COVID-19 - On the Ground

[zsn]

In my case, I’ve been more effective working from home. I’ve been in the office twice this year- once on Day 1 of when two of my direct reports started and another for a semi-social event. There’s likely literally two people in my company not vaccinated, as of a month ago (about 200 people work for our company; 99% vaccination rate). I could go in but the approx 2 h in commute (rt) is better spent WFH

[twocoach]

I think there's a difference between missing work because of being legitimately ill and missing work because you are taking advantage of a situation to benefit yourself. Performance issues due to volitional decisions being made are fireable.

Case in point, I had a coworker who was not in the office for 18 months. The college allowed him to work/teach from home because he claimed he was afraid of COVID. That was fine initially, since there were several people who were also doing that. However, when the rest of the faculty, all of whom were considerably older and more susceptible to COVID, came back, he insisted that he was still in grave danger. What he privately told others was that he realized during his time working from home that he liked being able to take his kids to school and pick them up afterward, and that he felt like that was a legitimate reason to keep working from home.

Magically, that fear went away completely last month when he was offered his "dream job" at another organization, along with a higher salary. He took it and is now willing to gladly go to the office every day, including interaction with large crowds and lots of air travel. I guess COVID only impacts you when you don't like your job and are not getting paid as much as you would like. And I guess his kids will be fine riding the bus now, too.

Work From Home is different than "missing work". Missing work is failing to do the job, not just failing to do the job from a specific location.

To a point. In some work settings, however, when you "work from home," you make it necessary for other people to take your prospective student campus visits, pick up all of your advising appointments, answer all of the questions from students because he won't return emails or phone calls among other things. It's not as simple as logging in to Zoom a few times per day.

If an employee cannot perform the role they are paid to do then the employer should not allow WFH to be an option.

[twocoach]

umm....isnt that what the vaccine is supposed to do?

I'd rather have a seat belt, air bag, side air bags and well designed crumple zones on my car if given the option of that or just a seat belt. The more tools we have at our disposal, the better. And some people may be more willing to take a pill than get vaccinated.

[zsn]

Yes, but some people’s approach seems to be akin to relying on training a lot more orthopedic surgeons and EMT personnel than clicking on the seat belt.

At this moment the oral antivirals under evaluation are not yet like airbags which supplement the seat belts. They are more like the plates which join broken bones together, for when you break them up badly by not wearing seat belts

[TDub]

the article said a preventative....and a treatment


hence my comment

[JKLivin]

Work From Home is different than "missing work". Missing work is failing to do the job, not just failing to do the job from a specific location.

To a point. In some work settings, however, when you "work from home," you make it necessary for other people to take your prospective student campus visits, pick up all of your advising appointments, answer all of the questions from students because he won't return emails or phone calls among other things. It's not as simple as logging in to Zoom a few times per day.

If an employee cannot perform the role they are paid to do then the employer should not allow WFH to be an option.

Agreed.

[sdoyel]

umm....isnt that what the vaccine is supposed to do?

It's for the anti-vaxers to more easily ingest the microchips...

[jhawks99]

I’m no legal eagle but I’m quite sure it’s illegal to fire someone for taking a medical leave of absence. However if you can document performance issues everything is fair game

I think there's a difference between missing work because of being legitimately ill and missing work because you are taking advantage of a situation to benefit yourself. Performance issues due to volitional decisions being made are fireable.

Case in point, I had a coworker who was not in the office for 18 months. The college allowed him to work/teach from home because he claimed he was afraid of COVID. That was fine initially, since there were several people who were also doing that. However, when the rest of the faculty, all of whom were considerably older and more susceptible to COVID, came back, he insisted that he was still in grave danger. What he privately told others was that he realized during his time working from home that he liked being able to take his kids to school and pick them up afterward, and that he felt like that was a legitimate reason to keep working from home.

Magically, that fear went away completely last month when he was offered his "dream job" at another organization, along with a higher salary. He took it and is now willing to gladly go to the office every day, including interaction with large crowds and lots of air travel. I guess COVID only impacts you when you don't like your job and are not getting paid as much as you would like. And I guess his kids will be fine riding the bus now, too.

