Coronavirus- What is your current working situation ??

[BobTheBuilder]

Been WFH full time for 3 weeks since my group came in contact with a person who tested positive a few days later. Will work on rotation from home / on site starting April 1st, but on a reduced schedule with reduced days total since we got hit, like many others, by supply chain issues. At least for April that means a few hundred after tax less. Glad I am not living paycheck to paycheck.

[PDXTabs]

Starting next week most people in my organization get a 20% pay cut.

[Unique User]

My project is on hold for the next 30-60 days, so my hours were reduced to zero.  Filed for unemployment yesterday.  DH is WFH full time.  He is in sales so Mondays and Fridays were always WFH office days, but visiting customers was halted a couple weeks ago.  He works for a small division of a huge company, but his division sells to restaurant franchises, hospitals, small manufacturers, etc.  We expect he'll get furloughed eventually.   

[Anette]

My project is on hold for the next 30-60 days, so my hours were reduced to zero.  Filed for unemployment yesterday.  DH is WFH full time.  He is in sales so Mondays and Fridays were always WFH office days, but visiting customers was halted a couple weeks ago.  He works for a small division of a huge company, but his division sells to restaurant franchises, hospitals, small manufacturers, etc.  We expect he'll get furloughed eventually.

Hopefully the situation will not go on for that long.
I am a nurse, so I am working and my DH is WFH.
I workat a boarding school for children and young adults with a handycap. Most of them have been sent home to stay with there families at this time. So far I was able to work all my shifts but I may not be able to do that in April and May (in case school isn't happening in May). I am not worried as we get pages all our would have worked hours and carry any minus hours with us. There is an agreement with the employer that anything over -40 will not be counted at the end of the year ( part timers accordingly to their percentage, for me ~ -25h at most as I work 66%). So I am not worried.
For a lot of people this presents a really difficult time though. I have some friends in Africa and they still get payed per working day, no social net, so often no income at this time.

[Sibley]

Well, opinions please.

I'm remote, have been for about 2 weeks, will be for April and likely into May as well. My problem is the setup.

I have a dining room table and chairs. Table is slate, so somewhat uneven, and the chair height is not good for working on the laptop. Overall, ok for maybe an hour then increasingly uncomfortable.

I have a couch. That's mostly where I'm working right now. Mid afternoon, my back starts to get achy.

I also have a desk. It's new to the house, and I currently have the printer and shredder on it, so there's no room for using it as a desk. I haven't tried sitting at it with the dining room chair, but I think it's the same height as the table so would likely have the same chair issues.

Do I rearrange the stuff on the desk and get an office chair? I'm not loving the prospect of spending money on a chair I probably won't use regularly after the pandemic.

[Anette]

Well, opinions please.

I'm remote, have been for about 2 weeks, will be for April and likely into May as well. My problem is the setup.

I have a dining room table and chairs. Table is slate, so somewhat uneven, and the chair height is not good for working on the laptop. Overall, ok for maybe an hour then increasingly uncomfortable.

I have a couch. That's mostly where I'm working right now. Mid afternoon, my back starts to get achy.

I also have a desk. It's new to the house, and I currently have the printer and shredder on it, so there's no room for using it as a desk. I haven't tried sitting at it with the dining room chair, but I think it's the same height as the table so would likely have the same chair issues.

Do I rearrange the stuff on the desk and get an office chair? I'm not loving the prospect of spending money on a chair I probably won't use regularly after the pandemic.

My DH just ordered a wedge pillow(?) to use with a kitchen chair. These used to be the thing when I worked with  patients who had lower back problems in the 90th and helps keeping a better position.
Other than that, set a timer and get up every 20 min to stretch?
Construct a standing desk with a box... the right height to sometimes work standing up?

[former player]

How many weeks do you think you will need to work from home?  Will you be voluntarily working from home at all after that?  How much would a chair cost?

