How can I not offer part of my dinner to the new roommates when they look at me with puppy dog eyes and tell me how good it smells?
1 Like
Make a deal that they need to provide an adequate meal sometime when you donāt feel like cooking?
2 Likes
First, you say no. Right off the bat. No.
Then, you soften a bit and say that you are willing to share your culinary knowledge with them in exchange for labour. Itās the only way theyāll learn.
If they just want a quick meal, thereās peanut butter in the cupboard. If they want a GOOD meal, theyāll have to pay for it, or cook it themselves.
Iām a dumbass. I canāt believe it took me this long to realize that my work laptop has access to the internet as long as itās connected through the VPN.
There is a little mental hoop that Iāve been working through. Start the laptop, connect the VPN, then start the virtual working environments for the different networks I have. I never actually do anything on the ālaptopā because it isnāt connected to any network. I see it now as a platform to get to the other environments and am never actually āinā it.
#duh
Try new Ook, the gift that keeps on Ooking!
Would the lock-downs be an agoraphobicās dream or nightmare?
If said agoraphobic have a big enough yard, then no. But if said person have a tiny closet of a flatlet, then yes.
Also depends on other things.
Agoraphobics are the ones who donāt like wide open spaces. Claustrophobics are the ones who donāt like closed in spaces.
Yep, wide open spaces and crowds.
On the one hand, theyāre not allowed into the places theyāre afraid of, but on the other hand they now have a reason for their fear.
I can say I definitely donāt like places with a lot of people and crowds, or places where itās hard to keep track of the exits, and I havenāt minded much of any of this at all. I havenāt left my house in 3 months.
2 Likes
Well, Adam Conover, double-ply toilet paper may be a waste of money, but if youāve ever been in a restroom where the holder is putting so much tension on a roll of single-ply paper that you have to manually turn it with one hand to avoid having the paper tear into single sheets or smaller scraps, youāll pay the extra amount for double-ply.
4 Likes
This could go in a āuseful info for your careerā thread about an extreme case of documenting everything and getting it in writing revealed an attempt to frame the OP (original poster):
I had to read through it and the comments to grasp what happened.
- One of the people that will cover for OP while heās gone is let go a week before he will be out. OP talks to New Boss (NB) to make him aware that now thereās only one person covering for his time off.
- NB starts denying the agreed-upon time-off request is still in effect and calls it āyour vacation or whatever unimportant issue it isā.
- IT Tech, who is the remaining person covering for OP while heās gone, cryptically provides a warning that the Exchange server and its backups might have a problem. OP decides he better make external backups of his documentation.
- Later, IT Tech shows HR the emails where he was directed to do maintenance on both.
- OP makes sure HR knows what the situation is after hearing IT Techās warning, and right after that, the Exchange server and backups get corrupted āto the point of losing all the emails for the year.ā
- Right when OP gets back, NB brings him in front of two HR reps to say heās being let go for taking āan entire week of unapproved vacation time off so you could take some trip to who knows whereā.
- In the same meeting, NB says āwe had a major system failure that resulted in a loss of all the companyās emails for several months, which is causing headaches for shipping and accountingā.
- NB confirms the original email about the new owners honoring existing time off requests existed, but says that nothing afterward about OPās time off exists to prove what OP is saying.
- OP hands email printouts and a copy of the time off request approved by the original HR department to the reps from the current HR department.
- New Boss becomes Ex-Boss.
For point 1, did New Boss deliberately get rid of that person just to mess with OP or was it coincidence?
Points 5 and 7 shows that instead of data corruption only targeting the emails for the time off, the entire company lost their messages. It was widespread data corruption, but still selective, because the damage just happened to stop short of getting rid of the original email about the new owners honoring existing time off requests (point 8).
Point 4 implies the IT Tech was verbally directed to perform the data corruption, which is standard procedure when planning a crime.
Points 2 and 6 show NB lied to HR about why OP was being let go, saying he went AWOL to take a trivial vacation. By specifically referring to it as āunapproved vacation timeā instead of saying ādid not show up for work last weekā, it proves NB was part of the discussion about the time off despite his denials that no discussions took place.
