how is your office responding to coronavirus?

by Alison Green on March 9, 2020

How is your company responding to coronavirus?

Let’s discuss in the comments.

And some useful info:

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  1. JessP*

    Hi Everyone! Clincial librarian at your service.

    Alison’s got it linked, but I wanted to mention again that the CDC doesn’t just offer guidance for hospitals and healthcare providers; they have guidance for schools, businesses, and higher ed as well. Professional organizations—the American Library Association—are also providing guidance and example plans.

    My library is subject to University closures and directives from the Dean of Libraries, so our plan focuses on how to operate with minimal staffing, including calling in procedures, how many staff should be in the building, who can make the call to close, etc.

    1. JessP*

      Here’s the what ALA recommends including in a pandemic response plan, which I think could translate well to other business types:
      >Criteria for closing the library
      >Employee policies for sick leave, payroll and banking/financial issues, working from home
      >Mandated documentation of procedures or cross training so others can take over for sick employees.
      >Policies for social distancing — that is, removing a number of chairs so people aren’t sitting close to each other, or limiting the number of people who can come in at any one time, or taking out coat racks, and similar things that keep people and their belongings separate from each other.
      >Criteria for suspending programming
      >Provision of masks and gloves along with the training of staff iin their removal and disposal.
      >Standards for the cleaning of bathrooms, railings and door knobs, telephones, keyboards, counters, and cleaning of workstations/offices of employees who go home sick, emptying of wastebaskets, etc. etc. etc.
      >Setting a schedule for seeing to the critical needs of the facility if the library is closed for an extended time (boiler and building checks by custodians, book drop, payroll and banking considerations).
      >Communications plan for reaching staff and for communicating with the public
      >Means for continuing to provide information services for the public, such as online ordering of materials and pick up from a table in the lobby at certain times, or expansion of online services
      >Accommodation of the needs of poor people in the community who may not have a home subscription to the local newspaper or a working home computer
      >Education of the public in advance of an epidemic

      1. JS*

        Came here for library-specific advice. Thanks! All we’d come up with so far is setting out hand sanitizer at the circulation desk/seating areas and wiping down surfaces daily.

        1. Also a JS*

          Ditto. We’re a publisher based in a University Library so all of this is super helpful.

          1. Library Student*

            To say that the sanitizer at the front desk has been very low is an understatement. I am only a student worker at my university library, but we’ve all been cleaning like mad people!

            1. Deborah*

              We’ve moved sanitizer behind the desk to staff-use only: library users can go and use the soap in the toilets which is more effective than sanitiser anyway. We have had to have words with our cleaning contractors about making sure the soap stays well-filled.

              In other preparations, I’ve got an order in to replace desktop machines (for the staff who still have them) with laptops, so everyone in theory will be able to work from home in the event of either personal self-isolation/quarantine or whole-campus shutdown. This was easier than I expected because we lease all our machines anyway; but it is still a wait of a few weeks so I’m just hoping there are no supply line issues.

              Most importantly I think, my workplace already has a good sick-leave policy and culture. We still need to reinforce with people that when they’re in that “I’m starting to feel better and don’t want to let the team down so I’ll go back to work even though I’m still coughing a bit” stage, they need to *stay home* and, if they insist, work from there (at least until they get tired because actually they’re not really better yet. Not that I’m guilty of this myself…..).

    2. Mama Bear*

      Watching, but no approved telework or policies at this time other than the standard if you are sick, please stay home.

      2. Autumnheart*

        Same.

        Lots of infuriating conversation where people say things like, “More people die of the flu!” and “What’s the big deal, most people won’t even notice they have it.”

        Yeah. China quarantined millions of people with an arrest-on-sight curfew, and stopped their economy on a dime, because of a bug most people won’t even notice they have. Italy just quarantined their financial district and announced that triage measures would be put in place for hospital beds, because of a bug that’s not as bad as the flu. Sure. That’s why we go through this every single year during flu season! OH WAIT, WE FUCKING DON’T.

        1. pamela voorhees*

          To be clear, those people aren’t wrong — most people won’t notice they have it, but it’s also simultaneously still a big deal. For example, my father lives in Miami, which has a population of 463,347. 16% of folks in Miami are over 65 years old (74,135) and if 15% of those people get a severe case of COVID-19 (it affects folks who are 65+ more than other age groups) we need roughly 11,120 hospital beds for them. Miami Valley Hospital has about 850 beds. This is in addition to the normal needs of the hospital. An individual will probably get through coronavirus just fine. A society will have a much, much harder time.