That should give you a cost per hour/day of buying the chair, and weighing that against 1) what you are paid per hour/day and 2) how much better you will feel not being uncomfortable or in pain should tell you whether the chair is worth it or not.

Personally my view would be buy the damn chair.

[Sibley]

I'm thinking probably 6 more weeks remote. Depends on what happens with the virus. IL is being fairly proactive. I can wfh normally, my current company doesn't love it and neither do I, so it's mostly when I need to be home for something/sick. But I am also looking to change jobs.

Chairs appear to be around $100-250 depending. And I might be able to get my company to pay for part too, it's worth asking. But that also means I have to deal with the current arrangement in that room.

[anotherAlias]

I was in your shoes last week.  I tried everything available in the house to get a decent set up but just wound up with an incredibly sore back.  I bought this chair(https://www.staples.com/Staples-Carder-Mesh-Office-Chair-Black/product_136815) on sale from Staples and feel a lot better.  I figure enough in my life was sucking that I was willing to throw $126 at this one problem for things to suck a bit less.

[Sibley]

Staples seems to be doing rolling sales on office furniture. They're certainly responsive to the times. I'm not in a lot of pain, and overall my life isn't sucky right now. I'm just not sure if I've hit the level of pain where I'm willing to throw money at it (either lifestyle or physical). Especially since I'd have to make a mess moving stuff around to accommodate the chair/desk.

[FIRE Artist]

i recommend that you work at the desk, and get yourself a decent enough chair.  My home office chair is not as good as my work chair so I have put a yoga bolster under the table to use as a footrest, that helps a lot. 

I also recommend that you lift your laptop up onto something, the top of your screen should be at or just below eye level.  And that means that you will need to add a separate keyboard, which is way better to type at anyway, and if like me, you need to use the number pad, that is way better to use than the numbers across the top of the keypad.

I have a wireless skype headset which is a godsend.  I have discovered that I can roam my whole house while keeping connected, go down to the kitchen for coffee, let the dog out etc.  Luckily my work does not use the video for regular Skype calls, and I have figured out that the daily safety brief/covid leadership check in, which now takes an hour (I work in healthcare), since I attend to listen, not report out, I can spend the meeting on my rowing machine.  WIN. 

[jinga nation]

I was in your shoes last week.  I tried everything available in the house to get a decent set up but just wound up with an incredibly sore back.  I bought this chair(https://www.staples.com/Staples-Carder-Mesh-Office-Chair-Black/product_136815) on sale from Staples and feel a lot better.  I figure enough in my life was sucking that I was willing to throw $126 at this one problem for things to suck a bit less.

have this for last few years... very good. wife has not complained (yet).

[dignam]

dupe

[dignam]

100% WFH.  The transition was seamless for the whole team as we're a software provider.  I bought a foot rest as my home desk isn't quite at the right height as my office.  Only weird thing is the office administrator here keeps begging for play time and walks.  And stares at me because she's not used to me being here all day.

GF works in the hospital so she still has to go in every day.  Luckily she is not around patients so the craziness will be somewhat limited for her.  She will still be feeling it though.

[catprog]

mostly WFH now.

[mizzourah2006]

Been WFH for 2 years now. Work hasn't changed much, but now the kids are out of daycare and my wife isn't WFH...so it's been a balancing act trying to watch a 4 and a 2-year-old with 2 full time working parents.

[bluebelle]

I've been WFH for 7 years now, for a company that has 50% of their employees virtual, so the infrastructure for 100% of employees WFH has been fairly seamless, we had the bandwidth for Webex already.  Hearing from some friends whose organizations where almost 100% office, their Webex set-up has been brutal, 5-10 minutes to get web-ex to open up for every meeting, and other company has put their employees on shifts, only 'critical' meetings can use webex between 8-5.

