fortnightly update

[domarzione]

The good: I wrote this for The Old Guard. Which I enjoyed a lot and went on about a bit here. 


The bad: I went from Thursday afternoon "nobody is going back to the office unless they ask to" to Friday morning "you are starting back at the office in ten days" and I have whiplash because I sure as shit did not ask. I am in a High Risk Group and do not want to take the subway to work in a space that Facilities hasn't even done the walk-though yet to determine safety protocols, let alone replaced the air handlers or figured out what to do with the bathrooms that were a disaster before all this. And the ugly is that my boss is basically offering us all up as sacrificial lambs because if he actually dared to tell his bosses "not everyone's ready" they would have said "fine," but he won't because he's got his eyes on the prize and that includes never even offering a modification to their requests, no matter what kind of dumbass results may come. This isn't dumbass, this is something else. I won't be going in every day, but that does not make this better. 


The good: baseball and hockey are back and returning. My Mets rocked today's opener like it was a 2019 AU where Yoenis Cespedes didn't lose a fight with a wild boar and Edwin Diaz didn't get the yips at being in NYC. (And if you think I'm making up the part with the boar, you don't know my baseball team.) I suspect the NY Rangers will have a brief adventure in the Toronto Bubble, but I'll take it. 



Three things make a post, so I'll stop griping now. 

Comments

[writerlibrarian]

I missed hockey so badly, yesterday I watched intra-teams Pens game on YT. 😂

I hope you can get safely to work and be safe at work.

[domarzione]

I would watch a scrimmage! I did watch the Mets intrasquad game when it was on youtube.

[leonie_alastair]

Sorry to hear about the situation regarding work - that's scary. Can you at least control the hours you work? My son is going back to the office 2 days a week in August but he's going to be working 11am to 7pm so he can miss the worst of the rush on NJT and MTA.

[domarzione]

I would love for there to be flexibility in our office schedule, but there is not because they are closing the building at 5:30. It's all very not-organized and not-thought-out and not-reasonable and that's why I am going to be transferring at Times Square during the worst of the rush hours.

[leonie_alastair]

Ugh - that's awful. I wish I had a good answer, but beyond suggesting you document your interactions with the company regarding the return - just in case you need it someday, I have no suggestions. It's a horrible situation.

Separately - I loved the Old Guard story.

[beradan]

yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes

[domarzione]

Ayup. *shrug emoji*

[alessandriana]

I'm sure you've already thought about this, but can you go over your boss's head?

I'm also having to go into work. Right now it's only a few days every other week, but they want us back up to 80% capacity soon, which in a building of 5,000 people is a less than thrilling idea. We've had multiple cases already. I'm just hunkering down in my cube and wearing a mask all the time.

I'm halfway through The Old Guard and I'm enjoying it! Charlize Theron with an axe is my jam.

[domarzione]

People over my boss don't know that I exist, like, literally. And the likely response is "you are scheduled for fewer days onsite than anyone else in your unit, what is your complaint?"

Finish the movie! It's actually a rare one that stands up to a rewatch for me because there are details you can pick up afterward, like the way Joe and Nicky fight in tandem, handing over weapons and victims to each other.

[alessandriana]

Ah, the impression I'd gotten from your post was that the people over your boss were fine with people staying home, it was just your boss that was pushing people to go in. That sucks, I'm sorry. :(

[domarzione]

They would have been fine if this plan had never been put into action! You did not misread! But now that it is in place, I look like I'm being difficult or trying to submarine my boss by saying "I did not agree to this/I don't like this."

[alessandriana]

Ah, gotcha. Definitely a tough situation. Do you know if other coworkers are uncomfortable with it? If you could get together with a number of them to push back, at least it wouldn't look like you alone are a troublemaker.

For a while we had a policy that high risk personnel weren't going to be called back into the office unless something major happened (our job can't be performed remotely), but it looks like that policy has been rescinded at high levels of our org. It's still up to individual managers to make the schedules, though, so I think unofficially many are not putting them on the schedule. Still, it's very frustrating.

[domarzione]

Sadly, I am the department rebel/loudmouth. Everyone else is docile to the point of obsequiousness and asking Boss and Supervisors what can they do to help. People asked to start working remotely before we had to. A few will gripe privately, but actually putting up a protest? No, no, despite the fact that we are unionized and short of first degree murder are really hard to fire.

Higher Admin's prime directive is that they hate paying us not to work, for very odd values of work. Snow days? We don't get them. The database has to be taken down for a week? Everyone come in and clean their cubicles for five days. My unit has actually been insanely efficient while we've been working remotely, even if we can't do our primary tasks -- we've all been doing the secondary stuff that none of us have time for in the office. That's why Higher would have been fine with us staying out -- they can look at the stats and see progress. But other units cannot do this and they are the ones driving the "so when is everyone coming back?" questions and my boss lacks the leadership capacity to say "we're fine where we are and here are the numbers to back it up."

