I thought I ought to jot down some stuff during this once in a lifetime experience known as Covid-19, or corona virus, or some other shit if you're a racist ass hole. This has been my experience:
I have been able to work from home once a week for years. Work has been cool about that. I usually do so on Thursdays. So all February I had been reading headlines regarding this corona virus that was apparently decimating China. I didn't do much research or anything because it was miles away, right?
I then remember hearing the World Health Organization(WHO) saying this is going from and epidemic to a pandemic. I didn't really know what that meant. By now, it's early March. Our shitty president tries to downplay the whole thing. "No worse than the flu". "Young people are not the ones dying from it" etc. Stupid shit to repeat, really. Because I believed some of it. Mostly the, "I'm younger so I'll be fine" bits.
Well it was March 12th, 2020, a Thursday, a work from home day. I was doing my usual thing, I think I was had just started a new project that week. So I was working as usual and we started getting some emails about not coming in to work. By this time, America was still blowing it off and not really giving a shit. I think Washington was starting to get bad, and the Bay Area was projecting to be bad. We got word of some cases in LA County, and so they were taking it really seriously. There were meetings where they said, "If you're going out of the country please let us know, or if you were just recently out of the country or around folks who were, please let HR know".
Then they just kicked us all out. It basically came down to only essential crew for the upcoming film were going to be at the office. Like story folks and director types I think. Everyone else was going to shift to work from home. What I liked about all of this was the technology group was pretty up front about it. They must've had lots of meetings where they were like, "Dude, there's literally NO WAY we can have all 900+ folks working from home on VPN".
At the time there were probably 4 or so active projects in the works. So they decided to make 3 of the 4 stop active production. They were basically communicating still, but couldn't actually do work, and then the upcoming movie would be allowed to VPN in and work while the upgraded things to work. So I kind of got a paid 2 week vacation(except unlike vacations, I still got overtime which was swell.)
So I spent 2 weeks at home with my wife and 3 kids, but not really able to go anywhere or see anyone...and it was raining for a lot of at least one of those weeks. And my daughter who was 5 months at the time, was fussy as fuck, so it was actually both a terrific time and a hot mess. By week 3, I was back to work which displeased my wife...
I have been able to work from home once a week for years. Work has been cool about that. I usually do so on Thursdays. So all February I had been reading headlines regarding this corona virus that was apparently decimating China. I didn't do much research or anything because it was miles away, right?
I then remember hearing the World Health Organization(WHO) saying this is going from and epidemic to a pandemic. I didn't really know what that meant. By now, it's early March. Our shitty president tries to downplay the whole thing. "No worse than the flu". "Young people are not the ones dying from it" etc. Stupid shit to repeat, really. Because I believed some of it. Mostly the, "I'm younger so I'll be fine" bits.
Well it was March 12th, 2020, a Thursday, a work from home day. I was doing my usual thing, I think I was had just started a new project that week. So I was working as usual and we started getting some emails about not coming in to work. By this time, America was still blowing it off and not really giving a shit. I think Washington was starting to get bad, and the Bay Area was projecting to be bad. We got word of some cases in LA County, and so they were taking it really seriously. There were meetings where they said, "If you're going out of the country please let us know, or if you were just recently out of the country or around folks who were, please let HR know".
Then they just kicked us all out. It basically came down to only essential crew for the upcoming film were going to be at the office. Like story folks and director types I think. Everyone else was going to shift to work from home. What I liked about all of this was the technology group was pretty up front about it. They must've had lots of meetings where they were like, "Dude, there's literally NO WAY we can have all 900+ folks working from home on VPN".
At the time there were probably 4 or so active projects in the works. So they decided to make 3 of the 4 stop active production. They were basically communicating still, but couldn't actually do work, and then the upcoming movie would be allowed to VPN in and work while the upgraded things to work. So I kind of got a paid 2 week vacation(except unlike vacations, I still got overtime which was swell.)
So I spent 2 weeks at home with my wife and 3 kids, but not really able to go anywhere or see anyone...and it was raining for a lot of at least one of those weeks. And my daughter who was 5 months at the time, was fussy as fuck, so it was actually both a terrific time and a hot mess. By week 3, I was back to work which displeased my wife...
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