DH was WFH on Fridays, he's loving the WFH, no drive in rush-hour.   I'm not loving it so much because we share office space.   But I am thankful that we both have jobs that can be done from home.   All of my 'problems' are very insignificant to the people loosing their lives and the millions out of work.   I have green space behind my home, I can go for a walk, I remind myself daily that I am lucky compared to many.   A 20% drop in my portfolio is nothing compared to what is going on in the world.   I believe in the market - it will come back eventually.   But the world will look very different when we come out of the other side of this.

[FireAnt]

I work in crisis mental health so we're essential. My employer is trying to get us to work remotely with the contracted site I'm at, but they are pushing back pretty hard. On the one hand I'm thankful to have a job. On the other hand, I'm frustrated that I'm being placed at higher risk of being exposed to this virus when my company has offered the contracted site numerous ways to minimize risk (i.e. telehealth, cut down on hours, etc.)

So the contracted site is a COVID-19 cesspool. Finally got pulled out Wednesday and doing telehealth as work is mandating me to quarantine for 14 days. It's been an interesting adjustment.

[Zaga]

Not sure how much longer my job will last, my team of 8 was all just furloughed except for me.  I would happily have given up my spot for a coworker, but they didn't ask my opinion about it!

DH is super busy, works in IT for a bank.  Bank IT is swamped with so many people working remotely who don't know a VPN from their asses.

[ItsALongStory]

I work in big tech and have been wfh for about 2.5 weeks now, going pretty smoothly since my team was already geographically dispersed across continental US. No layoffs so far but I did hear of a hiring freeze in the immediate future. Since I am applying for an internal transfer that kind of throws a wrench in my plans.

WFH has been easy since we have a dedicated office and my wife is retired. My home setup is similar to work with dual mounted monitors plus laptop.

Work did provide 2 extra weeks of paid leave that can be taken when needing to care for children or immediate family. This is on top of FMLA, sick leave etc so they are doing a great job supporting the employees. It does help that our company stands to profit somewhat from this WFH trend as we own one of the more popular tools for remote collaboration.

I expect that we will see a shift in flexibility around WFH moving forward given that we haven't really seen a drop off in productivity within my immediate group.

[mizzourah2006]

How are people with young children handling this with daycares closed? We have a 4 and a 2 year old. My entire team is on the younger side, so I'm the only one with children outside of one other colleague who's spouse is a SAH parent. On the other side my wife is still expected to go into work and she is hourly. Obvioulsy in worst case scenario I'm sure she could get some sort of short term unpaid leave of absence, but that's not ideal. Just curious how others are handling this if they are in similar situations. I'm likely to find myself as daycare worker with some meetings during the day and an employee during the evenings if this goes on much longer, which it's looking like it will.

[Plina]

I have worked from home for about 3 weeks, first due to some respiratory problems and thereafter because I prefer it. We are a small company so everybody except the CEO can choose if we want to work from home or the office. I prefer to work from home because I and my colleagues have different views of the social distancing and one of them takes the train to work every day. I also love the flexibility it allows me. I take walks during lunch and finish my work more fresh than working in a open plan office. I work with my laptop at the kitchen table or in the sofa. It is not optimal from an ergonomic perspective but I don't want to have a big screen on my kitchen table as a reminder.

I am also taking two weeks of vacation now to paint and do some work in my apartment instead of the planned ski trip to family. Workwise my work is safe.

[DadJokes]

How are people with young children handling this with daycares closed? We have a 4 and a 2 year old. My entire team is on the younger side, so I'm the only one with children outside of one other colleague who's spouse is a SAH parent. On the other side my wife is still expected to go into work and she is hourly. Obvioulsy in worst case scenario I'm sure she could get some sort of short term unpaid leave of absence, but that's not ideal. Just curious how others are handling this if they are in similar situations. I'm likely to find myself as daycare worker with some meetings during the day and an employee during the evenings if this goes on much longer, which it's looking like it will.