[alessandriana]

That sounds really frustrating. I'm sorry you're getting thrown under the bus like that. :\

I finished The Old Guard! It was great.

[ravurian]

I'm very well aware that employment works very differently in the US than it does here in the UK, and that the safeguards in law and in common practice here don't exist where you are (and probably won't exist here for much longer either), but are you saying that you do not feel able to have a conversation with your boss that proceeds along the lines of 'As you know, I am in a vulnerable group, and would like to remain working from home until such time as it is safe for me to return full time'? Can you not at least pitch for reasonable accommodations (i.e. late start/early finishing, or only going in a couple of days a week; though this does not diminish risk, it might be able to help you better manage it)? I know it's not the same where you are, but I don't see how seeking to avoid the real and present risk of your own death makes you difficult.

[domarzione]

Oh, I told Boss that I'm in a high risk group and his accommodation is that I am scheduled to appear in-office at a rate 2/3 of everyone else. I am not going in daily. I'm not in every week. But I'm pissed that I'm going in at all when this is ultimately not necessary.

(I already start later than everyone else because I hate mornings and want to miss the worst of the rush hour and so I work later than almost everyone else and I enjoyed the quiet. But I can't skew my hours too much because of Building Rules.)

[ravurian]

Gah, this is infuriating, and I'm vicariously furious about it. It seems crazy to me that you should be in a position where advocating for your own safety on the basis of health during a global pandemic might be seen as trouble-making or place your employment in jeopardy. I do recognise that you will have assessed the cost/benefit in pushing back further and reached your conclusions based on that analysis, but might there not be value in just saying: can you confirm in writing that it is corporate policy to require a member of a high-risk vulnerable group to put themselves at increased and unnecessary risk under threat of sanction? And can you also confirm the details of the death-in-service policy, and to whom my estate should address a wrongful-death suit? (I am only being slightly tongue in cheek with this).

Not to rub it in, but the university for which I am presently contracting has made it very clear that no one will be expected back in the office this year. It boggles me that there are institutions who are pretending that this is All Over.

[domarzione]

I've asked my supervisor whether she can verify that my institution retains liability if/when I get sick or whether I have to ask the Ombudsman. (Answer: ask the Ombudsman.) But the general attitude is "it is what it is" and DGAF.

[ravurian]

<applause, applause> but also it is so wearying to have to continually advocate for oneself like this. You have my complete support, for what that's worth, and if there's anything I may do to assist, I insist you recruit and deputise me immediately, even if that's only as a cheering section while you tear them to bits.

ION, I am thoroughly enjoying your The Old Guard stories thus far. You know of old that I love the way that your brain works, and how it manifests on the page, and I find no evidence that this is waning - you're a marvel with story, and with detail, and with character, and I love the way you word. I am not at all eyeing you for signs that a significant word count is approaching given your other commitments, but let's say that I won't be at all surprised if one appears.

[marcelo]

That's awful - it's criminal that it's not criminal.

(Loved the fic, too.)

[domarzione]

Yes :( and thank you :)

[vaznetti]

Your boss should be fired. I realise that he won't be, because that's not how life works, but that is really awful. I hope that his bosses start to rethink their own dumb demands before things get out of hand.

[domarzione]

He got to where he is by pleasing them, so this is an arrangement that works very well for both sides.

[musesfool]

That really sucks and is also stupid. How much do you trust your HR department? Because you can ask for a reasonable accommodation, i.e., working from home due to being high risk, and the HR department should be able to work that out for you with your supervisor.

#LFGM!

[domarzione]

I will be working from home for most of the month and I'm going in fewer days than anyone else, but... At the start of this, while they were very busy making sure the paying customers were all safe and protected and offering remote services, they were telling us to come in every day and no, we will not be giving you hand sanitizer. Treating the lowest rungs like crap is how they roll and the part of remote working that I've liked best is the way they're limited in what they can do in that regard. HR treats us like annoyances at best, mostly as actively malevolent beasts that wreck their spreadsheets with malice aforethought. Their jobs would be so much easier without us.

[blackrook]

Sorry about work:(
Wish you all the luck!

Heard on our news today that they will show NHL games with 4 seconds delay - to avoid players swearing getting live, because it could be heard with empty stadium! :)

[domarzione]

The sheer quantity of "fucks" uttered during an NHL game... yeah. It's going to be a lot of bleeping and some puck-hitting-sticks/boards noises and a little bit of inane "good job, Jonesie! Way to go, Bobby!" chatter. :)