Coronavirus

Shellhead wrote: One of my local friends got permission to work from home starting this week. He has foolishly set up a makeshift desk in the form of a card table next to his boardgame collection. He will be staring at two computer screens while working, but everything in the background behind the screens will be shelves of boxes of boardgames.

Perfect, he can start a youtube channel.

Our business owners include a PhD from China, so they have been monitoring the news about coronavirus since early January. Today, they finally announced the current company policy. We raise insects that are sold in pet stores as food for birds and reptiles, so our product demand is spiking right now as pet owners stockpile. So we are busier than normal and have no intention of cutting back or shutting down operations. Five of the eight people in our administrative office have compromised immune systems (three old, one pregnant, one with unspecified health issues), so they will be working from home 3 days a week and in the office just 2 days a week. All business travel has been suspended. If an employee goes on a vacation that involves air travel, hotel stays, or a cruise, we are requesting that they self-quarantine for a week after returning home. Though we have several job openings to fill, due to ongoing business growth and not just the current spike, I have been told to become more selective than usual because we are expecting a surge in applicants soon.

My man I think you probably have the oddest job on this site.

My job is accounting plus some HR. I just happen to currently work for an odd company. Most of our hiring is for entry-level people, because it's nearly impossible to find people with hands-on experience in our field.

ubarose wrote: They did arrive with 10 rolls of toilet paper so that's a plus.

The street value on that must be $100!

They can't go home because . . . ?

Job closed to the public for two weeks, all hourly employees to be paid for their scheduled hours during that time. Still will have a skeleton crew on site to handle online orders and whatnot, which I'll probably be part here and there. So I guess that's that for the time being.

ubarose wrote: To sort this all out a F2F meeting was just called for all the managers, because none of them appear to know how to create a conference call.

Holy cow, this! We have four types of remote access in my agency. One uses native apps on an iPad/phone, one uses any web browser, one uses a Citrix connection to a remote server, and one uses laptops that only login when the VPN is fully connected.

Well we don't have enough laptops and the connection is finnicky so tech duds hate them. The Citrix connection is maxed out and in this new age of telework takes three seconds after you type a key for it to appear (too many people). The other two types work GREAT since they use the Microsoft O365 cloud. However a bunch of old men in positions of power demand that they use the legacy application they are familiar with instead of learning how to share documents in OneDrive and OneNote. So everyone who works for these particular great leaders ends up suffering.

ubarose wrote: We now have 4 college students at our house. Al went up today to move out the Spawn and one other girl and ended up moving out all the remaining girls in her suite. With the current situation they may be here for several weeks.

We will be sorting out all this stuff, plus the overflow into the hall, kitchen and living room tomorrow. They did arrive with 10 rolls of toilet paper so that's a plus.

WHOEVER CONTROLS THE TP CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE!!!

it's amazing how the tone around here has changed in two days. much more serious about things (one of the managers watched something about Italy last night I guess). but we're finally being proactive about things. we're an 'essential' industry, so we won't shut down, but they are putting measures in place to spready out our startup meetings, significantly increased cleaning/sanitizing measures throughout the site. We've still got a huge issue with the hourly folks when they clock in/clock out, as it's a freaking stampede to the clocks and then to the buses. I suggested that the supervisors clock them in later on the computer (which would be difficult with crews of 30-60 people).

Now if I can get the managers daily meeting (where 20+ people congregate) adjusted so that 75% of the people participate via Zoom instead of face to face, that would be an accomplishment. Still getting the 'trump is doing great' comments, but baby steps I guess.

I would probably end up in jail if someone told me "Trump is doing great." People are dying and more will die because of his ineptitude. I'm not being hyperbolic. His choices led directly to more deaths. He is horrible at large, but this is the most horrible thing he has done.

You can tell your employer that you heard from a friend at a major biotech company that they should move to online meetings as fast as possible, and take immediate steps to enable social distancing among staff. It's critical.

My employer is adding $50/mon to everyone's paycheck to offset Internet/broadband costs; allocated $250 per staffer for home office purchases, no approvals required; ordered all non-essential staff to work remotely; staff that do have to come in are staggered to minimize contacts at ingress/egress; and implemented an hourly sanitization schedule in the facilities that are still in operation.

This is a real crisis.

Knowing what is happening is western europe, and simultaneously knowing how shitty and ragged the U.S. public health system is, I am not optimistic these days. I actually darkly laugh when I read about the vigilence and comprehensiveness of the South Korean response. Our country is not capable of doing that anymore given its denuded capacity, and that is not about the current president specifically regardless of the quality of his response.