My wife & I are both salaried. I have to be on for my 40 hours, which I can set (as long as they are within reason). I typically work 5:45-1:45. She has scheduled Zoom meetings, but the rest of her work can be done whenever is most convenient for her. So we kind of juggle watching the kid around. If I'm not on a call or in the middle of a pressing issue, then I can entertain him while I "work." She gets most of her work done in the evening.

Both of us working from home makes things pretty easy. Worst case scenario, we'd take him to her parents' for a day if we both had a lot of things that weren't flexible.

[Maverick1]

Working from home with a 25% reduction in pay. I’m supposed to be working 30 hours instead of 40, but due to workload I’ve been working more than 40. That will change over time as we adjust to the “new normal.”

My wife works 16 hours a week from home, no change to her hours or compensation.

[js82]

Work is still full speed, but people are encouraged to work from home where feasible, and rules at work around social(physical) distancing have been enacted.  In practice this means that the operators/technicians who do physical work are still at work, while the engineers/scientists(me) who are in supporting roles spend a large fraction of the time working from home, and are only in the plant/lab when necessary.


FWIW, this is in an "essential" industry where the demand curve is highly inelastic.

[mizzourah2006]

How are people with young children handling this with daycares closed? We have a 4 and a 2 year old. My entire team is on the younger side, so I'm the only one with children outside of one other colleague who's spouse is a SAH parent. On the other side my wife is still expected to go into work and she is hourly. Obvioulsy in worst case scenario I'm sure she could get some sort of short term unpaid leave of absence, but that's not ideal. Just curious how others are handling this if they are in similar situations. I'm likely to find myself as daycare worker with some meetings during the day and an employee during the evenings if this goes on much longer, which it's looking like it will.

My wife & I are both salaried. I have to be on for my 40 hours, which I can set (as long as they are within reason). I typically work 5:45-1:45. She has scheduled Zoom meetings, but the rest of her work can be done whenever is most convenient for her. So we kind of juggle watching the kid around. If I'm not on a call or in the middle of a pressing issue, then I can entertain him while I "work." She gets most of her work done in the evening.

Both of us working from home makes things pretty easy. Worst case scenario, we'd take him to her parents' for a day if we both had a lot of things that weren't flexible.

Interesting, I'm also salaried, but a lot of my work requires concentration, it's not as simple as calls, etc. Programming DL models, data cleaning, ML models, etc. I haven't been very successful at entertaining them while working. It's in their rooms playing with toys, or out back on the trampoline, etc. unless I can get them to sit down and watch Disney + for an hour or so. My wife is hourly, so if she isn't at work she's using sick time or personal days or not getting paid. We don't have family close and technically I guess all of our parents would likely be considered moderately "high risk" as they are all in their 60s, so I doubt they'd be willing to really help out anyway. My sister lives near my mom and she hasn't seen them once since the beginning of March.

I know others are in much worse situations, but I'd really hate to be working until 9 PM most nights for the next ~2 months.

[engineerjourney]

How are people with young children handling this with daycares closed? We have a 4 and a 2 year old. My entire team is on the younger side, so I'm the only one with children outside of one other colleague who's spouse is a SAH parent. On the other side my wife is still expected to go into work and she is hourly. Obvioulsy in worst case scenario I'm sure she could get some sort of short term unpaid leave of absence, but that's not ideal. Just curious how others are handling this if they are in similar situations. I'm likely to find myself as daycare worker with some meetings during the day and an employee during the evenings if this goes on much longer, which it's looking like it will.

My wife & I are both salaried. I have to be on for my 40 hours, which I can set (as long as they are within reason). I typically work 5:45-1:45. She has scheduled Zoom meetings, but the rest of her work can be done whenever is most convenient for her. So we kind of juggle watching the kid around. If I'm not on a call or in the middle of a pressing issue, then I can entertain him while I "work." She gets most of her work done in the evening.

Both of us working from home makes things pretty easy. Worst case scenario, we'd take him to her parents' for a day if we both had a lot of things that weren't flexible.

