours. I think a lot of people miss some things about the office and a few people would never want to keep working from home.

it's been interesting to watch this shake out in my 23-person company. I'm one of the few who basically never comes in, there's a niche for me and I filled it. Not everyone has that option, but some do.

Im optimistic that wfh coming in to the civil service here (and hub offices as another, linked, covid measure) will be good for work/life and especially geographic balancing measures, tbh

Longer term, who knows.

if I'm allowed to keep wfhing after all this - which there really is no good reason for me not to be able to, as an example my colleague who I share a work load with was on the sick for 3 months during this and I was able to do the work of 2 people from home, why can't I do my work of one person from home indefinitely? - my issue will be convincing my wife to move somewhere else in the province that's not as expensive as Vancouver (everywhere is pretty expensive but we're the pinnacle). probably won't be successful

I certainly have no interest in leaving my general chunk of the city but if a bunch of squares want to move to the suburbs and do their techco jobs from there and never drive into town again by all means they should.

ROASTED

silby i think you’ll find those are also known as “world class people”

I’m world class at laying down

During work

🤖personal RPA: robotic process automation will transform work for individuals

No-code tools that enable workers to built bots that automate menial parts of their roles will be huge

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) December 4, 2020

I don't think that's how this ends: "I've got a bot to do my job, I'll just lie back and enjoy that regular paycheck".