Work and Covid

[Jim]

How has your work/job changed since the start of the Covid Pandemic? For me I am 100% work from home and going forward this will be the norm with my company. Collaboration tools and moving our applications out to the cloud allowed this kind of business continuity to happen. I am in the IT security business for a Homeowners Insurance company.

What has work been for you?

 

[BigTerp]

I work as an Orthopaedic Technologist (casting, splinting, bracing, etc.) in an Orthopaedic office. I've been to work everyday through all of this. April and May were rough with surgery centers and elective surgeries shut down. Thought we were going to start laying off. But things picked back up and we're pretty much back to normal now. I've been exposed several times that I know of, and have to physically put my hands on numerous patients everyday. It's always in the back of my mind that I might bring something home to my wife and kids or worse, my at risk parents and in-laws. But we have all the precautions in the office setup, and so far everyone has been healthy. But ***** hitting the fan around here again. Local hospital has twice as many currently admitted as there has been at any point in time since March. Going to be a rough winter!!!

 

[RaisedByWolves]

I’m over the whole thing personally.

We’re considered essential so we have been coming to work throughout this whole thing.

We have 1350 people spread out over two shifts, most of them inner city people and Haitian immigrants and practically no one is getting sick.

Everyone using the same turnstiles, same filthy bathrooms, same cafeteria and we have had less than 1/4 of the average nationwide transmission rate.

Im really at a loss.

 

[JL8Jeff]

I stopped working a little over 5 years ago but when I was working, I would need to work from home once in a while. I did programming, operations and support. I always hated working from home, you get distracted and it takes more time to do the same amount of work. In the office I would get interrupted by people looking for help or asking general questions all the time and that wasn't as bad when working from home. But the big thing was the computer did not behave the same. We had to connect to our desktop PC and a lot of the keystroke shortcuts didn't work the same so it took more time to do the work. I still think working in the office is much more productive especially when you need to get people together and show specific details on things. But I keep hearing from people I play golf with that their companies will probably go to a hybrid home/office solution going forward to reduce the office space costs. I can't imagine how much efficiency has been lost this year with so many people "working" from home. If I was still working, I would prefer to work from the office. My brother does IT operations/support and he spends way more time working from home then he did in the office and he's jumping between 2 computers at home trying to keep up with the work.

 

[LDUBS]

I'm retired 8 years now. Technology allowed my part of our business to move to home offices back in the some years ago. In my region, I was the only one who was required to come to the office. I think those times I did work from home were probably more productive. I put in longer hours if for no other reason than I avoided over 2 hours of round trip commute every day. To be fair, my distractions at home were few as the kids were all grown and out on their own by that time.

I will say that when we first implemented the home office concept the human interaction issue was a pretty big deal. A lot of folks had a hard time adjusting to working outside of a structured office environment. To be fair, back then working from home was a new concept and no one was used to the idea. I think the younger generation is much more in tune with the concept. And, whether we consider it good or bad, I think one outcome of this pandemic will be more people working from home.

As for the covid, my county's case rate is also rising and the percent positives has started to increase from our low of about 1.9% to a current 3.6%. That is still a lot better than what we had before but I hate to see the trend rising. Then again, I don' t know how anyone thought we could start to open up and not expect to see an increase in cases. To me more important than case counts is trends in hospitalizations and fatalities. Covid patients in hospitals have increased but the trend is still relatively flat. And while no one wants any loss of life, my county of over 1 million has had 3 death in November (2 from long term care facilities) which is down from previous periods. Just seems we, meaning my county, needs to figure out a better way to protect the more vulnerable while we open things back up rather than apply drastic measure across the board.

 

[Rbertalotto]

One of my last jobs before retiring was to renegotiate commercial leases for chain stores. I did a whole year of work off a motorcycle. Traveling all over America. I had a pelican case mounted to the back of the bike for my laptop and a solar panel to keep an auxilary battery charged to run it uninterupted. Using three hotspots (T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T) I always had internet connectivity. Id ride for an hour, stop, send a couple emails or phone calls, attend a ZOOM here and there. No one ever knew I wasn't in my office. Was a great year!

 

[Crazyboat]

I work on a passenger/commuter railroad, we normally run 330,000 passengers a day. (PC /pre Covid)

We shrunk to a low of 10K per day and have now rebounded to about 70K+- per day (AC / After Covid)

We've not laid anyone off yet but plan on having our workforce reduced by 1/3 by early to mid 2021 through attrition, buy outs, upcoming retirements and a hiring freeze etc.

If we do lay off it will be management first (they make the most) and we are somewhat top heavy, go think, a gov. RR top heavy.

The worst part is, we serve NYC and quite frankly those white collar riders are just not coming back. These companies have figured out how to do work from home, so right now it's blue collar and minimum wage earners keeping things moving.

 

[BigTerp]

3 positives at my work in the last week, and 1 out so far this week awaiting test results. Our administrators father is dead, mother is in ICU on a vent and husband is at home with bilateral pneumonia......all from Covid. Vaccines started rolling out this week. As a health care worker I should be up for one sooner than later, but not sure when that'll be. But when the time comes my sleeve will be rolled up ready to go.

 

[maintenanceguy]

My full time job is overseeing construction, maintenance, and custodial services for a large organization. My biggest responsibility right now is a $100M + 4 year construction project on one of our sites. That project is still going 100% so I'm still busy. My office staff, including my own secretary is working on site 2 days per week and remote 3 days. That's been really tough. With this project, I need her every day and our office is crazy.

I'm struggling and in over my head right now.

 

[Crazyboat]

We have roughly 1000 people in our company, so far I know of one that died due to covid, many have been out for quarantine because they came in contact with another that tested positive, but the 1 death is all I can currently report.

 

[bcbouy]

i went on long term disability while i waited for knee replacement before covid hit.i'm not going back.it's time for me to retire and enjoy life while i'm still young.my wife was working from home until her work told her to come back,she told them to pack sand and retired as well.i have a decent pension and our oldest son told us he will set us up for the future so it's a done deal.

 

[LDUBS]

i went on long term disability while i waited for knee replacement before covid hit.i'm not going back.it's time for me to retire and enjoy life while i'm still young.my wife was working from home until her work told her to come back,she told them to pack sand and retired as well.i have a decent pension and our oldest son told us he will set us up for the future so it's a done deal.

Terrific. All I can say about retirement is that it is better than I ever thought it would be. I'm almost 9 years retired and still amazed at how little time I have to do things. Enjoy.

 

[Butthead]

100% telework since March. We’ve seen improved productivity overall. I personally love it. I would be willing to go into the office a couple of times a month if required, but with Zoom and Skype, it’s not necessary to be there to fully get the work done. I miss having lunch with colleagues, but not the interruptions of working in the office. People are much more likely now to try to figure out their problems themselves instead of just coming over to me for answers.

 

[Traceyl]

I'm working for five years now web developer. This year, during the pandemic, I was so productive. I mean, I got the courage to develop my own business. So happy with my achievement. I have three employees and still growing and growing! That's what it was an urgent need to renting a space. We chose osdoro in Singapore. WHY? Maybe you will ask me because my "baby start-up needs the best office" and of course guys for attracting international clients! It's a hint that I got from my mentor! Think big! Act accordingly!

 

[user 26281]

Retired so can’t say much about work, but state parks are full, more boats on the water, we just need to get people to work, so retirees can get back to normal.

Just kidding, hope everyone safely makes it through this pandemic and it gets back to normal soon.