          1. pamela voorhees*

            I double checked because I couldn’t remember seeing signs for Miami Valley Hospital when I visited him and I’ve realized that it is in Dayton, OH, not Miami, FL. Google autocomplete has yet again made me look quite the fool. For an actual example, Jackson Memorial Hospital has 1,550 beds. My point still stands though.

          2. Aquawoman*

            So, the USA, which runs on the mythos of individualism, needs to recognize the needs of our society? What could go wrong?

            1. pamela voorhees*

              The empty toilet paper palettes at Costco are a testament to how upsettingly right you are.

          3. Long-time reader*

            Not to mention number of beds (assuming they are adequate) does not equal number of respirators.

            And seasonal flus are things we already know a lot about and have lots of experience with. This virus is still an unknown. So we are not as equipped to predict what will happen. Human beings, like stock markets, don’t cope well with the unknown. Anyone who has been paying attention to scientists who’ve been saying it’s a matter of -when- not if we’ll have a pandemic in the future, are legitimately worried. At least I am. Not running through the streets panicking, but definitely more cautious about taking unnecessary risks.

            1. TardyTardis*

              We have an oxygen generator in the house already for my husband for night time (multiple medical issues), and we plan to hang onto it tooth and nail–if he comes down with it, having it may help him stay home (and we don’t know how many respirators our local hospital already has).

              But our county is fairly remote and rural–one presumptive case from travel–and is really deep in denial. This does make shopping easier, though.

        2. Diahann Carroll*

          THANK YOU! I said the same thing – this is not like the flu, and people need to stop saying that shit. Don’t panic, but don’t be misleading either.

        3. PVR*

          Right if 80% of cases are mild… that means 20% are not. Current #s are about 15% severe, 5% critical. And with mortality rates anywhere from 1-3+%, we are still talking about significantly higher fatality rates than the flu.

        4. Deborah*

          One of the key differences is that society as a whole already has a lot of immunity to flu because lots of people have already had it. That immunity slows the spread of it to people who aren’t immune, so you get a fairly low number of cases at any given time, so it’s business-as-usual.

          No-one’s got any immunity to Covid-19, so it can basically infect everyone all at once, and we don’t have the facilities to deal with that. That’s why it’s so important to slow the spread by washing hands, etc – if fewer people are infected *at any given time* then society can cope better even if everyone gets infected in the end.

    3. pamela voorhees*

      A fellow clinical librarian here who just wants to add one more resource — Ready.gov has information about how to prepare for disasters & emergencies for individuals and for businesses. No COVID-specific information, but a great resource for general topics like “what resources should we think about in an EAP” or “what should an emergency plan look like?”

        1. pamela voorhees*

          You’re very sweet, thank you! Medical librarians can get certain specializations, and mine is in disaster information. You hope to never use it, but I’m glad to help when I can. I also recommend MedlinePlus as a resource for accurate health information, both coronavirus-related and in general. It’s what I send to people to stop misinformation being spread.

          1. V8 Fiend*

            Seconding Medline Plus! I’m a clinical librarian for a professional association, and our biggest request lately has been consumer focused documentation – MedlinePlus is great for that!

            *I don’t work for Medline, I just really like it! :-)

      2. pamela voorhees*

        As far as what we’re doing personally, we live on the western side of Washington state and work in healthcare, so this is more in depth than what you might typically see. We already have a very generous sick leave policy (I was very ill in January and took a lot of time off, and still have roughly 23 sick days at the moment, separate from vacation) but we typically require a doctor’s note if you miss three consecutive days. We’re waiving that requirement, although you are still required to stay in contact with your supervisor. We’re also providing hand sanitizer and wipes to any staff who wants them, as well as face masks for our clinicians (I cannot emphasize enough that you should not buy face masks, since there’s a limited supply and that means less for doctors, nurses, and other clinicians who need them!). There’s required temperature taking before entering some of our facilities as well (certain wards with a lot of very ill patients, the nursing home, etc). We’re also discussing work from home policies, although our culture is strongly against it so that’s an uphill battle. The generous sick leave policy is really our secret weapon, though.

        1. BekaAnne*

          I’m in the UK – so it’s all a bit different. But we have an excellent sick pay facility.

