Whilst I’ve been off, I’ve been checking in with my email every day on my company phone. Every week there is a touchy feely post from the head of HR (Even my manager, a master of the dark arts himself says that she is as slippery as a soapy baby and then some) about mental health.
The fucking hypocrisy of it!
“We’ll fuck you up but be aware of how we are affecting you and when it gets too much, call bupa up on the company health care scheme and sort it out so we can start again.” Christ.
This whole episode has been mostly kind, both of us have continued to work, mine more haphazardly (my contracts have closed and engineers are furloughed but ive had to pick up the odd emergency etc). The wife has never been busier working 10-12 hour days. She has never been happier. She has been home nearly three months now and not had to fly away each week. This is the longest we have ever spent continuosly together. Its been lovely. The kids especially my daughter is much happier she is always around.
We both hope this will continue and her flying kept to a minimum, she seems to think her clients have adapted to this way of working.
We are not social people as a rule and have no family close, so that side of it has not really affected us.
Home schooling has been difficult to manage at times but ive mostly enjoyed the experience , being able to focus on areas of my children’s learning that needed more repetition and one on one has been mentally rewarding.
I really feel for people really struggling i have a couple of contractors who are not able to claim anything, ive tried to get them pieces of work around the south and have managed to help them keep above water but the longer it goes on.
I was feeling pretty fortunate anyway, but reading some of your posts has amplified that a chunk.
I went from working away 4.5 days a week in Scotland to being home whilst still being fully paid and no longer having to pay travel and accommodation. Since we can’t go diving on Fridays I’ve reduced my hours mon to thurs and do a few hours on Friday am to make up.
We’ve not pushed the kids to do much as my lad was due to do his GCSEs so has had no school work to do. My daughter has had homework but we’ve not pushed it.
I’d prefer not being 100% at home but I won’t be rushing to with away full time either. The ir35 delay has meant I got my contract extended til next March and it’s unlikely we’ll be back on site this year.
So apart from queuing to get the shopping and going for more walks with the wife it’s actually been pretty good. I miss seeing my parents in Sunday’s but I don’t have to suffer the mum in law so it could certainly be worse
Some of you are dealing with really shitty circumstances so I wish you all the best. Keep coming for the abuse, it seems to help at times 
I work remotely for an Austrian software development company, so the last two months have been pretty normal workwise. I do miss bakeoffs - Despite questionable tastes in music, most of the people I know are nice to hang out with. I’m not looking forward to the next 18 months with this clown of a PM in charge.
Other than having a lot of furlough days in April, where there was fuck all to do with everything shut and no sport on, it really hasn’t affected me at all, life has gone on exactly as before - walk dog, eat crap food, drink far too much alcohol and watch Veep dvd’s.
The reduction in traffic has been nice when I have been going to work and I have learned to cut my own hair 
but most of the time I still feel that life isn’t worth all the aggravation and misery that goes with it so nothing much has changed.
I’ll say it again, stop fucking listening to Morrisey first thing in the morning/ at all 
I’ve been teaching online students for about a decade, so not much change there. My PhD student meetings have all moved online. I have missed the face to face interactions with colleagues, but I am able to pretty much do at home what i did in the office. For me work hasn’t changed too much at all. I still have the 70 ppl to line manage! although that might change soon. We are still interviewing people but online.
I miss the hubbub of students on campus.
MS Teams was just being rolled out (I’ve been in a pilot for a year) pre lockdown, and it have proved great for our meetings, including those awful committees we have for governance meetings. Had a meeting with the architects and project management team working on the new building for my department, and it was great being able to screen share to see architectural drawings rather than peer at a projector screen in the distance.
I like getting up an hour later as Louise doesn’t need to get the train to go to her office. We have managed quite well although juggling meetings from room to room as I am not allowed to hear hers, has been a bit tricky.
I am working fewer hours for the first time in decades. I have managed to get a semblance of order to pur spare room so I can actually sit and work at the desk. We have completed a few decorating type projects that needed badly doing.
The thing I like best is I’ve started cooking again, having the time to start cooking stuff at 4pm or 5pm has been great. Pre lockdown, we got home between 6 and 7, cooked something for about 8pm maybe 8:30, and were in bed for 10pm ready for arising at 6am…
I think the lockdown has made many people question their lifestyle, particularly their work life balance.
Hopefully people can take this opportunity to reassess their priorities and will emerge happier though not necessarily wealthier.
Amazing thread, humbling personal insights.
So very much This. The potential for positive change is tremendous, albeit more social-isolation is not great for any sort of a sense of a coherent society: we all need to re-learn the basic primate social skill set face-to-face occasionally…
I fear you are right. There is a prevalent mindset among the kind of moron that finds personal virtue in getting-up early in the day, undertaking pointless repetitive labour, praying to imaginary deities &c that sacrificing scarce time and resources by dragging yourself into a dreary office in the middle of a large city to do work that could be done from home is somehow mysteriously and inexplicably Better.
This won’t go away, because this subset of idiot has relentless Certainty-in-the-face-of-evidence on their side…
There’s a lot about lockdown I’ve enjoyed - Sam working from home is great, less traffic too - it’s been nice walking the dogs without fearing for our lives. The latter’s gone, and I’m just left with a deep, inexpressible rage that 40,000 have died to serve the whims of elitist eugenicist sociopaths with hearts full of hate…
Personally it’s just a continuation of a trajectory started 7 years ago when I lost my last real job and faced life as an unemployable, low-skilled, unmotivated waste-of-protein. What should have happened 7 years ago was that I ended-up drinking myself to death on wasteland somewhere. If that sounds melodramatic, it isn’t meant to, all my life I felt certain that was my destination.
