It seems everyone is having to adapt. I’ve got a client with another country roaming around it’s systems after having broken in. Thing is we can see what they are doing and they are obviously now WFH and can’t quite get their VPNs working as they keep letting slip where they are 😂
We are flat out on crisis work and receiverships. I take no joy from any of it and just cross fingers everyone hunkers down and we rise this storm somehow. I’ve been very fragile last few weeks, mainly as I had flu (or maybe ....) but also because this completely brings back the fear of living with earthquakes which we had in Nz inc some very scary times.
We're in a holding pattern now at Bird. No idea which way it will go so just sitting tight and fingers crossed for everyone. The summers event plan is out the window obviously, trying to decide just when we'll be able to start back up limited demos/events in order to restart the year.
Also not exactly figured out what to do with the kids for 4 months... I mean I love em and all but I also have a business to run! Current plan is to buy a big TV and a sofa for the corner of the factory. Parenting at its finest.
Personally it’s a bit of a concern, me and the kids will be fine, but wife has a dodgy chest.
My wife is patient-facing NHS with a dodgy chest too. Bronchitis as a kid means every cold she gets she ends up with a hacking cough.
I am worried, but they simply don’t have the stocks of face masks.
Current plan is to buy a big TV and a sofa for the corner of the factory. Parenting at its finest.
Presumably for you whilst they do some sweeping up and cleaning intricate bits that only little fingers can get to?
I work for a certain national telecoms provider, we're not doing well as our CEO has tested positive for Coronavirus.
I'm sub-contracted out to another telecoms company (the one Beardy used to own) to look after there network, pretty much business as usual.
I've got a feeling this may change though, think we'll end up staying at home and just covering service affecting faults!
Presumably for you whilst they do some sweeping up and cleaning intricate bits that only little fingers can get to?
my dad had to take me into work during a school strike. He taught silver smithing. There was a set of rollers for turning sheet metal into foil. While he wasn’t looking I fed my little fingers into it. Got them past the second knuckle quite easily. Reversing them back out again proved more tricky.
Scottish uni here. All teaching is now done remotely, exam approaches being considered. Research is continuing until it isn't. Luckily for me I only have one lecture left to give and my research group have been practicing reduced working hours rather than being in the lab for a while now......
Working for a company who supply body panels for cars. Biggest customer is JLR so who knows how this is going to go. I'm expecting a long Easter break ( already an enforced week off instead of two days) I can see a couple of weeks shut down. Hands on engineer work at the moment but will be able to WFH if necessary, loads of desk work to catch up on!
Mrs F is front line NHS, already been in compromised situation with patient who wasn't screened for covid19 so it's only a matter of time before she/we get it. Sounds like a badly run war zone in her hospital.
My brother is a newsreader for the BBC World Service ...he has got things set up that he could broadcast from home if he had too
Ahsat- remind him to lock the door to prevent toddlers joining the broadcast!
I’m a finance bod working for a construction company. We had a quieter nov/dec/jan than usual due to the election. We had just started to see orders pick up bit that my change. The drop in work had affected money coming in and if it continues I can see salaried staff suffering.
I work in a hospital but am not clinical. Its business as usual except I'm not allowed to goto any site but my base site
@maccruiskeen and I bet you learned the sort of lesson you just don't get in school!
Self isolating at work
Micro business, just us 2 directors but we literally moved in to new premises 2 weeks ago which is looking like spectacularly bad timing after 4 years of WFH.
Where I work has just banned domestic business travel as well (unless it has VP approval). Although I have a company laptop I'm assigned to a gov agency (IT stuff) and for that I need a secure laptop which I don't have (they're scrambling around trying to find some) so that's going to be interesting if I get told to WFH - there's actually nothing I can do...
Cladding fabricator and fitter for tall buildings (a2 panels) and only just survived the fallout from grenfell, can't see much of a future now.
Work for a large cloudy computing company. I work from home anyway and cover EMEA, so main thing is that i've binned all travel. Work is busier than ever due to helping organisations rapidly expand their IT infrastructure to cope with demand. I work in public sector so it's very real working with staff who are under huge pressure and putting in long hours to help the public.
Office based staff being enabled to work from home. Site staff are separated from each other enough that they can continue to work without potential impact on each other and are covered in PPE as a matter of course anyway. Travel all but stopped because all the industry conferences and meetings are being cancelled. Main concern is how to deal with the international shutdown in a business which mainly exports.
Office is like a ghost town, with most teams in tech WFH. My team are, for some reason, all in.
Staff nurse here working in a small peripheral unit that was undergoing a change of use! Not likely to end up as acute however.
