RC Returned to work this week

[The WDW 3]

I’ve been working this entire time, but basically have been with working from home since the shut down. Yesterday was my first official day back in the office. I almost felt a little out of place yesterday, but totally adjusted today.

Is anyone else still working remotely or not working at all?

 

[fla4fun]

Still working remotely. My office is tentatively scheduled to reopen 6/29, at 25% occupancy, so with a department of seven, only one can come in at a time. Not sure how efficient that will be, but at least it will be some different walls to look at . . .

 

[PamNC]

Still remote thank goodness. I've been working remotely since 3/17 and from what they are telling us I may not have to go back to the office until 2021. I sure hope that's true.

 

[Lindsey17]

Still working remotely with no real word or guidance when we may be going back to the office. My kids daycare is re-opening Monday, but with limited hours so I'm hoping working from home continues because it just makes things easier. Although I'm worried about my kids going back I know they are in desperate need of kid interactions other than each other.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

I'm still working remotely. We have employees that support the site and they go in, but we were advised that if we're teleworking to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

 

[dina444444]

I’m partially back at work in the office. Couple of hours a day a few days a week. Working from home the rest of the time.

 

[disneysteve]

I never stopped working onsite. I'm an urgent care physician. Two of our centers did close, but not the one that I'm at, and they have since reopened. There has been some telemedicine happening that some of my colleagues have been involved with but I haven't been (except for one day back in May).

 

[Lumpy1106]

My office converted to "open plan" not too long ago. When the call came in to shut down due to COVID they hustled us out in a hurry. Turns out open-plan offices like ours are a big, known spreader in South Korea in particular. FWIW - they also cut our hours and pay 10% and our PTO 20%. They have now taped off every other desk and told us we can come in, but are still encouraging us to work from home. Pay and PTO is still cut. You don't have to ask me twice - staying home for sure. There is no way the every-other-desk setup is any safer than if we were all there, and I have a hard time justifying the commute cost is we are not getting full pay.

 

[Brett Wyman]

We are hearing not until 2021 for us. First work from home day was 3-15

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

My office converted to "open plan" not too long ago. When the call came in to shut down due to COVID they hustled us out in a hurry. Turns out open-plan offices like ours are a big, known spreader in South Korea in particular. FWIW - they also cut our hours and pay 10% and our PTO 20%. They have now taped off every other desk and told us we can come in, but are still encouraging us to work from home. Pay and PTO is still cut. You don't have to ask me twice - staying home for sure. There is no way the every-other-desk setup is any safer than if we were all there, and I have a hard time justifying the commute cost is we are not getting full pay.

Our company has been in the process of converting our work stations to low walls and smaller cubicles. My cubicle is a 6x6, with a sit-stand desk. We're now being told that if we do go in to the office and stand while working we have to wear masks if the adjacent coworker is also in his/her cubicle, plus we have to wear masks every time we leave our cubicles. We are also looking at putting in taller panels between cubicles, having employees work alternate days, or just telework if they can (like me). Whole areas that we were setting up for increased employee population had to be redone because of the new standards due to Covid 19. I work in Facilities at a big company, so a lot of my time has been taken up with Covid-19 sanitation to keep our sites as safe as can be for our employees.

Doors are left propped open so people don't have to touch them when going in/out office bays, restrooms, etc., and we're being asked to install door toe pulls for the restrooms at one of our sites, kind of like the one below. Our smaller conference rooms are now closed except for private phone calls (one person) and larger conference rooms now have 6-ft spaces between seats. One of our employees at one of our smaller sites said that there wasn't a 6-ft separation across the table, so that particular room can hold 3 employees at the most.

Almost all of our meetings are now virtual. Due to the nature of our business we don't use zoom. We do have Skype, but almost everyone doesn't have a webcam, so no video calls. The side-effect to this (kind of), is that we hear different sounds on our calls. Most of my meetings are accompanied by my daughter's cockatiel singing or making his chirping sounds in the background. One time he was so noisy everyone on the call heard this singing and then a loud squawk when I grabbed him and threw him out of my room. Another time, we were in a meeting and a manager loudly and firmly said, "NO!" I asked him what he was objecting to, and he said that he was talking to his cat. We all laughed. It's a new Corporate world we're in.

 

[Lindsey17]

View attachment 502100

Would love it if public restrooms were required to install these on their doors. I can't stand that after I wash my hands I then have to touch a dirty door handle. Or more need to be designed like Costco where there is no door.

 

[bigOlkid]

Still home. May still be for a while. As soon as my state (Alabama) opened up, everyone went to the beach and hugged, so now we're spiking. I'm in I.T. though so remoting is fine.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Our company has been in the process of converting our work stations to low walls and smaller cubicles. My cubicle is a 6x6, with a sit-stand desk. We're now being told that if we do go in to the office and stand while working we have to wear masks if the adjacent coworker is also in his/her cubicle, plus we have to wear masks every time we leave our cubicles. We are also looking at putting in taller panels between cubicles, having employees work alternate days, or just telework if they can (like me). Whole areas that we were setting up for increased employee population had to be redone because of the new standards due to Covid 19. I work in Facilities at a big company, so a lot of my time has been taken up with Covid-19 sanitation to keep our sites as safe as can be for our employees.