It didn’t happen because I met someone infinitely more talented and competent than myself. Jam on both sides of the bread, except nature didn’t equip me with the ability to experience anything other than guilt.
Lockdown, and its easing, has bought it to the fore, because unless I am compelled to work to survive, I don’t. My get-up-and-go got-up-and-went before I was born. Only fear, hunger and Sam giving me shit compel me. That no doubt sounds glib, but it’s the source of profound shame and self-hatred.
Sam comfortably earns enough for us both, but that is so much not what I want. Simultaneously, I’m devoid of useful skills or any kind of a work ethic to get myself back into salaried work. Self-employment has been an obvious and rightly-derided failure, not an avenue I’ll explore again.
At 16 I had not the slightest idea what I wanted to do and the only certainty I held was that I was not up to the job. 40 years later and nothing’s changed. If I was the kind of person who is happy being a parasite, it would all be gravy, but I managed to spend the bulk of my adult life keeping a roof over my own and various ex’s heads, and really struggle with this role reversal.
My rational mind knows this is all self-indulgent wank of the worst kind, but my deeply irrational subconscious unfailingly rides roughshod over Reason every time…
Excusing the death of my grandad and granny who I was very close to, lockdown has been brilliant for me.
I haven’t had the chance to walk so much in ages. My holidays always used to be a week or two trekking silly distances in the mountains and I really miss those days. So knocking out 10-20km a day has been great.
I have been working on my own in the workshop with the shop shut for some time now, but severely reduced hours. So I have time for the mrs, exercise and mental space.
With the reduced hours I’m still outputting the same level of work because the shop has been shut and no stress of a backlog of work.
The shop is open now on reduced days and hours and I don’t really ever want to increase it again tbh. So may not.
As someone who went from employed to self employed, I must say it worked well for me at the time. My mistake was getting too busy and not turning work down, so then I ended up buying a business and then having the headache of staff etc.
Selling it and going back to self employed was great. But then I found a company to work with and ended up buying a share. I do my bit and they do theirs. It’s worked out well just sort of organically. They do the stuff I used to hate with my old business and I do the stuff I enjoy.
Saying all this I will get bored of it in a few years and fuck off to the next project.
Become a watchmaker, learn a new hell of frustration and never being good enough 
You’re obviously a cunt. Come here to be reminded regularly and assuage your guilt about having a bit of good luck.
On the other hand It’s not illegal to find fortune and Sam ain’t stupid so you can’t be a total bastard.
You should be writing. About current affairs, about the arts, about yourself, your life and your experiences and maybe some fiction as well. Set aside an hour each day & do it.
This ^. Except you still have to write on here for free.
(Durrrr … meant to reply to @Mrs_Maureen_OPinion.)
VB
Yup except I was never that great at getting to bed for 10pm…
I go to bed about the same time just now but get up between 7 and 8. Fallen into the rhythm that my body wanted…pretty daft that we’re not able to do generally
Were in a weird state at work, at the moment. The company I work for (Small/Medium Aerospace sector) does not actually really make anything, yet. We have taken a pay cut (up to 20%) and down to 4-day/week for at least the next 3-4months. My role in the company is facilities so we have been quite busy getting it all ready for some teams to return to site over the past month, but to be honest, we were having issues before the lockdown.
I’ve been there almost 10-years now and I get the feel that it would be time to move on but as my only real job before has been in the HiFi Retail sector, and no really wanting to continue in the Facilities area I feel I’m a bit stuck. Don’t get me wrong I get paid well for doing a job I don’t enjoy, my team is great but the job is not what I saw myself doing when I left University with a Design Degree…
Fortunately, compared to most we are privilaged to be somewhat comfortable at home, the Wife has a secure job she has been in for 8+ years and was working from home 2-days/week before the lockdown so she has more than enough work to do. We also are lucky to be in the position to be able to move house (upsize) in these strange uncertain times.
My longer term plan is to become a house husband or try and find something I can do from home while managing child care. Not managed to find something yet I would like to do…
spot on, exactly us. Pre lockdown we worried about getting to bed after 10pm. Just that extra hour in the morning seems to have a huge impact.
Now I am working 8 to about 4, before I was working about 07:45 to 5-6pm…that extra few hours seems to make a huge difference to our mental wellbeing and rhythm.
Commuting is the killer, in the office was I was up at 06:30 and getting home around 19:00 but it could often be as late as 23:00 depending on scheduled changes or planned work.
Now I get up at 07:30 and am generally finished by 17:00 with the occasional bit of OOH but there is normally a break in between.
I can’t complain about my commute. We chose to live down here away from London and my livelyhood but I guess having three kids all at once and one of them not making it played a part in the decision. What pisses me off is putting in all the effort of commuting and doing my very best just to get a kicking and then being chucked under the bus every five minutes. It just feels like a waste of time.
I’ve been thinking whilst reading all these posts that most people’s lives are effected by a series of random events as well as planning. This crises though is something we all have in common. I read a quote from Churchill the other day ; “never waste a good crises,” something seemingly that is passing our government by but honestly, I really do think there is something to it and that stuff is there for changing.
Bit difficult to see the real positives here, at the mo.