I have been off on hols for two weeks so not up to date with what is going on. My patients are a high risk group so I expect reduced visits and increased precautions.
Could I be moved to acute work? Its a possibility and one I don't really fancy. Apart from anything else I do not have the skills!
My parents are definitely at risk. In their 80s and dad has a preexisting chest condition
Just found out that, out of 24, 3 phoned in sick this morning stating coughs and temperatures. That puts us below operational capacity as they'll be off for a week minimum, we can cope for a few days by calling in people on days off but we'll eventually run out of driving hours available by the end of next week. I'm off this week and the boss said to make sure I come back next week and be prepared to do some stupidly long hours as he predicts a few more will go sick over this week. I'm hoping it's just people 'taking a sickie' because they can but seeing as we all come into contact with so many people all over South Wales every day it could be the real article.
Working in France here for a US travel company, so mostly screwed. predicting 40-60% down, which when you're in a business with tiny margins is not great news. however it's making me wonder what I should do next, as to be honest I was having some problems justifying my existence helping wealthy people have nicer vacations... (is that a positive side to this? I really am getting too American!)
otherwise I more concerned about my parents in the UK who seem to be in the "keep calm and carry on" mode, but are definitely in the demographic that's going to be sacrificed under the current herd immunity plan. That's creating a little permanent knot in my stomach. personally I'm a type 1 diabetic, so I'm kind of concerned for myself, already packed the kids off to their mother for, well who knows how long? can't really work from home either. normally this week I should be finishing off a new building for storing another 1700 new bikes. when I figure out how to do that from home I'll let you know!
fully expect to be under an Italian style confinement any day now, so I'll be finishing off some work in my girlfriends house (same village) and riding discreetly around the ventoux on my MTB.
bit rambling all of that, sorry.
Steve.
Conference production for us. Sound, lighting, data and video and set building. 95% for conferences around drug trials. I've got a 2 speaker pa for this evening just come in! 20+ jobs around the world cancelled as of this morning and all the rest on the calendar under review. Basically we are unlikely to have any work at all for the next 6 months. There are just 5 of us but a large number of freelancers none of whom have any work and our trucking company specialise in events so they are also likely to be badly hit. The whole industry has come to a halt along with exhibitions.
We run our own (small) mail order business making bike parts. Orders have dropped off a fair bit which is worrying but hopefully we'll be able to muddle through.
In construction/building services but work remotely doing site surveys & drawings from home - no word from the office & factory on this at all, but that's not unusual 🤔
Due to complete sale of Mrs dB & her ex's house tomorrow, been put back till the 24th, if it goes through we will be fine, if not it's gonna be a struggle if either of us gets laid off.
Head in the sand attitude as per usual here............
Persoanlly I'll be fine - I run a small product design and management company working for a US owned brand in the bike industry. We're still in the office here, though it's only ever two of us, third member of our UK team works remotely anyway. We can work from home no bother, but it will be a testing time as demand for the end product is down and supply chain's already jacked up due to all the earlier issues in China.
However - the business I own with my other half, which she runs, is a pub/restaurant - I'm not exactly positive about the chances of that fighting through. Touch wood, it's actually still ticking along OK - I think people are kind of adopting a bit of a Sean Of The Dead 'Winchester' attitude, and the take away business has increased noticeably - but if it goes lock-down, then no chance. We do know our land lord their pretty well, and are hoping he'll let us away without paying rent if that happens, but we'll have to make some hard calls on staff.
Further - my brother owns a bar and pizza spot in Tignes in the Alps. They're screwed obvs - the resort got fully shutdown on Saturday night....
I guess we'll all find a way through it though. No other choice is there?
One of the teams in our office has 3 staff off 'self isolating' - all started with new coughs.
I'm expecting to be working from home in next two weeks - all tested and working fine on Friday.
First teleconference of the day, skype fell over. This is not going to go smoothly!
Not a company but I’m not sure that the FRA has made the right call here: https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157040030196659&id=665376658&set=gm.10158163491506719&source=48&refid=18&ref=group_header&_ft_=qid.6804753775685882477%3Amf_story_key.10158163491506719%3Agroup_id.44498401718%3Atop_level_post_id.10158163491506719%3Atl_objid.10158163491506719%3Acontent_owner_id_new.665376658%3Asrc.22%3Aphoto_id.10157040030196659%3Astory_location.6%3Astory_attachment_style.photo%3Afilter.GroupStoriesByActivityEntQuery&__tn__=EH-R
large engineering company, on campus with a couple thousand other people. business as usual so far.