Doors are left propped open so people don't have to touch them when going in/out office bays, restrooms, etc., and we're being asked to install door toe pulls for the restrooms at one of our sites, kind of like the one below. Our smaller conference rooms are now closed except for private phone calls (one person) and larger conference rooms now have 6-ft spaces between seats. One of our employees at one of our smaller sites said that there wasn't a 6-ft separation across the table, so that particular room can hold 3 employees at the most.

Almost all of our meetings are now virtual. Due to the nature of our business we don't use zoom. We do have Skype, but almost everyone doesn't have a webcam, so no video calls. The side-effect to this (kind of), is that we hear different sounds on our calls. Most of my meetings are accompanied by my daughter's cockatiel singing or making his chirping sounds in the background. One time he was so noisy everyone on the call heard this singing and then a loud squawk when I grabbed him and threw him out of my room. Another time, we were in a meeting and a manager loudly and firmly said, "NO!" I asked him what he was objecting to, and he said that he was talking to his cat. We all laughed. It's a new Corporate world we're in.

Open Floor Plan is not cubicles - it is a long row table, with wobbly bolt-on separators and sometimes you get a return table. The entire workspace is 5 feet wide - it is non-stop distracting all day long, and I have to move my keyboard to lay down a set of plans. It is "meant to foster collaboration", but everyone wears headphones to block out the noise so there goes that. Part of that noise comes from white space speakers that are incorporated in the design to mitigate the noise from everything else - kinda like turning up the TV to drown out the stereo IMHO. LSS - if you have any say, DON'T DO IT!! If we had the cubicles we gave up when they converted the office we'd all be back working in the office now - no exaggeration. They were sterile and sortof depressing like any other cubicle, but they also had 6ft partitions and plenty of desk space that you didn't share. God I miss the cube farm.

There were two positives that came from the open office reno -

1. Everyone got dual monitors on swing arms and laptops. when the call came down to shut the office they encouraged us to take monitors - so I did. My home office is set up with dual monitors on swing arms, plus I incorporated the monitor from my laptop so I now work regularly with 3 monitors. Yes, it is awesome. It also came with a headset that you can use for Zoom calls, but I left that in the office. I took my Herman Miller chair too - no way I could work a full day without it.
2. Teams - If your company is not using Teams, they should be. Zoom sortof does the same thing but not as well. We can chat, set up private groups, share files, you name it, and it does it seamlessly. You don't need a VPN. If you want to share a screen with someone you are chatting with, no problem. It does group conferences better than Zoom or Skype, but I will say it does not throw everyone up on the same screen at the same time. I count that as a plus in almost all cases. There are also a ton of other apps you can integrate but I'll be honest, I have not found a use for any of them. Someone must have though or they would not be a thing.

And yeah, skillful use of the "mute" button is a necessity in this day-and-age.

 

[KittyKitty]

"NO!" I asked him what he was objecting to, and he said that he was talking to his cat. We all laughed. It's a new Corporate world we're in.

This is way funny! Thanks for sharing.

 

[disneysteve]

almost everyone doesn't have a webcam, so no video calls

Really? Who doesn't have a smart phone or laptop or desktop computer or tablet these days. What sort of device are they working on? Every single device we own that has internet access has a camera. Just off the top of my head: 3 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 MacBooks, 1 PC laptop, 1 iMac desktop, 1 Amazon Fire tablet. They all have cameras.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Really? Who doesn't have a smart phone or laptop or desktop computer or tablet these days. What sort of device are they working on? Every single device we own that has internet access has a camera. Just off the top of my head: 3 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 MacBooks, 1 PC laptop, 1 iMac desktop, 1 Amazon Fire tablet. They all have cameras.

We have a desktop that does not - just didn't think we'd need it. You used to be able to buy a cheap camera and microphone to add on to your computer, but now that they all come with it, those are fancier than you need and far more expensive than they should be. We ended up buying my daughter a laptop so she could do her schoolwork - just made a lot more sense than trying to retrofit the desktop. We swore we wouldn't buy either of our HS kids computers until they went off to college but now the both have one. Thanks a bunch Covid.

 

[The WDW 3]

Really? Who doesn't have a smart phone or laptop or desktop computer or tablet these days. What sort of device are they working on? Every single device we own that has internet access has a camera. Just off the top of my head: 3 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 MacBooks, 1 PC laptop, 1 iMac desktop, 1 Amazon Fire tablet. They all have cameras.

We’ve got a big shot here.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

Really? Who doesn't have a smart phone or laptop or desktop computer or tablet these days. What sort of device are they working on? Every single device we own that has internet access has a camera. Just off the top of my head: 3 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 MacBooks, 1 PC laptop, 1 iMac desktop, 1 Amazon Fire tablet. They all have cameras.

All of our computers and phones are encrypted, and the norm has been no webcams. We can’t plug our phones in the computers and download pics. To have virtual meetings with people outside the company we use webex to share our screens. I don’t think our phones are set up to meet face to face.

 

[disneysteve]

All of our computers and phones are encrypted, and the norm has been no webcams. We can’t plug our phones in the computers and download pics. To have virtual meetings with people outside the company we use webex to share our screens. I don’t think our phones are set up to meet face to face.

Interesting. I’m guessing you work in some sort of high security setting. I have a cousin who works for the government and for years they weren’t allowed to have phones with cameras, which became increasingly difficult to comply with. I think they finally dropped that rule.

 

[KittyKitty]

We have a desktop that does not - just didn't think we'd need it.

I bought new desk top computer without even thinking about a camera. Had to borrow a Chrome book from the school to tutor students this last 3 months.