Interesting, I'm also salaried, but a lot of my work requires concentration, it's not as simple as calls, etc. Programming DL models, data cleaning, ML models, etc. I haven't been very successful at entertaining them while working. It's in their rooms playing with toys, or out back on the trampoline, etc. unless I can get them to sit down and watch Disney + for an hour or so. My wife is hourly, so if she isn't at work she's using sick time or personal days or not getting paid. We don't have family close and technically I guess all of our parents would likely be considered moderately "high risk" as they are all in their 60s, so I doubt they'd be willing to really help out anyway. My sister lives near my mom and she hasn't seen them once since the beginning of March.

I know others are in much worse situations, but I'd really hate to be working until 9 PM most nights for the next ~2 months.

Husband and I are both salary and work at the same essential company.  We have kids the same age as yours.  We switch weekly between first shift (6am-2pm) and second shift (3pm-11pm) going into the office.  We have some work from home capability to make up some hours so we have been trying to front load hours on Sundays so the first shift person can go in a little late and the second shift person can leave work a little early.  We see each other for approx 10 minutes each working day. And your non-working time is being "on" with the kids.  IT FUCKING SUCKS.  We will probably end up using some PTO/unpaid time at some point to save our sanity.  Kids cant go to anyone else as our family in the area is super high risk and I dont trust anyone else to be responsible not only for my kids but for their own interactions with society.  Good luck!  Do whatever you need to do. 

[mizzourah2006]

How are people with young children handling this with daycares closed? We have a 4 and a 2 year old. My entire team is on the younger side, so I'm the only one with children outside of one other colleague who's spouse is a SAH parent. On the other side my wife is still expected to go into work and she is hourly. Obvioulsy in worst case scenario I'm sure she could get some sort of short term unpaid leave of absence, but that's not ideal. Just curious how others are handling this if they are in similar situations. I'm likely to find myself as daycare worker with some meetings during the day and an employee during the evenings if this goes on much longer, which it's looking like it will.

My wife & I are both salaried. I have to be on for my 40 hours, which I can set (as long as they are within reason). I typically work 5:45-1:45. She has scheduled Zoom meetings, but the rest of her work can be done whenever is most convenient for her. So we kind of juggle watching the kid around. If I'm not on a call or in the middle of a pressing issue, then I can entertain him while I "work." She gets most of her work done in the evening.

Both of us working from home makes things pretty easy. Worst case scenario, we'd take him to her parents' for a day if we both had a lot of things that weren't flexible.

Interesting, I'm also salaried, but a lot of my work requires concentration, it's not as simple as calls, etc. Programming DL models, data cleaning, ML models, etc. I haven't been very successful at entertaining them while working. It's in their rooms playing with toys, or out back on the trampoline, etc. unless I can get them to sit down and watch Disney + for an hour or so. My wife is hourly, so if she isn't at work she's using sick time or personal days or not getting paid. We don't have family close and technically I guess all of our parents would likely be considered moderately "high risk" as they are all in their 60s, so I doubt they'd be willing to really help out anyway. My sister lives near my mom and she hasn't seen them once since the beginning of March.

I know others are in much worse situations, but I'd really hate to be working until 9 PM most nights for the next ~2 months.

Husband and I are both salary and work at the same essential company.  We have kids the same age as yours.  We switch weekly between first shift (6am-2pm) and second shift (3pm-11pm) going into the office.  We have some work from home capability to make up some hours so we have been trying to front load hours on Sundays so the first shift person can go in a little late and the second shift person can leave work a little early.  We see each other for approx 10 minutes each working day. And your non-working time is being "on" with the kids.  IT FUCKING SUCKS.  We will probably end up using some PTO/unpaid time at some point to save our sanity.  Kids cant go to anyone else as our family in the area is super high risk and I dont trust anyone else to be responsible not only for my kids but for their own interactions with society.  Good luck!  Do whatever you need to do.