Got a conference call this morning. Attendance mandatory, otherwise I wouldn't bother. Whole pnic situation is pissing me off. Thanks **** some people keeping sensible heads - the U12s rugby tournament yesterday went ahead with full attendance, great day. Only difference to normal was bumping elbows instead of shaking hands.
Elbow-touch Rugby?
I work from home normally, but the VPN stopped coping with the additional demand around 10am this morning.
My trade is soft furnisher (making Roman blinds, curtains, cushions etc).
wfh and self employed. Usually at this time of year when coming up to Easter, I'm busy.
Worrying as there is nothing in the pipeline, no orders, no enquiries. Then to make matters worse the company I work for that gives me commissions (she's an interior designer) have shut because of a divorce.
I'm lucky in that hubby still has a job. Really feel for other self employed people.
First teleconference of the day, skype fell over. This is not going to go smoothly!
Ours was a bit flaky too. Apparently, Skype demand has gone through the roof in a week.
Train operators and TfL have taken massive hits. I think TfL was down £400m in lost ticket revenue over the course of last week.
Manufacturing site here. Tier 1 supplier to automotive. Current company line is to carry on as normal until the government says otherwise. Oh, and don't forget to wash your hands.
Visitors are as good as banned, but I don't think there were many trying to turn up anyway.
I can work from home and occasionally do, but if it comes to it there's going to be some difficult decisions from management as to who can and can't WFH.
Also, don't think we'd be much good at making ventilators - wrong type of manufacture.
Train operators and TfL have taken massive hits. I think TfL was down £400m in lost ticket revenue over the course of last week.
London Underground line controller here, job is pretty safe so no complaints on that score! It's weird seeing the platforms so empty on a Monday, traffic on the streets is noticeably quieter as well. Made for a nice ride in this morning though.
I can't see some of the small businesses surviving without the tourists and workers walk past trade, coffee shops and takeaway food outlets look deserted.
Carpet cleaner hire repair engineer, visiting upto 10 different shops a day, cleaning people's shit piss and puke off our machines on a daily basis, with a compromised immune system due to having to take steroids on a daily basis, am recovering from pneumonia in January and have COPD!
Nothings changed yet!
Scientist for a pharma CRO, we rely on a lot of people using lot of technical equipment in a certain environment so limited WFH.
Huge supply of face masks etc as we stockpiled ready for Brexit. So tyvek suits to go shopping...
We are splitting teams, elevators, floors, canteen and only tech staff allowed on site.
We have some stability testing programs that could be shafted which is worrying. Most of our clients are in a similar boat.
Conference production for us. Sound, lighting, data and video and set building. 95% for conferences around drug trials. I’ve got a 2 speaker pa for this evening just come in! 20+ jobs around the world cancelled as of this morning and all the rest on the calendar under review. Basically we are unlikely to have any work at all for the next 6 months. There are just 5 of us but a large number of freelancers none of whom have any work and our trucking company specialise in events so they are also likely to be badly hit. The whole industry has come to a halt along with exhibitions.
Not me (retired) but my son and I can recognise your situation.....
A self employed sound engineer. He had a full schedule of work mapped out for the year..... festivals, tours plus some fill in corporate work in the near future. Now he has no idea what will go ahead but fears the worst.The corporate stuff has died up already. One company he regularly works for have pulled out of any new equipment investment. Another company would normally have a lot of kit out at different venues but now it's all in their trucks, with not enough warehousing to unload it .
Very worrying.
I've been sent home from work. I have a cough and feel achey. No temperature though.
Had a conference call with our middle management this afternoon (I’m one of two directors). The first question I got on the call when I started outlining my expectations on increased home working was if the company would foot the bill for the additional gas and electricity bills employees would face. I despair.
That's a tax claim IIRC, not sure how it works for normally office bound employees but certainly self employed can claim on utilities.
I’m an aircraft engineer for a major airline . Based in a hanger so today has kind of been business as usual but the wait for the inevitable punch in the gut is starting to grate .
IT consultant for a software company. My customers can be all over Europe. Projects run for months if not years & am currently working on a public sector project in Norway. I work 1 week remote, 1 week on-site for them.
The customer has made everyone work from home since last Thursday. Good thing too as the Norwegian government closed their borders today and I was due to travel this afternoon. I also see the FCO have just advised against non-essential travel to Norway.
I had a team member on site last week from Slovakia. He flew home on Friday via Vienna. As all public transport across the border is shut down, he got a taxi to the nearest village, walked 5 km to the border and a further 3.5km home in the snow. He’s now in enforced quarantine at home for two weeks. Another colleague is in Slovenia. He expects to be locked down very shortly.