My advice to you:

1.) Stop complaining.
2.) Go to work.
3.) Do your job.
4.) Repeat cycle.

POTD

[Deleted User 887]

I think there's a difference between missing work because of being legitimately ill and missing work because you are taking advantage of a situation to benefit yourself. Performance issues due to volitional decisions being made are fireable.

Case in point, I had a coworker who was not in the office for 18 months. The college allowed him to work/teach from home because he claimed he was afraid of COVID. That was fine initially, since there were several people who were also doing that. However, when the rest of the faculty, all of whom were considerably older and more susceptible to COVID, came back, he insisted that he was still in grave danger. What he privately told others was that he realized during his time working from home that he liked being able to take his kids to school and pick them up afterward, and that he felt like that was a legitimate reason to keep working from home.

Magically, that fear went away completely last month when he was offered his "dream job" at another organization, along with a higher salary. He took it and is now willing to gladly go to the office every day, including interaction with large crowds and lots of air travel. I guess COVID only impacts you when you don't like your job and are not getting paid as much as you would like. And I guess his kids will be fine riding the bus now, too.

My advice to you:

1.) Stop complaining.
2.) Go to work.
3.) Do your job.
4.) Repeat cycle.

POTD

"POTD" meaning piece of total dreck?
Sure that's sound advice for "normal" circumstances but Covid is far from being a normal circumstance.
Let me ask you this. Do you feel your daughter should stop complaining, go to work, do her job, and repeat cycle if the other doctors and nurses didn't abide by the "rules" and didn't give a shit that they put her and her family members life and well being in jeopardy because of it?
My guess and hope is your answer is no.

I admit I'm having a difficult time figuring out how and why people can't (or refuse to) comprehend MY situation and the circumstances that I spelled out pretty clearly.
Fine, maybe I'm an asshole but I would rather be an overly concerned asshole who cares about my family than a negligent asshole who doesn't.
Maybe that's just me. I sure hope it's not.

[TDub]

maybe we can pay the national guard to do all our jobs.

[JKLivin]

My advice to you:

1.) Stop complaining.
2.) Go to work.
3.) Do your job.
4.) Repeat cycle.

POTD

"POTD" meaning piece of total dreck?
Sure that's sound advice for "normal" circumstances but Covid is far from being a normal circumstance.
Let me ask you this. Do you feel your daughter should stop complaining, go to work, do her job, and repeat cycle if the other doctors and nurses didn't abide by the "rules" and didn't give a shit that they put her and her family members life and well being in jeopardy because of it?
My guess and hope is your answer is no.

I admit I'm having a difficult time figuring out how and why people can't (or refuse to) comprehend MY situation and the circumstances that I spelled out pretty clearly.
Fine, maybe I'm an asshole but I would rather be an overly concerned asshole who cares about my family than a negligent asshole who doesn't.
Maybe that's just me. I sure hope it's not.

My guess is that you are a neurotic Aspergerian mess whose attitudes and behaviors in the office create more work for those around you.

[sdoyel]

[jhawks99]

My advice to you:

1.) Stop complaining.
2.) Go to work.
3.) Do your job.
4.) Repeat cycle.

POTD

"POTD" meaning piece of total dreck?
Sure that's sound advice for "normal" circumstances but Covid is far from being a normal circumstance.
Let me ask you this. Do you feel your daughter should stop complaining, go to work, do her job, and repeat cycle if the other doctors and nurses didn't abide by the "rules" and didn't give a shit that they put her and her family members life and well being in jeopardy because of it?
My guess and hope is your answer is no.

I admit I'm having a difficult time figuring out how and why people can't (or refuse to) comprehend MY situation and the circumstances that I spelled out pretty clearly.
Fine, maybe I'm an asshole but I would rather be an overly concerned asshole who cares about my family than a negligent asshole who doesn't.
Maybe that's just me. I sure hope it's not.

Ooops, thought I was quoting Crimson and Blue who had a genius mocking of psych.
My mistake. I should read more carefully.