Wow, yeah. You make our situation look like a vacation. Good luck to you both as well! Let's hope this ends soon.

[mrs sideways]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

[jojoguy]

Me and the wife work in retail and we are now overnights for the duration of the pandemic to avoid the crowds.

[Zaga]

Change for me this week, I just got furloughed.  So I will be doing things to work on our budding winery and also working in the yard/garden.  DH is essential fortunately, we are fine on just his income.

[vand]

How are people with young children handling this with daycares closed?

I type with one hand and childcare with the other!

[Arbitrage]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

This is us (7 and 9 year old), except that we're both working full-time from home, so we have to somehow manage the kids while also putting in 50 hours per week or so.  Yeah...

Thankfully for us, it sounds like our kids are handling the situation a bit better than yours, but we're still having tons of challenges managing this.

[Phenix]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

My wife and I are in a similar situation.  She's a SAHM trying to handle our two boys (4 & 2) while being 34 weeks pregnant.  My 4yo is acting out as he's no longer seeing any of his friends from preschool, hasn't been to the library for story time in over a month, and can't go play with his cousins at the park.  My 2yo mimics everything my 4yo does but typically steps it up a notch so my poor wife is trying to keep them quiet while I lock myself in my office for 8 hours each day.  The weather has been fairly nice, but our house sits on a small lot fairly close to the road so it's not optimal for playing outdoors (we would typically opt for the nearby playground which is now off limits due to the virus).

When the weather is nice, I eat my lunch while working and then take the boys off her hands for an hour so she doesn't go crazy.  Taking them to an empty parking lot with their power wheels is always a fun time.  I make them get themselves unstuck whenever they run into something or go off into the grass.  They generally take a good afternoon nap afterward.

[GuitarStv]

Well, we got a 20% staff reduction and company wide 20% pay cut today - to be in effect until end of December at least.  Still expected to do more work than we were doing before the work from home thing started though.  Gotta make up for all the people who have been fired.

:S

[mm1970]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

We bought a hammock.  I've considered a blow up swimming pool (for summer) and a trampoline also...not a lot of space for the trampoline in the front, but maybe could fit a 10 footer.

[ChickenStash]

My department went mostly WFH starting Monday. For the first week they're rotating a few people on-site just in case they need a presence but I suspect that will change. Other departments are still mostly on-site for some reason. Very little of what we do can't be done remotely and our VPN is pretty stable.

It's nice not to drive in but I miss the human contact a little. I suspect I'm going to go stir crazy in a week or two between WFH and most gatherings in the city closed down.

We've gone full WFH for everyone we can. We've done a host of upgrades to handle the increased VPN and remote application load.

Being in IT, I'm very surprised how many of my coworkers don't have a decent WFH setup. People are swiping their monitors, docks, keyboards, etc. from their cubes so they can have a better setup at home, trying to find good desks and chairs. In normal times, our role includes a lot of after-hours and on-call work (24x7 company) so I would have thought most would already be kitted out at home. Not really a problem, just interesting.

[StarBright]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

We bought a hammock.  I've considered a blow up swimming pool (for summer) and a trampoline also...not a lot of space for the trampoline in the front, but maybe could fit a 10 footer.

Was just looking at the costs of blow up pools today. We are starting to count on social distancing until at least July based on the rumblings we are hearing.

[mm1970]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

We bought a hammock.  I've considered a blow up swimming pool (for summer) and a trampoline also...not a lot of space for the trampoline in the front, but maybe could fit a 10 footer.

Was just looking at the costs of blow up pools today. We are starting to count on social distancing until at least July based on the rumblings we are hearing.

Just got an email from United that I can change or get credit for my birthday trip in June, (until the end of April we can do that).  So.  Yeah. Prob do that tonight, then try and get a refund from AirBNB.  Then I'll have money for the blow up pool!  More concerned about the water cost, actually.

