Employer mandating work from home - happy Covid-19

Just thought I'd start this off, since I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I work for a very large health insurance company, I'm in the IT Major Incident Response group. We have 40K+ employees all across the U.S.. Due to the Covid-19 / coronavirus hysteria, many of our locations are closing down and employees are being told to work from home.

We were told this morning that for those of us based in California, this will be mandatory, and we will likely get the official word some day this week.

Good thing I drink Guinness .... I'm immune to Corona viruses

 

I work in a hospital....on medical equipment...I am currently drinking a Guinness at home...I still have to go to work tomorrow...They won't ship the damn anesthesia machines to my house!

 

My job has been pretty quiet about what there doing. I've gotten more and better updates from places I've done business with that had my email then from my own employer. I work in the field in customer homes and my work said it's not if but when an employee gets it. Maybe well get you a bar of soap and a bottle of water ,oh and it's just a little worse then a cold. Meanwhile managers are there sitting isolated in there offices with there doors closed. Please dont come in to my office just call me.

 

Happy and hysteria?
Well, I work in a hospital, so I don't have that option. I can assure you the people in Italy and much of Europe right now aren't happy or calling it hysteria. Hopefully we never know.

 

Yes and no. The ICU is business as normal but the ER has seen a definite dropoff. We barely have enough nurses to keep all wards open as it is though, so not sure what an increase will do to us. Lots of longer hours I suppose.

 

Accidentally posted this in the Northern CA version of this too...
"It is a little nuts here now. I would be surprised if our "lockdown" is only till the 27th, thinking much longer. I have more conference calls tomorrow. Been self quarantined since Friday (13th). Except for scheduled times today to retrieve items from our building for 20 minutes today.

Wore my mask and gloves the whole time. Not exactly as much fun as Fallout 4.

I keep finishing projects here at home and trying to keep myself amused with TV and memes.

This may sound like an odd thing on our truck forum....but typing this is making me feel better.
Thanks
Stay Safe"

 

I’m planning on hitting Costco tomorrow. May people be sheltering in place and the shelves be stocked (a first world prayer).

Edit (Costco report):

5 out of 5 stars. Arrived Wens (3/18/2020) at 10 AM. Parking lot was XMAS eve packed.

Costco had pre sanitized carts, all checkout lines open, pre checkout checkers. I only did focused strategic shopping. No browsing through the OLED TV’s etc. Went directly to non refrigerated fruit juice, canned stuff (soup, tuna), etc. Couldn’t pass up the stuffed salmon.

I was loading the truck at 10:30 AM.

 

We upgraded our systems this past week to allow for more online users, by the end of next week they are expecting 2000 remote workers, with more to come.

 

It is a little nuts, I worry because places/stores/etc are closing and then people get hungry and scared.

 

I work in education administration at our system office. We are working at home this week due to an employee who says she has virus symptoms. We are at home until her test results come back. We have a two hour window tomorrow to go into the building and get files and what we need for a while. Our 70 campuses are teaching online as best they can.

 

We've been told to work from home if possible and they're upgrading the VPN to handle more users (while telling us to please be gentle with it). I can go to work if I need to, but my boss wants us to put it on the team calendar so we can keep a minimum number of people. Fortunately my team tends to travel and work remote regularly anyway, so we've got all the right tools.

I'm pretty good with working from home, but that usually assumes I can escape to a coffee shop once a week or so and see something different. This is going to be a challenge.

Earlier when I was making dinner I was tossing around ideas about what this is going to look like going forward. Its not a regular natural disaster, its not a war; we can't clean it up and we can't sign a treaty. Its also insanely persistent, if we back off on whatever mitigations we put in place it can spring back (the 1918 Spanish Flu did that.). Until we get an effective vaccine, this is going to be an issue.

 

At my employer it's managers and office staff that's staying home to work. Anyone in the field is required to work.

 

I work for an IT consulting firm.

After the last two weeks, I'm confident that I could setup a Sonicwall Secure Mobile Access VPN concentrator in my sleep now.
I sure am glad I setup my home office last year, since we're all working remotely as well.

Going a little stir-crazy over here, tbh.
I'm also thinking about growing out my sysadmin beard finally. Got a nice head start.

 

I'm a machinist at an industrial shop and I still have to come in to run parts obviously but most of the office folks were told to work from home and only come in if necessary.

And they gave us an extra week of sick time to use if we needed it. Ah, hell yea. I'll need it in about 8 weeks to go camping.

 

IT for the feds. Shelter in place because of asthma and location (LA). Paid administrative leave. No connection to work except for Skype meetings and what I can do from my phone. Mostly online training for now.
I do finally have time to get stuff done around the house. Maybe even so some improvements to my 4Runner.

My wife is a nurse at a local hospital she works at that has had 8 positives so far. We have to keep a distance just in case so no touching, kissing. Sleeping in separate rooms for now. I don't think it's possible to be unaffected if she gets it being in the same house.