oh, as usual dear ... I have been a bit miffed that our communications team has taken over our mass emails. I had previously been responsible for them and I thought I was doing well, but they've decided they want to do them all themselves. I'm still responsible for the addresses that the vendor they use to send them out maintains - I upload addresses and I monitor the bad addresses, making sure that our membership people (who manage our database) get information about bad addresses ... which is fine with me. I am, however, taking a certain amount of, well, glee in that they're ignoring one little thing I did to make life easier for other people. Early on, when we first started using this vendor I had some "generic" email addresses set up - ones that no one else saw that would get all the bounce-backs, either from people who were out of the office or had left the company. Well, the communications team doesn't like using those ... they recently sent out a message from our CEO ... and the bounce-backs (of which there will be a lot because - hello! working remotely!) will go to a mailbox shared by our CEO, her #2 and her assistant. he he he

When my agency started allowing telework, we had to submit a work plan the day before and then report on what we had accomplished. Those requirements eventually kind of -- just went away.

Over the last couple of years, I've been teleworking pretty frequently thanks to health issues, doctor appointments, and so on. No real requirements, although my supervisors appreciate advance notice where possible. Eventually, I developed the habit of emailing my supervisory every Monday morning with my schedule for the week.

Technically, we're now on what is called "extended telework." Which means we can telework full time, no reason necessary. We've been told that we'll get 30 days advance notice before going back to regular in-office work schedules.

We just had a brief discussion on our department meeting today about our annual outlet sale - no official word yet, but I cannot imagine how it could possibly happen. I get sick after working it every year under normal circumstances. For it to be worthwhile we pretty much have to have crowds. And aside from the health and safety aspect, our inventory levels are already looking problematically low, setting aside a bunch of stuff for the sale would make that worse well into January. That aspect was a mess last year and we didn't start out in trouble.

Kind of sad, we've been doing it for 25+ years but I don't see how it's possible. Maybe people will be content with online deals.

meara- Sorry, late May, not April. Time is very ephemeral this year. The products we sell include PPE and cleaning supplies so we were technically an essential business. But pretty much as soon as our state supreme court overruled the governor's stay at home order they started pulling people back into the office.

Dang. Do you feel like that has worked out ok for you personally, Kalshane? Are people following guidelines and whatnot?

A friend of mine was ordered back to the office every third week, for no good reason (she works in higher ed doing financial aid for an online program -- she never sees students in person anyway!), and she got out of it for a medical reason, which was her BMI, which seems crazy to me, but apparently is a high-risk marker.

Just a possible arrow for some to keep in their quiver if you're looking for a reason to stay out of the office.

Also, msbelle, I thought of you as it took me 1000 emails to get paperwork submitted to the City, but half of it was my issue. And they took scanned paperwork!!

On Ask A Manager, there are stories ...

One of the worst was a firm who tried to make their employees forfeit their entire year's vacation time because they'd been working from home. (AAM said that, appalling though this is, over much of the United States it would be legal.)

I've made the decision that the move to remote work for my company is permanent. The work has been getting done as needed, we are set up to communicate through a few avenues, and when needed we can gather at the office. The office space will have a couple of workstation areas set up so that you can connect your laptop and work from there if something requires you to be in. We will do a rotating shift in the office to cover shipments and things like that, which means basically one day every week and a half each person will work from the office space for the day, but they will most likely be solo in the office.

One thing about the fulltime job is two weeks of vacation and THREE sick days, which to me sounds like bullshit. Fortunately I'm confident that the guy in the local office is very flexible in terms of hours and working from home.

In happier news, Ryan has been learning about the Dreaming at school, and has celebrated it by writing a haiku (so, traditional Aboriginal poetry). It's called "Echidna and the Shade Tree Movement".

Echidna and the Shade Tree Movement

Animals hunting
Echidna guarded the young
Echidna angry

It's that last line that makes it poetry.