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.

Dana that sounds like complete bullshit. The full time jobs I've had in retail have had better leave than that.

Right now we get (or pre pandemic got) 114 hours (or something like that) of PTO AND 40 hours of Personal days. At Best Buy I think we had 2 weeks of sick and 2 weeks of vacation although I believe that has changed since I was there.

Work has been tiring, customers are so needy right now. Also some continue to be just..batshit.. annoying. Our store is now open an hour before the mall so now instead of having customers bitching we were closing before the mall does we now have people grumbling because the doors to the mall are closed because the mall is closed.

"When did the mall start opening at 11?"..since May 1.

So they increased our hours of operation but they had cut us to the bone in terms of staffing hours with full time getting 29.5 hours. But now we are behind in fufillment (pulling products for online orders) so we have increased hours. I'm going into tomorrow and working 8 hours just pulling stuff. It's hard for me because I'm not familiar with upstairs areas and then also the store looks a mess in many areas because we are so lightly staffed.

I have nothing but respect for people working in the service industries. That shit is stressful in the best of times when things aren't batshit crazy and you don't have to worry about your customers infecting you with a virus (or trying to beat you up because you asked them to wear a mask).

As for my work, I personally think it's bullshit that we're in the office right now. We proved we could easily work from home while still providing our high standards of support to our users (we had a rotation with one person physically in the building each week to push buttons and swap out hardware as-needed.)

On the plus side, they're doing a lot cleaning, we've got a hospital-grade HVAC system, elevators are restricted use and they've reworked the cafeteria to encourage social distancing and limit physical contact.

On the negative, up until our governor issued a mask mandate last week, maybe 10% of people were wearing them and I was constantly seeing unmasked people standing in each other's cubes talking. They're also continuing to do monthly guest speakers in the auditorium which is flat out stupid, IMO, but their reasoning is attendance is voluntary (except for, you know, the staff that has to support it) so people are choosing to take the risk.

So far we haven't had any evidence of intra-employee transmission but I worry it's only a matter of time.

My big boss' general practice has been to require people to be at the office during normal business hours because it helps collaborative work, ensures that people are available if clients or co-workers need to get in touch with them, etc. But she's been quite reasonable about working from home in this situation, and in fact ordered everyone who could to do so well in advance of the states closing non-essential businesses. I think the work getting done, and safely, is the main priority, not making sure that people don't occasionally wander off to deal with a child or pet during the work day.

(I think such concerns about Biden's stamina and/or health are overblown, but there you go.)

My concern is along the lines of "this is (traditionally) one of the hardest jobs in the world that (traditionally) ages the hell out of even relatively young people... and at 78 when things go south they can go hard and fast."

I think he's physically and mentally fit for the job... but he'd better have a good second who can hit the ground running. In Kamala he does.

One of the deceptive things, I think, is that the stutter he's always had makes him "seem old." I prescribe adorable children's book written by his wife.

I'm back in the office because we're moving in the middle of September and boxes can't be packed remotely. We're running a skeleton crew, all wearing masks when we're not alone in a room, and they're paying for cars to keep us off of public transportation.

3 days?!? What is that?

We get pretty chintzy sick time, but better than that. And since I'm salaried and can work from home when I'm not feeling well but not super sick, I've done pretty well piling it up over time, but when I was hourly, boy, they will nickel and dime you out of all the PTO if you aren't careful.

For some management, allowing WFH means they can't micromanage or feel like they can. Which, OK, if you're dealing with teenage employees at a Burger King drivethrough window might be slightly defensible, but these policies are being extended to workers who have demonstrated years of discipline (just getting through college and multi-year careers) that fundamentally disrespects them.

People have gone batshit crazy about the masks. The one other person who's scheduled to be in the office Tuesday-Wednesday was having fits yesterday because one of the instructors using our conference room was not wearing a mask. She interrupted me on a conference call to see if I could find a mask and get him to wear it (no). And the people who won't wear masks ... there are the (fake) exemption cards people make up and there's a (fake) "Freedom to Breathe Agency" with people going around saying that anyone trying to make them wear a mask - in a store, with signs posted - can be fined and spend a couple days in jail for doing so. They have (fake) badges and (fake) paperwork laying out the penalties. oy

HOWEVER, Illinois recently passed a law making it a felony specifically for anyone who assaults a worker for trying to make them wear a mask. yay?