Yeah J, if I was supposed to be going back to work using public transport I'd be pretty pissed off too...is it even really necessary for her? My job is possible to do pretty much entirely remotely and I would imagine that it would be the same for most other office workers. So feels a bit crap to have employers insist that people go back into work so early. In your case I can at least understand why you need to go back to work (to some extent) in person, but for most people that really isn't necessary. And like Satis said, what's the point anyway if you can't have any meetings or sit at the same desk/in the same room anyway...I guess some people really need to be able to wave across the room to their colleagues?

@ Satis damn son, you weren't lying! Nice work from you and Shiny. What's with your potato obsession though? I mean I love potatoes, I'm just wondering why you chose to become the potato guy in this particular situation. Because they're low maintenance and fast growing, can be stored easily for long periods and pack a nutritional punch? Preparing for that apocalypse? Lol @ that rosemary bush. Darwinism at its finest.

I've also been talking about the 'problem' of paid leave for months now. I still have every single day of my paid leave for this year....we're halfway 2020 and I have over 6 weeks of leave that I have yet to take. And I'm clearly not the only one. I'm missing a plan from governments or businesses to manage and anticipate these problems...won't do much good to reopen the economy if everyone is off for the rest of the year. In Denmark they cut a deal early in the crisis between employers, government and unions in which everyone gave up something in exchange for a deal that would be beneficial to everyone. In that deal employees gave up one week of paid leave in 2020 in exchange for more guarantees from their employers, who in turn got more guarantees from the government. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the nordic countries had way more foresight than Belgium or France, but it's still depressing when these obvious problems are ignored until they can't be avoided anymore.

The 'not allowing my wife to keep working from home full time' change is a bit silly as you say. Since there is no real need for her to be physically present. As far as i can tell, the only benefit would be to be able to have actual meetings instead of the obligated teleconferences that aren't useful half of the time for her. But those actual meetings are still forbidden.

On the paid leave subject: my wife's firm has declared that 60% of her (and everyone's) leave must be taken before half of September somewhere. To avoid everyone being away in November and December probably. I can see why they're taking this measure, at least they're doing some things right. But on the other hand you could ask why there isn't any political guidance here (or none that i know of).

That garden is looking good Satis! We try to grow some vegs but as we only have a balcony we're pretty restricted. It's good to be back Satis, missed you all while gone!

Agreed that sounds weird J and don't blame her not being very happy. I don't know how it is in Belgium but people aren't exactly masters of cleanliness on public transport here, no way I'd want to be on it.

Work is the same here really. Still working from home, slowly building up my hours. Had a chat with an occupational therapist a couple of weeks ago to get HR off my back. Agreed to try and be up to 50% of my hours within 8 weeks time and then have another review. We had an updated from our CEO saying he's not sure what's happening yet but to prepare to continue as we are for another 3 months, just in case.

At first we were all told we'd have to have taken 10 days of annual leave by the end of June but then work scrapped that, for exactly the reasons you guys have said. I mean it's gonna get to the end of the year and *hopefully* work will be coming in, employees will be needed and we'll all be on hol! I didn't want to take any though since I have more surgeries needed at some point so it'd be good to use them up then instead of hoping I have enough sick pay left. I do have a few days booked off at the end of August and beginning of September for Discworld Convention and seeing Celine Dion but the con is definitely cancelled and it's highly unlikely Celine won't postpone her tour. Might as well still take them though.

When all the lockdowns happened, Shiny and I stocked up on things that would be good in an apocalyptic situation, just in case everything did collapse. So... rice and potatoes were pretty big parts of that. A lot of the potatoes we had out started growing roots or whatever, so it made sense to use those to plant. Hence the potato garden. Besides, you can turn 1 potato into 2-3 potato plants, and each of those supposedly makes between 9-20 potatoes or something, so not a bad investment. I haven't actually harvested any yet, so we'll see what the real result will be. They are pretty resilient though, that's true. You have to water them heavily and as they grow, you have to pile up dirt around them to they produce more/larger potatoes. Or so I hear. Again, we'll see. :p I really wish we could have chickens, but they are apparently not allowed in my city. Too bad. Being able to provide my own eggs would be awesome.

Everything does appear to be leveling off. I don't know if my country's idiocy made international news, but it was memorial day this last weekend (honoring our soldiers who died in war) and many beaches were flooded with morons. In 2-3 weeks we may be seeing a big spike in infections. *sigh* I seriously haven't gone into public in 2 months. It's not that hard. Idiots.

Funny... it's been 2 weeks since memorial day and suddenly the covid cases are spiking. I'm shocked.

