Whole company went back in July. Few hundred home office employees. There have definitely been positive tests. Entire UND department was quarantined for 2 weeks at one point. There has been significant pushback. My dept is tiny and I interact with no one really face to face, but I disagreed with the call. At least 1 employee left as a result, mainly due to lack of ability to take care of her kids who weren’t going back to school.
Wow. That’s a really irresponsible call showing a complete disregard for both the health of employees and people they will spread it to. Seems there is no good reason why actuarial work cannot be done from home.
There arent too many areas if any in the US right now where that would make sense.
Yeah that’s what I thought. I suspect there are political motivations. Also there are large departments that don’t have the technical capacity to work from home still, so it was kind of a weird thing. If stuff starts shutting down again it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
This is me too. I want to go back. My Monday and Wednesday are both jammed full of meetings. It would be nice to do those in person and be more engaged. I could also hit the company gym up (much needed at this point in quarantine) and spend some time face to face with my direct reports. That said Tuesday my schedule is almost always wide open so staying home and knocking out technical work would be great. Obviously staying home Friday is nice as well. Thursday would probably be a wild card every week.
Also for a weird office story I have a direct report who is applying for permanent worker status and part of the process is posting his job to make sure no Americans qualify to replace him. I also had to post it in our office so I went in 2 weeks ago and used the printer to print the job posting and stick it on the board in the break room. The printer prints a diagnostic check every day at some point and it has the date and some phone numbers for tech help with Xerox. Anyway the only thing in the printer tray in the office was about 50 of these diagnostic reports in a stack. It kind of felt like being in the office after the zombie apocalypse or something.
1 Like
now you know what it would look like
1 Like
about 40% of company employees came back over time. its been 6 months and we had 1 positive case (literally the first week back, which freaked some people out, but turned out to be a non-issue). I wash hands before I eat anything and avoid standing/sitting right next to people. No one comes in if they have any illness with symptoms.
Its a nice atmosphere here since its voluntary to come in.
My entire office has been moved to permanent remote WFH. So not going back.
‘Totes jelly’…as they say
I’m not sure. Probably. I expect they’ll work on moving everyone back to the office eventually.
I’ve been considering requesting to WFH permanently. Wife and I are only really here for my job. She doesn’t have a lot of local prospects…and moving to somewhere that doesn’t suck during the winter would be nice.
1 Like
Currently quarantined with Sr. Hoffman who is COVID+, so … even if we all go back to the office tomorrow, I’ll be out for at least as long as he’s symptomatic + 10-14 days. 
Do we have a threat to bitch about things where it’s more than just annoying?
Hope your dad recovers quickly with no long-lasting side effects.
Thanks. Me too. Of course, I’m going to live forever so I’m not worried about me - and a few weeks back after being with him, I decided I wasn’t getting old either. Which makes sense, really: if you’re never dying but you’re going to get old, kind of defeats the purpose of never dying.
And since I’m going to live forever and never get old, being in quarantine with a parent who’s got COVID but not getting it myself should be trivial.
yikes, sorry to hear Ted. I hope your dad gets well soon. how old is he?
i’m not sure how you would avoid catching it yourself, but good luck. 
I like where your head’s at
1 Like
I prefer working in the office. Unfortunately, a lot of our stuff is still done via paper, and a great majority of the older stuff is NOT scanned to the network drive.
Plus, I think it gives a better home/work division. When WFH, it’s way too easy to break away for little things like a nooner, or an extended lunch, or hang that picture frame or help my son w/ some homework.
Also, I like to talk to people face to face. In the office it’s a lot easier to involve more than one person in a conversation.
That said, I wouldn’t mind working from home from time to time. But management here is pretty against it. Once offices were allowed to reopen, we were right back at it.
I miss talking to people face to face, and sad that we aren’t having a holiday party this year 
If it was completely up to me, I’d be in the office 1-2 days a week, and that’s it.
1 Like
I’m hoping to work from home indefinitely, and go to the physical office once every other week or so.
I am hoping not to go back at all, except when I have to for an occasional compliance meeting or to do something on the NML computer (troglodytes 
).
Every single thing I do besides that I’ve been doing from home with no problem.
Everyone that I work with is in another state entirely, so the fact that I’ve had to show up in an office at all for the last nine years is kind of a joke. I would drive (or ride) an hour, get to my cubicle, interact with nobody at all in person for eight or nine hours, then drive (or ride) another hour to get home. Total waste of time.
They know precisely what I think already. If they try to make me go back for anything beyond the above, they know what to expect in response.
This sounds like the start of a comedy movie