After the unexpected death of my previous employer the newspaper group was closed. A few of us took over one of the titles and over the last 20 months have really moved the paper forward beating the local rival.
Now this.
When a lot of your advertisers are bars, pubs, restaurants and theatre groups you sudden;y see be gaps appearing on the page plans.
I don't know how long we'll bother sticking out issues as the distribution costs are the same for 8 pages as 80.
Then if we do restart it who knows how many customers will have survived.
Pretty gutted.
I'm field based for a medical devices company and across the course of last week most hospital trusts started restricting our access so the decision pretty much got made for us.
Looking at how insecure some peoples positions are with work I'm feeling blessed as our main product is ventilators so busier than we've ever been but would rather this wasn't the reason.
On the plus side I'm leading training sessions via ZOOM and getting so proficient that when this all settles down it may be the new way of working and cut down on windscreen time, every cloud and all that.
Charity - beneficiary services and fundraising events decimated for the forseeable. Team have put as much as they can online, but engagement and impact will be lower for the group we help. We're just measuring the size of the hole.
Team member prevented from taking monitor and keyboard home as they're not asset tagged, despite written approval from MD. Laptop is fine as it's tagged. Monitor and keyboard are cheap old rubbish.
Security suggested that she take it out a side door but then the risk is on her. Some senior managers are not behaving sensibly.
Civil Service and we're planning well, WFH, everyone has laptops. Those needing to contribute to response will be in offices, labs etc. We're a fairly adaptable bunch and I'm more worried about the isolation of everyone working remotely for an extended period. I did 7 weeks from mid-December after breaking a leg and it was tortuous near the end.
Well, this is all looking a bir grim.
Current situation is the ship is 100Nm off the coast of Guyana. Normal trip lengths are 4 weeks. I've been asked to stay an extra week already, but Guyanese authorities have just stopped all international flights for 14 days.
No option to get off the ship for now, as all flights home go Guyana to Caribbean islands or Panama. All closed off except Barbados, but I'm sure that's going to change.
Going to carry on drilling until we can't no more because lack of logistics from Trinidad will bring it to a stop.
The best plan we have at the moment is keep working for another 20 days or so, then head to Barbados anchor off and see if we can formulate an escape plan from there.
Poop, going be a L...o...n...g hitch, probably 45-50 days onboard instead of normal 28. As work is 12 hours a day, everyday of the week, it starts to get a bit tiring after a while.
Engineer/technical stuff in PU industry that supplies automotive market. My Mrs has symptoms so we've self isolated - had my CAD desktop and monitor dropped off so effectively catching up on outstanding Solidworks jobs. First time WFH - too many distractions!!!!!
Office staff who can WFH are now at home - enough shopfloor are in that production can continue but we know car plants are on stop so in a few weeks time it backs up to us and we'll go on short time/redundancies.
Does anyone know about staff being told not to work for a period and this 'clashing' with annual leave? I need to take a few weeks off before end April and I'm anticipating most of the staff being told not to attend during that period. I know its exceptional circumstances but I'm a tad miffed about folk effectively getting extra time off whilst my leave couldn't be timed worse. I'm already carrying over leave to next year. Could I justifiably argue to carry over more than is normally allowed? Thanks
Just had to pay for $90k worth of SRAM stuff. Alas I blinked and in the 2 weeks since I ordered it the pound fell 10% against the USD. Thats not going to be helpful for the UK at all... bugger.
Bike mechanic here.
We're f****d.
No one is buying and no one wants their bike serviced. Training sessions etc all cancelled.
On the bright side I did find a small container of hand sanitiser in the shed at home, that's gotta be worth a few grand on ebay...
boriselbrus, you must have some IPA knocking around the workshop, you could make some santiser to sell....
I work as a visa courier. I'm getting made redundant along with many others at my company.
IHN
Member
More easily avoided here by not looking at the main CV thread.Yeah, I stuck my head in there briefly. Makes the Brexit thread look like the Oxford Debating Society
To be fair the CV-Conspiracy thread has been taken over by the Brexit thread loonies .. its difficult to tell the two threads apart now. But I do think the Coronavirus is less anxiety provoking for them because there are facts to rein in their wild thought disordered views on Brexit.
Project Manager for a big multinational Engineering/Defence contractor here - i can WFH short term, but my current job role does benefit from face to face contact with the rest of my team, and also time spent in the factory where we build the stuff we design.
Today was the first day most of us de-camped home for the foreseeable - the global IT network groaned and crashed - apparently it wasn't designed to support almost everyone working remotely via VPN..
If this goes on more than 4 weeks our business will suffer but we're working on big projects for the UK Navy so it'll still be there on the other side of this.