I still hate my job. I haven't mentioned this in other posts, but it's Saturday and I've been on a conference call for the last 35 minutes. Is something super important broken? Nope. We're discussing how best to do predictive scheduling analysis so we can make a single infographic we're currently showing is more accurate. Initially this meeting was scheduled for 5pm on Friday. Yea, thanks. I'm glad to give up the little bit of free time I have for no reason.

Jesus man, can they just do that? Make you work on Saturday? Or is a matter of "well you can refuse, but then you'll be fired/never see a promotion ever again"?

Over here in France it's technically speaking illegal to expect employees to perform work activities on their days off: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38479439 I have been reprimanded by HR several times already for working in the weekends because they are afraid they will get sanctioned by the government, but then that's what you get when you cut costs on a department all the time and expect everything to happen the same way with half the staff. Fuckers. I kinda hope they do get in trouble and will be forced to work with a realistic staffing instead of relying on me to deliver the goods every time.

Ugh that sucks Satis. You're a technical guy, can't you figure out a way to skip these meetings that's the pc equivalent of "rustle crisp packet in speaker" no, you're breaking up, I... n't... you, you st... crrrrrrrrr*line goes dead*

Managed a couple of weeks of 4 afternoons now, around 4 hours each afternoon. It's so tiring. I start to lose focus from 3 onwards so the last 2 hours are very much me getting distracted on the internet/watching TV then remembering I'm meant to be working. CEO keeps going on about doing his absolute best to avoid the reduced hours/furloughing for another 3 months but I'm pretty sure we'll stay on it.

I appreciate the happy feels guys. I wish I could tell my job to fuck themselves, but this is America and Texas. I'm an exempt employee so they can do whatever they want. Texas is a "right to work" state, which is kinda one of those "alternative facts" kind of things which means they can fire you for no reason at all if they want to. Anyway, whatever, it is what it is. I'll find a new job eventually. For now I'm collecting a pretty decent paycheck. Besides, I'm probably the smartest guys they have. :p

To be honest, I'd take a pay cut to work like 20 hours a week. Having all that extra time would let me do so many things I don't have time for now. It'd be marvelous.

Ah yes, I keep forgetting about that. So basically you can't really refuse anything if you know what's good for you (that is, don't want to risk getting fired over it). Sorry man.

The American branch of my employer is located in Dallas (close to Northeast Dallas and Vickery Meadow) and I'm pretty sure they have decent benefits by American standards. They have handled this health crisis very well for example, with a lot of though about the employees. Not guaranteeing that the work itself will be good but I think it's likely still a better work environment than mine here in Europe. There are reasons for it that I won't go into here because I don't want to make things too obvious just in case. Anyway they're usually looking for some IT engineers so let me know if you have a vague interest and I'll send you a PM. Can't hurt to try!

I'm a software developer by trade.. I could do IT if I had to (or tech support), but it's not something I care for. Both of those mostly deal with hand-holding idiots (either customers or other employees) because they're stupid and don't understand computers. Though it can be a decent job, it's not very challenging... I'd much rather write code than tell someone how to fix their email for the 10th time. My boss keeps trying to talk me into being essentially an installation engineer (a guy in our company that installs the software for our customers) and I'm totally not interested. I'd rather be fired. fuck dealing with customers.

Err... so all of that to say, thank you, but I think I'll pass for now. If things get desperate, I may reconsider. Having that said, I hadn't heard of Vickery Park, so I looked it up, and that's a pretty cool place in Dallas. I'd have to fight with traffic getting there in the morning, but it's fairly close...jump on 75 (highway), head south for a bit, and I'd be there. My current commute is way further, though 75 tends to be crazy during rush hour.

Oh I probably wasn't using the right name, we also have in-house software developers. I was using IT as a sort of catch all term since I am a n00B who is unfamiliar with the sector haha. Either way, if you ever get desparate let me know and I'll direct you towards their job page. You never know. I think there might be a lot of flexibility to work from home following this crisis too if the company's current attitude is anything to judge by. So even the commute may not be a huge problem.

Completely understand that you don't want to deal with customers of any sort haha. As someone who works in such a department I can tell you that it offers the wonderful combination of being one of the more stressful/negative departments and the least prestigious one. Except for maybe the cleaning personnel.

No one ever takes anything we say seriously. We have been dealing with a completely inept product development team for a year or two now and they keep releasing broken and unpopular updates without checking in with us once...and then arrogantly refuse to even speak to us about the many customer complaints we report to them. Why would they? We are the laughing stock of the company, even if we are probably more competent at our jobs than they are at theirs. Meh.

Wait... do you want me to work for the inept product development team? Unless they hire me as a senior engineer, that sounds like hell. :p BTW, I did officially get the "senior software engineer" title recently, so that's something.

anyway, if it's actually a developer job you're talking about, I'm interested. Send me info (PM me) and I'll check it out. Not sure I'm willing to jump ship just yet, but I'm not sure how my job can get much worse than it is.