Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

What? Oh nooooo

As someone who’ve stopping working from home since the beginning of 2022, it is fun to see people complain about coming back to the office full time. Mind you I work in education, on a campus where teaching happens in-person. Therefore it’s only appropriate for the support staff to be there as well. Because the university just spent a lot of money on a new arts building, and is currently constructing a new science wing. So damn it, there had better be people using these new facilities!

A coworker of mine is a steward for the union. He’s been fielding complaints from people being asked to work in-person the full five days a week. Of course, those complaints go nowhere, because whether or not you get to work-from-home is up to your supervising manager. Nothing in our contract stipulates mandatory remote working days. California’s COVID emergency is expiring this month, the Federal one in May. Things are going back to the way it were on campus before the pandemic, folks!

The obvious pain point of coming to campus is the commute. Traveling from San Jose into San Francisco five days a week - like a coworker of mine does - is just brutal. I shall never take for granted my living proximity to campus, and the ability to simply walk the 10 minutes to work. But those are personal choices, right? The employer have zero duty to acquiesce and account for how far you live from the workplace. Again, a university isn’t that sort of job anyways.

Back in January, our supervisor informed the team we will be working on campus the entire work week. I replied with gleeful nonchalance that I’ve been doing so for well over a year now. The low-key griping from some is schadenfreude-ic music to my ears.

Secret stash.

Batten down the hatches

It’s funny how events repeat themselves. This time last year we were precautiously sent home from campus due to the raging omicron COVID variant. In 2023, we’ve also been sent home during the first week of January, but for a different reason. During New Years Eve, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced heavy rainfall, leading to multiple cases of flooding. Well, today marks the beginning of another round of storms. With the ground already saturated from the rain four days ago, the results are not going to be pretty.

Obviously it’s plenty safe to actually be on campus. It’s getting there and back that’s the problem. The commute today is going to suck really bad, so best for those with a long commute to stay home (my guy with a ferry ride across the bay is happy to not have to do that). San Francisco State is not the only campus to ask staff to work-from-home if possible the next few days. I’ve got friends at other universities in the area with the same directive. If you have the privilege to stay home, do so.

The real MVP during these times of severe weather are the folks who have to be outside. Shoutout to the mail carriers and package couriers still striving to get packages to us. Shoutout to the food delivery drivers getting food to us from restaurants. Shoutout to the first responders clearing road hazards and making sure things are as safe as possible. Modern society would not be possible without these heroes. The rest of us who Zoom’ed our way through the pandemic should count our lucky stars.

That said, I’m going to be watching the mayhem from the comfort of my room window this entire day. And praying nothing foul lands on and damages my car. 40 miles-an-hour winds are no joke!

Stay in the middle.

Walking home

With summer semester going into action at the university, the staff are being asked to work on campus fully for two to three days out of the week. California is getting ready to fully open in about a fortnight, so things are returning to normal quite rapidly. Every weekend in May, I’ve gone out to places and ate indoors at restaurants. I’ve hung out indoors with a relatively large group of friends, unmasked. We are back, baby.

Except for much of the rest of the world. Rising COVID rates in countries with formerly ultra low outbreaks such as Taiwan and Vietnam show that vaccines are the only solution out of this mess. It’s perverse luck that the United States is amongst the worse in COVID deaths, yet we are the amongst the first to achieve an appropriately high level of vaccination. I read on twitter that some people are contemplating travel to America just to get the vaccine.

From worst to first, the underdog story. That’s America!

Anyways, being back to working a full day at work makes me appreciate how nice it is that I now live only a 10 minute walk away. To end a nine-hours day on campus without a commute slog in a car afterwards is just the best feeling. Yesterday evening I walked by heavy traffic on 19th Avenue on the way home, and thought to myself how grateful that I’m not the one stuck in a car amongst that quagmire. Maybe it’s not the job that’s soul-sucking, but it’s the commute?

I think this is why plenty of people are thriving with working-from-home. The commute time they get back in turn allows them to perform better. They are less stressed because they have more time. Unfortunately they’re going to hav a rude wake-up call if and when they are asked to return physically to work. Something for employers to look out for, surely.

Portsmouth Square.

WFH on rainy days

The best days to work from home are the rainy days, when I am comfortably indoors with a hot cup of tea. The flowers are blooming this time of the year, so the view outside my window is rather lovely. The BMW M2 is getting a free car wash courtesy of the rain. The clouded skies means the sun isn’t shinning directly into my eyes during the afternoon. I have window shades, but I prefer to keep a view towards the outside.

Rainy days are great when you don’t have to go outside. One thing I didn’t calculate for when I moved closer to work is that I would have to walk through the rain to get to campus. Even the strongest umbrella cannot prevent the bottom half of my body from getting wet. The brief 10 minute walk is enough to completely soak the shoes. I really need a pair of rain boots, or shoes that are somewhat weatherproof.

The ultimate first world solution would to actually drive to work when it rains, even though I only live two longish blocks away. My parents would never dream of being so wasteful, but what’s the point of making money if not to make our lives more convenient? More so than the cost of gas, I’d be more worried about such a short trip having a negative effect on the engine. Advantage to electric vehicles: there aren’t any internal fluids to get up to temperature.

But there’s a problem: the distance from the school’s parking lot to the building where I work is precisely the same distance as that building from my home. I would literally gain nothing from driving. Perhaps those boots are indeed the way to go.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy working at home in front of the window on these rainy days. As the vaccines proliferate, pretty soon I’m going to have to say goodbye to this pandemic work lifestyle.

They call this work.