Could you work on that program? Please?

[jducoeur]

On the one hand, I quite appreciate that Kate's employer has set up a robo-call to tell her that the office is closed due to snow.

I'm slightly less happy about being woken up at 5:30 by that call, but I can understand that it needs to be early if it's going to catch everyone before they start prepping to leave for work.

I'm significantly less happy about it calling us *three times* between 5:30 and 6:30 -- the first time simply calling and hanging up without saying anything. We did manage to get a bit of sleep in between the calls, but it started our day unnecessarily tense: very little wakes me up quite so abruptly as the phone, and it takes a good while to get my heartrate back down again.

So -- big points for the right idea. But somebody needs to do some debugging there...

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I prefer my employer's method.

They didn't say anything, except to point out that the office would be available if it was safe to come in.

We're supposed to get our work done.

Everyone, on BOTH my projects, informed the others that we'll be working at home, and it seems everyone is.

I like that we hire adults, and expect them to behave that way.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

That's basically what my company does. The office is open, but if school is closed where we live or where we work, 90% of us stay home and work from home. And we work from home so often in general that everyone's already got the routine down.

[dreda.livejournal.com]

I'm curious - does everyone at your workplace have job duties that allow them to work from home? Closing-or-not is pertinent for me because I *cannot* do my job from home; no job I have ever had or been qualified for or trained for has been in that kind of field.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

We do have staff (largely support staff, IT, front desk) that cannot work from home. They know that, unless we close the building, their jobs require them to come in. We can (and have) closed the building, but we rarely do. On the other hand, it is OFTEN the case that on days before major holidays, our support staff goes home early, after working half a day. We're fair-minded, pretty much.

Sometimes our regular staff have to come in. For example, if the phase of work I am in requires that I work on physical prototypes, I have to come in. I've also driven in during snow storms to interview candidates for jobs.

But, we're still treated like adults: you know what your job entails, you do your job. If you have discretion, you may exercise it. A manager I had years ago encapsulated the idea well: "We ask an awful lot of you here. If you get it done, we don't care how. If you don't get it done, we don't care why". (But his eyes were twinkling as he said that last bit: British humor.)

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Simmons sends us text messages and emails to let us know, but not an actual phone call. My library, on the other hand, has an actual human in the person of the director call everybody manually. I imagine that's easier to do when your total staff only numbers about 12 to 15.

[jducoeur]

Yaas. Whereas Kate's employer has multiple skyscrapers downtown -- manually isn't going to cut it...

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

I just don't keep a phone anywhere near the bedroom. I can think of pretty much nothing that MUST have my attention in the middle of the night now that the kids are not my problem on party nights.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

At my last position, there was a number for us to call out to in case of increment weather. Now I don't work there anymore, they call me to tell me about it early. Not at improvement. (Assume it's from a change of management, with lesser values and who have lost track of my position. Still not a help.)

[rosinavs.livejournal.com]

My company called once to say that the office was open but infrastructure would be limited, and people should talk to their managers about whether to come in. I had already decided I would stay home, and had talked to my manager about it. The only issue was that my husband, not hearing what the call said, thought it was one of the new pay calls and that I was calling them back when trying to click on the number to get the robo-message.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Be grateful. My company recently had a two-hour delay due to bad weather and would be opening at 10AM instead of 8AM. I was already there when I found out about the delay. When I got home, my wife informed me that I had received an automated call informing me of the two-hour delay. The call came at 10:48AM.