JCB toyota and Nissan all close down uk bases, Merseyrail half all train services, buses going to be only accepting cards and passes soon not cash,schools closed from friday indefinately.
Last day out visiting contacts today. Property inspections cancelled with details to be taken by phone. Proper judicial meetings to be confirmed.
Not enough laptops for us all to work from home. Can do general research on the home PC and use work mobile to contact people, but need to go in one or two a week.
Our obscure corner of the civil service links to one of the high profile issues around government support in this crisis, which may actually help us get the data we need. Mentioned that to a contact I met today, was interesting to see them finally realise how the info they give us feeds into the system and then supports their clients.
Civil service update - our parent department has sent the majority of its staff to work from home as they have laptops or tablets.
This has crashed their internet capacity.
Which has also crashed it for us in the office, as we decided to share IT services last year.
Great efficiency saving that was!
Well, this is all looking a bir grim.
Current situation is the ship is 100Nm off the coast of Guyana. Normal trip lengths are 4 weeks. I’ve been asked to stay an extra week already, but Guyanese authorities have just stopped all international flights for 14 days.
No option to get off the ship for now, as all flights home go Guyana to Caribbean islands or Panama. All closed off except Barbados, but I’m sure that’s going to change.
Going to carry on drilling until we can’t no more because lack of logistics from Trinidad will bring it to a stop.
The best plan we have at the moment is keep working for another 20 days or so, then head to Barbados anchor off and see if we can formulate an escape plan from there.
Poop, going be a L…o…n…g hitch, probably 45-50 days onboard instead of normal 28. As work is 12 hours a day, everyday of the week, it starts to get a bit tiring after a while.
seadog , feeling for you on that one. thats harsh.. Take care of your mental health , Take time for you/and your crew as needed. In these times a time out for safety has never had more potential to save lives as folk get more frustrated.
How ever - its also good to focus on tasks(drilling) to keep mind off the facts of the matter.
seeing the trouble we are having getting equipment and supplies to send to the UKCS i can only imagine how it is out of trinidad.
We were informed today that anyone who's not presenting symptoms may be drafted in to go offshore to meet demand - another well thought out knee jerk plan.
Off-Site construction. Looks like we've got an order for a 24 bed ward to be completed in 12 weeks.
big multinational engineering firm...
work from home now the default position, with time in office as and when needed
red team, blue team, never the two shall meet
distancing rules being laid down for any in-office time
the WFH is for us desk jockeys; production staff going to the red/blue rota, with distancing rules.
Whose missed their first VidConf because they were washing their bike then??
🤷♂️
Despite my initial cynicism, my company have played a blinder in looking after us. Operations closed down initially until the end of April, But on full pay still.
much like others, those who can work from home unless you need to run something in a lab.
production and service staff have spread out to occupy the vacant areas.
not sure what it'll do to the order book, but given we have had a 4-8 week lead time on most products for as long as I can remember, hopefully we'll be building as much stock as we can for when things get back to normal.
Getting towards the end of first week of working from home, and with living alone, I am starting to feel the isolation already. Some predictions are that this will need to go on for 12-18 months.
I always considered myself a bit of a loner, but faced with the reality it seems I was wrong. I don't think I can hack the mentality of this level of isolation for more than a few weeks before my attitude changes to "**** it"
Y’a need coping strategies then.
Plenty online if you need em.
I’ve been WFH for 15yrs, popping into the office once a week... but that feels like a massive waste of time.
I suspect many will look at their families and ask themselves “so, what is it you actually do”?
As a social experiment the results will be interesting reading.
I suspect many will look at their families and ask themselves “so, what is it you actually do”?
and the opposite...
How does one go about applying for government assistance?
Grants available April and loans from 23 March 2020 apparently. The type of assistance (grant or loan etc) and the amount depends on the nature of your business:
Our company closed all pubs and restaurants at 3pm yesterday. After Boris told people not to come it was a waste of time even opening - the majority of our lunchtime trade is the older crowd so we were empty.
There are a few key staff in today doing stocktakes and shutting everything down for the foreseeable. There was a firkin of Purity Gold already tapped so they're disposing of that whilst they're working as I told them under no circumstances are they allowed to let it go to waste.
The promise of loans at 'attractive rates' from the government isn't going to help. When the hospitality industry has been decimated, why would anyone want to burden themselves with yet more debt?
Hopefully some good news comes of today with financial support from the government as 34 of us wondering how we'll be paid. Too many don't have a reserve of cash to see them through and for the benefit of us all we need the company to be financially viable when we come out the other side.