[mm1970]

My department went mostly WFH starting Monday. For the first week they're rotating a few people on-site just in case they need a presence but I suspect that will change. Other departments are still mostly on-site for some reason. Very little of what we do can't be done remotely and our VPN is pretty stable.

It's nice not to drive in but I miss the human contact a little. I suspect I'm going to go stir crazy in a week or two between WFH and most gatherings in the city closed down.

We've gone full WFH for everyone we can. We've done a host of upgrades to handle the increased VPN and remote application load.

Being in IT, I'm very surprised how many of my coworkers don't have a decent WFH setup. People are swiping their monitors, docks, keyboards, etc. from their cubes so they can have a better setup at home, trying to find good desks and chairs. In normal times, our role includes a lot of after-hours and on-call work (24x7 company) so I would have thought most would already be kitted out at home. Not really a problem, just interesting.

We have almost nothing.  We have a computer desk in the living room for our home computer.  But otherwise?  2BR, 1BA house with 2 kids. 
- Husband working on a fold out table in the LR, swiped a monitor from work, bought a keyboard, bought a chair.
- I'm working on a desk in the kids' room that husband built.  Had to buy a chair to get it the right height for laptop, but also now have to have a pkg of TP under my feet.  He also bought a small TV (no monitors avail) for me. Crappy visuals but better than laptop.
- I had to order a headset for my conf calls.
- Kid #1 working on a card table in our bedroom for school (he's a teen)
- Kid #2 working on a card table in the LR/DR for school (he's 7)

After hours and on-call work is prob occasional, and not 8 hrs a day, so you can manage with a laptop on the kitchen table and a cell phone. I assume.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

Husband is WFH as a programmer. It's not an ideal setup: he has to VPN over to his workstation in his office a lot. He relies on noise-cancelling headphones and a really good chair, two splurges, to stay sane while working in a small house with two kids. (Sibley, spend the money and get a nice chair.)

We're doing the best we can with a 7-year old and a 9-year old. I don't know about other people, but I'm glad I'm not working (SAHM), because I'm now a full-time child psychologist, teacher, and entertainer.

The kids have lost their social circles, routine of school, and everything they liked to do outside the house. The parks are all closed. They're clingy and emotional and rambunctious when they're not obnoxious, which means I have to manage them and manage to keep them from bugging my husband who is trying to work. They have gotten SO demanding, constantly jumping on me and trying to get my attention. I can send them outside but there's only so much to do outside our house. And of course there's a scary invisible virus out there, which is freaking them out no matter how reassuring I try to be, because they're worried about their grandparents. The kids are getting lots of headaches, lots of bad sleep, and lots of nightmares, which makes them even worse during the day.

I am *this close* to buying a trampoline and putting it on our front yard just to give them something active to do, because they can only bicycle around the block so many times.

We bought a hammock.  I've considered a blow up swimming pool (for summer) and a trampoline also...not a lot of space for the trampoline in the front, but maybe could fit a 10 footer.

Was just looking at the costs of blow up pools today. We are starting to count on social distancing until at least July based on the rumblings we are hearing.

Just got an email from United that I can change or get credit for my birthday trip in June, (until the end of April we can do that).  So.  Yeah. Prob do that tonight, then try and get a refund from AirBNB.  Then I'll have money for the blow up pool!  More concerned about the water cost, actually.

We have a pool, but have never heated it. If we get a warm enough stretch, we may go for it, to give the kids an activity. It would be a huge help.

Unless we're draining/refilling our pool (and, ours is huge), the cost hasn't been too much. ($50 or so)

[mrs sideways]

We have almost nothing.  We have a computer desk in the living room for our home computer.  But otherwise?  2BR, 1BA house with 2 kids. 
- Husband working on a fold out table in the LR, swiped a monitor from work, bought a keyboard, bought a chair.
- I'm working on a desk in the kids' room that husband built.  Had to buy a chair to get it the right height for laptop, but also now have to have a pkg of TP under my feet.  He also bought a small TV (no monitors avail) for me. Crappy visuals but better than laptop.
- I had to order a headset for my conf calls.
- Kid #1 working on a card table in our bedroom for school (he's a teen)
- Kid #2 working on a card table in the LR/DR for school (he's 7)

After hours and on-call work is prob occasional, and not 8 hrs a day, so you can manage with a laptop on the kitchen table and a cell phone. I assume.

