outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I feel for everyone having to go back to work.

I did for 3 weeks (3 days a week) and when Delta started popping off I pulled an Office Space: I went on vacation for 3 days and then just started working from home without saying anything or asking permission (I work for a small company and I am pretty senior). No masks were being required (or any other precautions) so I felt justified, especially now that there have been at least two positive cases the last 6 weeks.

I am now trying to push management to mandate social distancing and masking as my read of current NY law is that it is now required due to the governors 9/6 designation of covid as an airborne infectious disease outbreak. Getting ignored right now - CEO pays lips service to protecting employees but he implied that company would have to shut down if we went remote again, which is bullshit because we operated fully remotely from March 2020 to July 2021 with no discernible loss of business/efficiency/etc.

I appreciate the apology jon. I think it's important for workers to help each other out and feel connected. If you think you've got that covered remotely then good for you. But I'd appreciate it if you could resist the temptation of accusing me of passing around middle management excuses. That's not what I'm doing - as you might have recognised through the tears of your blinding rage if you'd just taken a second to breathe. Frankly the suggestion is offensive.

Well I still do apologize for going at you so personally, but that doesn't change the fact that I find most "team building" and "brotherhood" to be laughable at best. Ime, vanishingly few bosses genuinely care about nurturing a team, they just get more creative about ways to encourage you to be on site, being more productive so they can be seen as productive bosses. I have to be honest, you and I are never going to see eye-to-eye on that one and I do feel bad about going after you personally, but I could have done without that ridiculous, belittling condescension at the end.

shortly into the pandemic the company I work for closed our office and made work from home permanent. It mostly has more positives than negatives, but I do wish we would do occasional in-person meetings instead of doing everything through Teams, especially when dealing with somewhat complex issues. I'm lucky enough to have nice coworkers whose company I enjoy. I realize this is not the case for everybody.

I was fully remote before covid and just quit my job to work somewhere I’d have the option of going into an office. Planning to go in 1-2 days a week from the new year

Yeah I'm not against being in the office a few times a week, I'm just disappointed that I don't even have the option to WFH ever.

What really burns me is that my team has proven that we can do all our work fully remotely but my boss has made a big show of claiming that he will be in five days a week with the implication we should too.

I love my job but I spent four hours every day commuting because I can’t afford to live closer to my work.

Some personal science results for those of you that dig such things. I've been participating in a Red Cross antibody study since June 2020, when I donated blood and tested positive for antibodies on both the Roche and Ortho tests. Assuming I had Covid in the first week of March 2020 (which is possible), that means I was testing reactive for antibodies on both tests three months or so after exposure. I tested double-reactive a couple more times over the following months, but then I started testing reactive for just the Ortho test but not the Roche, which means my antibodies were still there but had faded (as expected). Fast forward several months, for reasons of timing, and I gave my first blood sample since vaccination a few weeks ago. I was fully vaccinated by March of 2021, and by this past late August (so, five or so months) my tests already showed waning antibodies, reactive on the Ortho but non-reactive on the Roche. In other words, vaccine antibodies behaving just as predicted/reported, and similar to natural antibodies: fading, at least somewhat. Now, what I don't know is, were I exposed to Covid again, would those antibodies bounce back up in response? Or is my protection compromised, requiring a booster (as many expect)? I suspect that's part of the study, though my handler if I heard her correctly told me that they hadn't yet had a participant who had been reinfected.

lol jon the suggestion I would ever use the phrase "team building" in earnest is possibly even more offensive than what you said before!

I'm talking about brotherhood and solidarity LATERALLY among WORKERS AGAINST MANAGEMENT to stand up for themselves when they are being dicked about. As other people in this very thread have testified in the last 24 hours or so, physical absence makes this much harder! So yeah, sorry I mean epic point-missing is going to get you condescended to, particularly when you lash out with such hostility. I don't make the rules!

it is true jon there are a lot of people who do way better on their own and their jobs would benefit from not being interrupted by meetings - i get that. those people should certainly be allowed to work from home when they want imo and i'm sorry that's not happening in your case! seems extremely dumb.

I guess I didn't follow the larger point about it being workers against management because your post was sprinkled with the EXACT SAME buzzwords that every mid-level manager has thrown at me my entire career as to why, for just one example, we must attend an a mandatory after work bowling party that I won't be paid for because why, "FELLOWSHIP" and "TEAM BUILDING". I concede that I did miss your larger point though, the shitty buzzwords I've have heard for two decades raised red flags.

i have never had a manager use "workplace solidarity" and wanting "to divide you and screw you over" (phrases that are actually in the post, unlike "team building") as a reason for doing something but ymmv

Oh jesus christ. I admitted I missed the larger point, but continue to pile on me in good ol' ilxor style.

but for the record, since you seem so invested, I have actually had a manager use "workpace solidarity" multiple times as a reason for team building events.

i had no idea that “brotherhood” “solidarity” and “fellowship” were buzzwords. do you work in a church jon?

harbl’s post is helping me feel like i’m not going crazy so i appreciate it frankly.

do you ever come back to these fits and admit you were a complete asshole jvc

or is it all just fuel for the "everyone piled on me again" routine

youve been barking at tracer for about a dozen posts now after inventing the original offence, harden the fuck up about being asked to check yrself gullad

well my investment is not paying off so i'm going to close my position now

I mean, I did apologize to Tracer several posts back for going after them personally, that was totally uncalled for. yes. And I acknowledge that I completely missed his larger point. Do I need to issue something more formal too? I fucked up and misinterpreted the post, and probably erred by overexplaining my position. My issue with "piling on" was harbl swinging by to take an unneeded swipe at me too.