My boss has organised a daily check in & our weekly lab meetings as normal via zoom
https://twitter.com/trevoragraham/status/1240222845361364992?s=19
I'm still in the office but so far today 3 out of the 4 conf calls I've been in have had dogs barking or kids screaming in the background. A colleague who is WFH says he has to go out and sit in his car to get some quiet during meetings :p
My boss has organised a daily check in & our weekly lab meetings as normal via zoom
We're using MS Teams, so far so good. CEO today suggested that next catch up call should be video rather than just audio.
Could hear the thought process of everyone else online thinking "hmm, might need to get out of bed for the next call..."
😂
We're up to 400+ users wfh via citrix vs the normal 40ish peak on a Friday.
As I'm in IT, MS teams is already fundamental to us working together, we've got a big chat group so it still feels like you have people in close contact.
Just heard from my brother who's an electrician/electronics engineer, his factory is shutting down for two weeks minimum, everyone can either go on unpaid leave or use holiday. After that who knows? Apparently the canadian owners decided not to take up the offer of a loan from the government to pay wages. Well done tories.
Currently in the office on the Cambridge Science Park, view out the window is very much 28 Days Later, absolutely deserted.
We're a new start up (as in less than 1 month old), so everyone busy working away on things....
@crazy-legs there's some great tales and footage of less than competent use of the tech just recently. One chap had his porn-stream relayed to the office, tech support suggested that he not re-broadcast his desktop! Another is footage of a chap on the bog during a conference call complete with moving pictures (no smell-o-vison).
Today one of the places we book rooms at has told me that they close this evening until further notice. Managerial staff attending on shortened hours to deal with further cancellations. Holidays are in a mess.
Well, just had an email from our biggest client dating all non ‘essential’ work would be stopped from tomorrow.
Trying to see what that means for us as we are following a PPM schedule rather than doing reactive works so it looks very much like we are included in the shutdown.
Doesn’t help that our contract manager is off until Monday so I don’t seem to be able to speak to anyone who can give us a concrete answer.
Small ray of light in that we are midway through a leak prevention job that should take us through to next Friday but now I’m really concerned that we will have nothing after that.
A few other planned jobs coming up but nothing really substantial and clients with new works in the pipeline have all gone very quiet.
Dreading tomorrow’s toolbox talk with the lads...
WFH now using Skype, Zoom (Pro), Microsoft Team and WhatsApp or whatever that is available to communicate properly .... 🤔
Constant update from friends in the far east via WhatsApp due to lock down and friends are bored as WFH is not the norm there. Oh ... and the escaping of super spreaders from hospital quarantine and now placed on wanted list. 😒
Work for a construction company (office bod). I'm WFH as mrs & son are high risk- a few other high risk identified colleagues are wfh and other staff are rotating/ on shift to reduce bods in the office. The factory has split into shifts as well. Message from constructors on site is that its BAU- a couple of major clients have even said they will try to accelerate builds if spare capacity becomes available.
One client has shut their London sites (doesn't affect us) due to the higher cases there. All the while sites are open (and we get paid) we'll keep on building.
sons pregnant girlfriend works for EE. now that pregnant women are deemed to be in the vulnerable group, i assume shes now 'officially' advised by PHE not to go to work? (shes on sales desk so meets public all day).
she asked her HR dept who said of course she can take time off, but its unpaid. this doesnt seem fair so thought id ask if this is actually a legal stance? shes a single mum and cant afford unpaid time off, so in a way this would mean feeling forced to go in to keep afloat. is there no SSP for pregnant women taking government advice?
thanks
How far gone is she - could always start maternity leave early if she's passed a certain number of weeks. Would cut down on time with baby post birth tho
only 12 weeks im afraid.....
We have had the decree that all non essential business have to close as of today. Only food shops, chemists and DIY stores can stay open. All sports clubs and private schools have to close. No idea how long (one can only hope for a couple of weeks) but it looks like at least until after Easter. The government have set up a small business loan where small businesses or lone traders can borrow up to 50,000 euros interest free, AFAIK, and a deferral of payments of up to three years. I have heard along the grapevine that there is a distinct possibility of a lock down starting next week.
I work for a medium sized outdoor retailer, run two shops in a National Park. It's been quite steady trade this week, I think a lot of people are escaping to the hills.
We are currently still open for business, although I have 30% of the team self-isolating as they're high risk. I expect we'll have to shut the shops soon, once Boris decides, as we're obviously non essential. I just hope we can weather the storm and all have jobs to come back to. Obviously working from home is tricky in retail...
Boris is still resolutely protecting the insurance companies by refusing to formally close us in the hospitality business.
In today’s news conference he swerved the question and reiterated that people should avoid going to restaurants etc.
I spoke to our insurance yesterday and they are refusing to discuss a payout until the government close us down.