FWIW, here's a virtual high five from an internet stranger for doing what you can in such a small space. Good luck getting through all this.

And high five to Phenix, for making do with a parking lot and Powerwheels. And Jojo for working retail. And all the parents and everyone on reduced hours and everyone who is adjusting their lives or just fighting to get through this. You should feel proud of the sacrifices you're making, and the good you're doing it for.

[Unique User]

My project is on hold for the next 30-60 days, so my hours were reduced to zero.  Filed for unemployment yesterday.  DH is WFH full time.  He is in sales so Mondays and Fridays were always WFH office days, but visiting customers was halted a couple weeks ago.  He works for a small division of a huge company, but his division sells to restaurant franchises, hospitals, small manufacturers, etc.  We expect he'll get furloughed eventually.

My client requested I return Monday at 20 hours a week for the next six weeks and full time after that.  DH was told by management that they will all be paid through the end of June and after that the business will decide on layoffs.  We are very grateful for both and our large emergency fund. 

[mm1970]

Welp, we have credit for our airline flights now.  Airbnb is trickier.  They (parent AirBNB) are only refunding for travel through end May (our trip is June).  Current owner cancellation policy is...I get nothing.  Basically, I can get refunded approx 50% of the TOTAL bill, but I put down 50%, so ... yeah.

Since I can cancel until June 1 with the same sunk cost, I am waiting to see if AirBNB changes their dates to include end June.

On the flip side, if everything settles out sooner (I doubt it), I can always use my airline credit to rebuy the tickets.

[zinnie]

Starting next week most people in my organization get a 20% pay cut.

This just happened to us, too. The #1 question in chat during the announcement was how to change your 401k contributions, which made me sad and also feel lucky to be in the position I am in.

Curious if others have had changes since first posting here!

[PDXTabs]

Starting next week most people in my organization get a 20% pay cut.

The #1 question in chat during the announcement was how to change your 401k contributions, which made me sad and also feel lucky to be in the position I am in.

Well, you might need to change them up if your election is based on a percentage of your salary.

[vikingtantan]

I'm currently working one week full-time and then off for three weeks. I'm labeled as an essential worker at my job site, and all the other essential workers in my department were split up into four teams. Each week a different team works and then has the next 3 weeks off. For the month of April, the company paid for our 3 weeks off through a special Covid-19 paid leave. For May, we're not sure what will happen. I'm still on that one week on/3 weeks off rotation, but no one has any idea if we're getting paid for our mandatory time off yet in May. We'll find on Thursday or Friday of this week. Furloughs have been approved for other departments, so there's a strong possibility that they'll just start furloughing employees soon.

[Missy B]

Off work since mid-March by provincial health order. Can't work remotely. Have no work income and still paying commercial rent but am getting CERB.

Mixed bag with my fellow professionals. Definitely some don't want to go back, we work very closely with clients and they are afraid of getting COVID, esp people with asthma or other issues. Others are really keen to return to work.

[zinnie]

Starting next week most people in my organization get a 20% pay cut.

The #1 question in chat during the announcement was how to change your 401k contributions, which made me sad and also feel lucky to be in the position I am in.

Well, you might need to change them up if your election is based on a percentage of your salary.

Indeed! This is exactly what I did. But yeah, they were asking how to stop all kinds of contributions: 401k, HSA, etc.

[Optimiser]

Just got an email saying that we will all need to transition from WFH back to working in the office full time on May 26th. Everyone in the building has their own offices so I should be able to stay away from everyone most of the time.

I have mixed feelings about this.