[Deleted User 887]

POTD

"POTD" meaning piece of total dreck?
Sure that's sound advice for "normal" circumstances but Covid is far from being a normal circumstance.
Let me ask you this. Do you feel your daughter should stop complaining, go to work, do her job, and repeat cycle if the other doctors and nurses didn't abide by the "rules" and didn't give a shit that they put her and her family members life and well being in jeopardy because of it?
My guess and hope is your answer is no.

I admit I'm having a difficult time figuring out how and why people can't (or refuse to) comprehend MY situation and the circumstances that I spelled out pretty clearly.
Fine, maybe I'm an asshole but I would rather be an overly concerned asshole who cares about my family than a negligent asshole who doesn't.
Maybe that's just me. I sure hope it's not.

My guess is that you are a neurotic Aspergerian mess whose attitudes and behaviors in the office create more work for those around you.

Spot on! I'd give you a gold star if we had that option on here.

Now it's my turn to guess.
Ah screw it. I'm not going to guess. I pretty much know who and what you are on this site and I don't really care who or what you are off of it.

Getting back to Covid on the Ground......
I'll share what I experienced earlier this evening in a later post.

[Deleted User 887]

POTD

"POTD" meaning piece of total dreck?
Sure that's sound advice for "normal" circumstances but Covid is far from being a normal circumstance.
Let me ask you this. Do you feel your daughter should stop complaining, go to work, do her job, and repeat cycle if the other doctors and nurses didn't abide by the "rules" and didn't give a shit that they put her and her family members life and well being in jeopardy because of it?
My guess and hope is your answer is no.

I admit I'm having a difficult time figuring out how and why people can't (or refuse to) comprehend MY situation and the circumstances that I spelled out pretty clearly.
Fine, maybe I'm an asshole but I would rather be an overly concerned asshole who cares about my family than a negligent asshole who doesn't.
Maybe that's just me. I sure hope it's not.

Ooops, thought I was quoting Crimson and Blue who had a genius mocking of psych.
My mistake. I should read more carefully.

No worries! I might have given it a POTD too in the right context.

[Deleted User 887]

Earlier this evening I walked through Feinberg Pavilion at Northwestern Hospital. The Emergency Room is in Feinberg and I’m not exaggerating when I say there were at least 40 people OUTSIDE of the Emergency Room who were in need of care and perhaps being “treated” but NOT directly monitored. Granted, many didn’t appear to be in dire need of medical attention but clearly they and/or someone else felt the need for them to go to and be in the Emergency Room. I couldn’t help but think how if I or someone I care about needed to be in the Emergency Room, we would be screwed in terms of receiving care.
How many if any were there for Covid? My guess and hope is none being that I know they used to isolate people in the ER who may have Covid.
We supposedly live in the best/greatest country in the world. Chicago is a major city and Northwestern is the primary “trauma center” for the heart of the city. I have said this before, the hospital is in NO WAY prepared for a mass crisis of ANY kind. So why are we (this city, state, country, continent, planet) not prepared and/or don't have the resources we would need should there be a mass crisis?

[TDub]

As long as we're in rhetorical question mode....

why do so many people go to the ER for non-emergency treatment? I know lots of people that go to ER for standard care. Talk about clogging up the system and straining already thin resources.....

[Overlander]

Earlier this evening I walked through Feinberg Pavilion at Northwestern Hospital. The Emergency Room is in Feinberg and I’m not exaggerating when I say there were at least 40 people OUTSIDE of the Emergency Room who were in need of care and perhaps being “treated” but NOT directly monitored. Granted, many didn’t appear to be in dire need of medical attention but clearly they and/or someone else felt the need for them to go to and be in the Emergency Room. I couldn’t help but think how if I or someone I care about needed to be in the Emergency Room, we would be screwed in terms of receiving care.
How many if any were there for Covid? My guess and hope is none being that I know they used to isolate people in the ER who may have Covid.
We supposedly live in the best/greatest country in the world. Chicago is a major city and Northwestern is the primary “trauma center” for the heart of the city. I have said this before, the hospital is in NO WAY prepared for a mass crisis of ANY kind. So why are we (this city, state, country, continent, planet) not prepared and/or don't have the resources we would need should there be a mass crisis?

Health care workers are resigning by 10s of thousands weekly.

[TDub]

or being forced out

[TDub]

its ok. the national guard are just as good.....