Resurrectin' this thread because yeah

All of us office people could have come to work if we had private offices. And just not gone to the cafeteria for lunch. And hold our breath from our cars to our offices

But yeah it is finally time to maybe rethink this one for many places

Yep - I have always loved the atmosphere in our open plan office - has a really good energy and general vibe, but it's always been problematic for stuff like seasonal flu and any other bug that goes around.

Relying primarily on recycled air with few windows, and company policies that penalise specifically the number of absences (3 strikes and you lose your bonus), rather than general absence levels, though they also are a concern given the points based system of absence management turns the place into a petri dish. Most people will at some point be in work with a mild to moderate dose of flu, getting through the day on Lemsip and paracetamol -

I don't see how this can be business as usual when the pandemic is over. Because the next pandemic might not be that far off. We could have vaccines in large scale use within 2 years, but that only deals with this corona virus strain.

We are too global a world now to contain something that spreads through similar mechanisms to flu

WB Dana!

Hi Limes:)

Fingers crossed my internet connection is behaving itself right now lol

There was a company wide town hall meeting today. Broken up into 3 separate telephone conferences to make the size of each more manageable.

Bottom line is that remote work seems to be working good enough so far that salary reductions and layoffs won’t be needed yet.

But they are reassessing every two weeks.

Big parts of our business have gotten really slow because the courts are closed. Can’t have juries.

But my side of things in trademarks is still active.

I am so glad I made the move to this new job two years ago.

A lot of firms have implemented temporary 20% salary reductions for all staff and attorneys, but we aren’t there yet. I expect we will be, but for now, the partnership is absorbing all losses.

I have a lot of faith in the people running the show here. The Dickhead who brought in the open office plans into this place is no longer running the show and the new guy is very good.