Sure, Dave might seem like he's avidly listening to this morning's meeting, but he's actually doing a yoga routine Transcription service Otter.ai has unleashed another remote-working survey. Today's report revealed that not only are workers not bothering to dispense with nightwear, a minority are content to virtually meet with just their undercrackers on. Following Microsoft's announcement of tentative office reopenings, the YouGov/Otter. …
Well, yeah. That's where most drownings occur. Go where the market is, man!
For a few years I was able to commute to school and both of my jobs by train and a bit of walking, aside from driving a few miles to and from the train station; or if I didn't feel like driving to the train station, by bus and train and a bit of walking.
Those were good years. I got a lot of reading done. And even in Boston (which has nasty winter weather) I enjoyed having some outdoor time every day.
But since 1998 I've worked from home, which is even better.
Does it actually matter if someone is still in bed or doing breakfast in their undercrackers? No. (Before people start vomiting at he thought of fat 50 odd males doing meeting in their skiddies, I don't, I might not be smart but I m showered and properly dressed. But I will also be going back to work after dinner to be restarting at 5 tomorrow morning. I can do such things from home but never could from an office. You want it done then don't put stupid office based obstacles in my way
You'll never catch me working at home in just my undercrackers. No, siree. I'd be wearing at least a dressing gown.
Most likely fully dressed though since I've got a leather chair that's cold in the morning and an office window that faces onto the street...
Coat icon because it looks almost big enough to be a dressing gown.
I'm just confused why people are using the video option for teleconferencing. Thankfully my employer insists we don't use it* which means a) it doesn't matter if I don't look my best b) it's not immediately apparent if I've been distracted by an email, book, postie arriving with something more interesting and c) no one sees my facial expression when someone senior says something mind numbingly stupid.
Plus I don't really need to see my co-workers in blocky pixel vision to understand what they're saying.
*I'm sure it's nothing to do with the capacity of the VPN...
Since there is little cost to sending another invite to the Zoom meeting, I find myself roped into many things that wouldn't justify taking admin people out of their offices in the past. This does mean many more people can hear the important bits of new plans and ideas than would have been possible before. But the best thing, is that I can be officially present for the 5% of the time I'm really needed, and snoring loudly for the rest. I love it.
Just a note: herbal teas don't actually keep you awake. But they ARE yummy.
Since I discovered the joys of Zoom background videos that still work when the camera is covered, I don't even have to attend the meetings where I am no more than a spectator.
Of course, it means I occasionally have to shoot a new background video in case anyone asks me if that's the only shirt I own!
I am a developer and I have been commuting to the office in the UK for some time now since the pandemic started. We are appropriately socially distanced.
I am seeing mentioning of showering daily, which is part of my routine, but seemingly not part of others. I always wear deodorant, which I thought was normal, however I am now sandwiched between the support team, and my development team, and during hot days the smell of sweat can get unbearable. On colder days, I can still smell a heavy hint of bodily odour.
How can I encourage our technical people to take more care about their personal hygiene? I understand it is perfectly natural to sweat, but I need help to encourage others to do something about it. It doesn't help that our boss makes us do stretching sessions twice a day like the Japanese do. I don't want to say to members of my team "you have terrible BO", but I also don't want to sit and smell it for 9 hours a day.
I honestly thought you were talking about beer for a good several seconds. I don't think I've ever seen anyone refer to COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 (which is what you'd really be "getting" in this case, or more accurately droplets containing SARS-CoV-2 virons) as "Corona" before. Occasionally "coronavirus", I guess, due to the giant spider principle. Maybe it's a regional thing?
So at least 35 percent lied, which doesn't seem very pious to me. And what is wrong with having a little alcohol to help you get through another mind-numbingly boring zoom call? That sounds like a good approach to maintaining your mental health in 2021.
That's how I work. I wait til my other half is off to work at 7:05 and I have a very large rum smoothie (1 part rum, 1 part ice, and 1 part random fruit, ) started before 8am. If the blender wakes everyone else up....too bad. My camera still has the factory sticker over it, and I wear whatever I want depending on the temperature.
Also, I've been working from home for more than 10 years, so nothing new for me.
I find that I need to dress exactly as I would if I was physically attending the lecture/tutorial/meeting, otherwise I don't feel right. This includes wearing proper shoes, for some reason - I did try doing a session in slippers, but felt "wrong" all the way through!
I've ditched anything else, especially "social" things, that involve remote meetings - I don't know whether it's my ASD, or my hearing, or both, but there is no pleasure in them. I've stepped down temporarily from my role as chairman of a group because I cannot get the rest of the group to run a simplex system - i.e. one person controls, and others indicate they want to come in and wait for clearance. I end up completely stressed and very bad tempered, so there is no point me being involved.
After a year of WFH, my superiors are starting to talk about "returning to the office".
My feeling is that I am at least as productive at home (and I haven't heard otherwise), and perhaps more, due to the open-plan environment at the office. I'm happy to return, but not just for the sake of returning. I'm an EE, so there are things (debugging PCB assemblies, reworking, testing) that are better done in the lab at work. I'm fine with coming in to do those things and to help others.
But, for design work, which is entirely computer-based, meetings, writing documentation, coding...let me do it at home, where it's quiet and I can think. And, if there's no good reason for me to come into the office (1.5 hrs on public transportation each way), please let me continue to WFH. I promise I'll wear trousers (never have been one for hanging around the house in a bathrobe -- jeans and t-shirts are more my style)
> they introduced the open plan office because they thought it was a good idea
Actually because it is way cheaper.
Not only can you cram more people into the same volume, but you can also keep an eye on them much easier than if they all had individual offices, with walls and doors. No need for wardens making rounds checking if everyone was where he was supposed to, and doing what he was supposed to do, one single person can simultaneous keep watch on dozens of wage slaves.
Agreed. It's all about how many people you can cram into a given area, and how you can minimize costs.
They may talk about synergy, cross-fertilization and collaboration, but in reality, it's all about driving down the costs of doing business. Of course, you and I are supposed to buckle down and work through the distractions...
Ah, well. Retirement beckons...
One could install magnetic rails on the cealing and then have some robots roam around and give random electric chocks to the cubicle dwellers?
Initially I thought that a good olde "Blood and Thunder"-style Marx Generator would be best, but, I think a robot that silently sneaks a very thin and pretty much invisible wire down from a darkened ceiling, cloaked by the stark glare of many, many LED spots, and then goes "Zapp", will induce more fear.
> cubicle dwellers
That's luxury from the past! Cubicles are the evolutionary link between individual offices and "open space" offices. They still waste a lot of space where you could cram a couple more desks and as many wage slaves (and then there is the cost of the actual cubicle walls). Remove those walls, push the desks closer together, and you get a market place open space office...
Together with our new offices we now have an app, where one has to book a desk in advance, and all of our shit is to be kept in a box with wheels on it, for the Glorious occasion when we need a desk.
Nobody amongst the "Bright Young Things" that are my colleagues seems to understand the significance of the sparkling and new offices being designed for about 350 people and there currently being about 500 in the organisation.
Eventually, of course they will figure it out. In the meantime, it's work from home "forever".
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