Iām a bit incredulous as to the lengths New Boss went to in order to get rid of this person, but thereās too many court cases that lay out the planning and deception that goes into crimes for me to say the story is fake.
Pro tip:
The person did something really smart in his documentation process. By sending emails to his personal account that only contained information about the time off request, he make an electronic backup to supplement the paper backup and did not violate any policies about transmitting confidential information.
It also provided secondary logs that could have been used if the Exchange server logs for sending and receiving messages were part of the corruption instead of just the emails themselves. They probably were. If necessary, he could have contacted the company that hosts his personal email and had them submit the portions of their server logs showing the inbound emails. And the headers of the email messages could be examined to show where they originated.
1 Like
Earlier, like mid April, we (all 4 of us in the company) decided that we would continue WFH until the end of May, then revisit the issue, depending on the COVID situation. On Friday, while I was in the office waiting for FedEx*, my boss stopped by the office to do a few things that canāt be done remotely, and we chatted for a bit. Since work related things have been going so smoothly (aside from the occasional shipping SNAFUs, like (*) below, which can happen even when weāre not WFH), he said he is leaning toward having us continue to WFH indefinitely. That will probably be first up for discussion tomorrow on our daily morning conference call.
*This was the second time $Customer sent a package via FedEx FIRST Overnight service (before 8:30am), after being asked not toā¦ we specifically specified Priority Overnight, which arrives between 8:30 and 11:00, typically between 9:00 and 10:30. The first delivery attempt was at 7:00, an hour before the buildingās maglocks turn off; the second was at 8:09, approximately 5 minutes before I arrived at 8:14. ARGH!! Door tag said redelivery would be attempted MONDAY early AM unless the package is picked up between 7:00 & 8:00pm at the distribution center 20 miles away. After two calls to FedEx (the first customer service drone was an ass), they sent a message to the driver to redeliver same day, and he arrived about 3:00. Fair enough, he had to finish the rest of his regular route before returning to me, totally understand, not his fault the sender setup the wrong service. But that was why I didnāt get out of the office until after 6:00pm. Arg.
Sooo, I guess I needed to vent. 
1 Like
Weāre working off the assumption that coworkers with kids wonāt have reliable childcare throughout he summer. Maybe in the fall when/if schools reopen. My boss has said they donāt feel itās fair to make the childless half of the team come in, so Iām assuming weāre in āas neededā for a few more months barring something surprising.
Iām also wondering if weāre going to have āstressā if anyone suggests trying to get everyone in some of the meeting rooms we have. We have several that are long thin rooms and we complained about them being tight for a large group before the lockdown: Iām assuming itāll be even weirder if thereās social distancing expected.
2 Likes
After our little company was acquired by The Big Corporation, many of the employees began WFH - the big corp encourages it.
That leaves about a third, maybe less than that coming in on a routine basis.
So the plan was to move us to a smaller suite, with dedicated desks for those coming in regularly, and āhotelā desks for transients.
I had actually boxed up my whole desk before I left for surgery in late Feb with the expectation the move might happen before I returned.
The the Wuhan Coronavirus hit. The big corp shut down the office and sent everyone to WFH. Thatās still in effect, and will be for a least a little while longer.
Looking at the new suite, and the old suite, and the new distancing expectationsā¦ Iām wondering if weāll just stay put, and simply RedX every other desk so we have a checkerboard pattern. Only have to move five people on a rough fingertip calculationā¦ plus no need to buy new cubicals, rewire the new suite, pay for movers, etc. We wonāt get the āsmaller suiteā discount, but weāll see, weāll see.
1 Like
My Wifeās company put it out that they were one of the first companies to go to WFH, and they sure as hell wonāt be the first to go back. In fact it was stated they will never be 100% in the office ever again.
2 Likes
Iām not sure whatās going to happen here either. NZ may well remove any restrictions some time in the next month. But we have proved that working from home can be just as successful as working in the office - and that has been acknowledged by management.
I suspect that there will be some ācome in for meetings or when the client requires you on-siteā, but other than that it will be our choice.
1 Like
I think weāre leaning that way as well. Our VP already said in an email that it could be November before the office reopens. TBH, Iām not sure Iād want to work from home full time, but two or three days a week would be nice.
1 Like