ok if it matters it was a response to your very last post which i did not read that way, not an attempted pile-on

I apologize to Tracer, it was definitely uncalled for and I fucked up by not considering the entire point. I'll be the first to admit that I get myself into hot water sometimes by multitasking and skimming posts too quickly, absolutely. Shame on me for that.

sounds like somebody could use a morale-improving kahoot quiz!

lol

I think harbl is allowed to express her opinion

On a message board

would be better if i wasn't, tbh

Quiet you

My own personal experience of being in a workplace union showed me that even in many of the unions, the buzzwords mean absolute dick. So many meetings where organizers and union officials would pay lip-service to ideas of solidarity, only to back away in negotiations.

Which is to say that I actually kind of disagree with both jon and Tracer here— I think that there is something good, mentally and emotionally, about going into a work setting and being around co-workers, particularly if the dynamic isn't toxic. I also am immediately distrustful of unions because of my own experience with them...in fact, before I decided not to adjunct this fall, I'd gone out of the way to *withdraw* my membership from the union.

i have dedicated my life to being anti-work, and i have a feeling i'm going to have to go to work again soon. but i think i'm going to liquidate my entire retirement account first (losing a bunch to taxes and early withdraw) just because i hate to "work" (make money for other people) so much, and not working is so many multiple times better than working that if you apply a net present value to it and give yourself some reasonable assumptions, it probably makes more sense to just say fuck off from the world and enjoy 5 completely non-work years, on your own terms, then it does to live 40 years and work all the time and finally take that big trip to south america when you're 75

why? because of covid. full circle

very curious to me that you feel this way but then i have never been part of a unionized workforce xxp

in fact, using this theory and stretching it past the limits of logic, some say that it is possible to live a better life in 1 hour, 1 amazing hour, than it is to work your entire life at a normal job in the united states

I don't think this undermines tracer's key point that atomised work forces are difficult to organise in terms of unionisation etc. Efforts to prevent unionisation often target making sure workers spend almost as little time as possible if any interacting with each other in person. I think this is partly why efforts to organise deliveroo staff have been more successful than Uber, drivers are inherently cut off by their vehicle from each other. This is not to say there are not huge opportunities to be had from working from home but it does seem to be rarely the case historically that workers ultimately benefit from these kinds of technological improvement, often the reverse, and as such we should be very mindful of the attendant risks. This seems quite reasonable to me.

very curious to me that you feel this way but then i have never been part of a unionized workforce xxp

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, September 15, 2021 10:44 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The union for teachers and university professionals at the institution where I spent four years is *notorious* for paying lip service to adjuncts and NTTs and then throwing them under the bus in actual negotiations to get better deals for tenured folks. Which demographic is more represented when negotiations take place? Tenured folks.

And this state of affairs doesn't exist because adjuncts shuffle in and out— many adjuncts have been at the institution for YEARS, some even a decade-plus. It's shameful.

I know this isn't the state of affairs in many or most unions. But it was my first experience as a union member, and it has made me extremely wary of them.

That was pretty much the conclusion I reached after trying for years to get our union to do anything at all for us. I spent some time trying to organize and get more turnout for union meetings and ended up feeling like I was being manipulated into making empty promises to people, so I eventually gave up. But it certainly doesn't help that the university keeps the adjuncts decentralized and none of us know who the others even are.

My opinion is work is bad and should be destroyed

Meanwhile, in one of the two worst states for new cases ...

Right wing extremist *TN Pastors Network* accuses CRMC of “murdering people” — says they should be able to go into the COVID ward to visit and catch Covid if they want to — insists people be given ivermectin 😵‍💫😷 pic.twitter.com/aa9KCfP1o9

— Cookeville Holler (@CvilleHoller) September 16, 2021

Why the fuck are we wasting hospital space on these dangerous assholes? Bomb threats, and it's only going to get worse. There needs to be a fully-conscious signature on a form saying that they should have gotten the fucking vaccine and they don't believe in horse dewormer as an effective treatment to get a hospital bed.

Let those who won't or can't sign die in a filthy ivermectin tent across the tracks.

i ask everyone to please watch that clip tipsy posted, from 1:30 the end especially

i know a lot of what i post is hyperbole, but the church i went to was like 65% that, all the time, median

i like how they give THE WOMAN 7 seconds at the beginning to give her elevator speech. but then the men speak. at leeeength

it's an inverted reflection of what men and people like me do all the time too. i just use different words

What a shame

life comes at you fast pic.twitter.com/8k1NYg69Qg

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) September 17, 2021

damn, was hoping I'd never see that name again

ok Loomer

lmao she's on telegram complaining about how she can't get ivermectin because doctors are "weird" about prescribing it

give her rat poison imo

in a box that says Ivermectin written in crayon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ02zCMoxCo

Meantime

someone I went to high school with who “did their research” and won’t get the vaccine keeps sharing this pic.twitter.com/PWGa5A7ZxA

— paige (@BonerWizard) September 16, 2021

love how these days 'did my research' generally boils down to 'looked at some dipshits reddit/fb entry'