Working From Home

I like to go out for lunch to break up the monotony of the day, work a little while out, then go home and finish the day.

today, I forgot somehow that I had a meeting at 1:30, and I only arrived at the McDonald's at 1:15. oh well, I'll attend it from here. this McDonald's is quiet, and it's a short meeting.

no sooner than the meeting starts, a very noisy pair sit very close to me and the barely audible muzak suddenly turns into a very loud Usher/Lil Jon "Yea"

lol....lesson learned.

The place I work for part-time is interested in increasing my hours starting in June; meanwhile, the place I work for "full-time" as a contractor is giving me additional responsibilities and there's talk of hiring me as a full-time employee. I really hope the part-time spot doesn't want me to go full-time as well; juggling both would probably start to feel like real work.

lol, it was a valiant effort Neando.

Going out for a walk at lunchtime and forgetting about that 1pm meeting is something I do a bit too often. Likely to happen a bit more often in the coming weeks with the spring weather.

I walk down to a park a few blocks from my house almost every day, usually stopping to buy a bottle of Guinness on the way.. rain or shine
Nice to get out of my place, even if just for a half-hour

I was inspired by my trip to Stockholm last summer, seeing people laying in the grass sunbathing: "what are theses people doing? don't they have work or school? Wait, I'm gonna start doing that too."

another monthly Face to Face day where everybody is meant to come into the office. but...

one is crying off with 'diarrhea since early morning' (thanks for that)

and the one who instigated these face 2 face days has just posted 'would love to have been there, but have to wait in for delivery'

elsewhere people are commuting in having moved away during lockdown, hours of train travel and literally £100 in one case.

the other two senior managers are a) travelling in after 11 after not feeling well this morning and b) on holiday today

but nigel HAS made it in from Penge. and a colleague who nobody has seen since in person since march 2020 is here.

after last time i booked a desk on the quiet side, away from the desk-eaters and the shouty people. nice view of white city, if such a thing is possible.

Going out for a walk at lunchtime and forgetting about that 1pm meeting is something I do a bit too often.

Having the dev scrum dailies right in the middle of my lunch break (it's not anyone else's 1:30pm) is a new intrusion into routine. Walking around the rec ground, earbuds in, trying to follow a screen-share on a phone.

Going in tomorrow: the Xmas gifts have arrived! Corporate-branded merch that the kids like. Ironically perhaps. In three years we've gone from: 200 'credits' to spend in our online store, shipped to yr house in Dec, to: choose two things only, it'll be three months before you get them, collect from the office.

The best thing about working from home (which I’ve done, for, gasp, 11 YEARS now) is the lunchtime walks in relatively mellow surroundings. Just essential for clearing my head. Every now and then the work day is too crazy or the weather sucks, but without the ability to do this I might lose it

Koogs, your description of your office is straight out of Barbara Pym's Late Quartet.

another in-office day on... Tuesday, the day after Easter holiday weekend. i can guarantee people haven't seen this in their calendars because nobody looks beyond the current week, especially if the week before is short.

(and last Monday all the mixer taps were out of order so no hot drinks (short of popping to starbucks))

Dear Andrew ****,

You have 1 assignment that is 1454 days overdue.

You must complete the following assignment(s):

- Executive Series: Securely Working From Home with Quiz

Lol

I am working from home tomorrow but cannot because kids are on Easter holiday and mother-in-law in staying and I will not be able to focus for one minute. So I need to go to a cafe or a pub, however though I live in a city (Cambridge) there are no cafes or pubs within half an hour's walk.

No point here, just thought I would have a whinge.

Coffe grounds and hard boiled eggs

anybody else used speech to text in meetings to transcribe boring, unnecessary meetings when your mind inevitably drifts

Someone I know online just got a job at some startup offering this service

(Xp) we use Teams and I think it transcribes all meetings that are recorded. The problem is asking everyone at the beginning is they consent to be recorded.

If someone is giving me some long list of tasks/grievances etc in a meeting I just pull the old ‘please send that to me in an email so I I have a record of it’ trick. Makes them very less likely to do it again.

Company just decided to go from 2 days in the office to three. I am not happy.

we had another in-office day and someone got upset because someone else had booked the one standing desk

and i inadvertantly sat in someone else's desk (they are all in the booking system but some obviously have residents like 50% of the time, residents who don't book their own desks)

nobody really benefited from being there afaict

i feel like it doesn't work unless there's a regular sked. i like 1 day a week, everybody in the department shows up boom you can talk to whoever you want to or need to and then that's it. you can develop understandings and habits etc

boss sends me and another guy a video of a meeting we missed as we were on PTO and tells us to watch it asap.

he turned transcript on. I ain't watching shit lol.

Also posting for amusement for LOLs at clueless leaders. We changed our telephony technology two years ago to move to a cloud based application. It has been a complete disaster, as it's been very poor and overcomplicated a simple process, but then leaders were stunned yesterday to find out that employees found a loophole to avoid work that nobody knew about.

Under all of our previous telephony applications, agents had two lines - a personal and a business line. If you were on a personal call and a work call came in, and you refused to answer it, you'd still be next in line and keep getting calls until you did. And it was easy for managers to tell you were refusing to take calls.

Our new application has one line. Yes, there is a personal call option on it, but it's from the same line - it just turns off the call recording technology and makes the agent's direct phone number visible on caller ID.

Leaders mistakenly thought these were actually two separate lines. Agents otoh discovered that if they were on a personal call, it would prevent a work call from coming in, AND would put them at the back of the line for call routing.

You can figure out the rest. Lol...