          We’re all using laptops and the company is encouraging people to work from home if they feel in any way unwell. If you need to quarantine, do it. If your laptop is in the office, they will courier it out to you so that you do not have to come get it.

          No business travel that is not critical – and so far, management have deemed none as critical even though we work in a healthcare adjacent area. Move back to disposable plates, utensils, etc., so that risk of infection is minimized even if someone is a carrier or is not aware that they have been exposed. Anti-bac wipes readily available for desks and computers.

          They’re looking at changing the statutory sick pay rules as well so that you’re paid from day 1 and not day 3, and changing the rules for doctors notes – as doctors are encouraging people not to attend surgeries unless truly necessary.

          To be fair, they have had this in place for flu as well and general sickness. Given the air-con and the shared spaces, they’ve always encouraged us to work from home if we aren’t well, and to actually call in sick if we think we may need to. It’s better to take a day or two off now than struggle through and need more time off later.

          The weird thing though is that we track illness through the Bradford Score – B= S² x D where
          B = Bradford factor score
          S = total number of spells (instances) of absence for that individual in the given period
          D = total number of days the individual was absent during the given period
          That’s starting to take a bit of a hit as we’ve have some people call in ill with flu like symptoms (not C-19 just colds) but I think we may need to suspend this for the foreseeable as it drives a warning system for absenteeism.

    4. Yukimura*

      I work at a theme park in Japan.
      We’ve closed officially from February 29th to March 15th, but there is no telling if we’ll actually be opening on the 16th.
      Employees are coming in regularly, cast are doing rehearsals, etc, everyone being paid—just no guests.
      Our theater is going to be SO sparkly clean by the end of all this.

      1. Retail not Retail*

        That sounds like my job’s dream. Everything clean and trimmed and sparkling.

    5. Nerdy Library Clerk*

      Public library, in a state with a few cases (including one in our city).
      We’ve had emails about hand washing and staying home if sick (though nothing about what to do if you run out of sick time or are one of the part timers who doesn’t *have* sick time). We’re wiping everything down a lot more and wearing gloves/washing our hands even more than usual. But that’s about it.
      I’m hoping that behind the scenes they’re thinking about what to do if more cases happen here, etc, but the front line staff isn’t in the know if they are.

      1. AuroraLight37*

        Same here. Basically, “Don’t panic and we’re not issuing gloves or face masks for library staff.” So, yeah, not much help, especially for substitutes. I have noticed people using hand sanitizer more at work, and more hand washing. I was helping a patron who was talking and exhaled some saliva on my hand, yuck) so I went and washed as soon as I was done with him. I would have done it anyway, but I did feel a bit more tense about it.

        1. boxfish*

          Same here from a public library worker in the UK. We’ve just got signs out reminding people to wash their hands and use tissues, basically (and tbh i feel like if you were going to do those things anyway, you don’t need a sign, and if you weren’t, a sign isn’t going to change your mind!). We’ve not heard anything from management about library closure plans or anything, so who knows.

    6. Gov Worker*

      We get daily update emails from public health. All outside of Canada business travel is cancelled. Anyone coming back from travelling in Hubei province in China has to go into mandatory 14 day quarantine. Anyone coming back from any of the other highly affected countries or areas has to go into 14 day quarantine if they show signs of any illness. Quarantine pay is separate paid time off that does not affect regular PTO or sick days.

      2. Diahann Carroll*

        I love that your company is doing quarantine pay – that should ensure people who have traveled to affected areas actually take the quarantine seriously and stay their behinds home because they’re not going to lose out on pay or vacation time.

    7. Thankful for AAM*

      Also librarian; public, city run library.

      We actually have a full, pandemic policy for the library, as well as for the city, that spell out all the things Jess P mentioned.

      What I especially like at my city:
      -a strong “stay at home if you are sick” message backed by support if you don’t get or have sick leave left.
      -an option to work away from the public is your health needs that (but no work from home option)
      -a very well organized but simple communication system. Each manager has their staffs contact and emergency contact info and we have our manager’s contact info given to us on a half sheet of paper spelling out the communications policy. If we close, there is a citywide phone number to call with a recorded message that tells me what to do. My only real responsibility is to call that number each day by x time.

      As for daily details:
      We have wipes and sanitizer out for staff and we are being encouraged to hand wash often. We are also wiping down public keyboards and desks 2 additional times a day. We also have gloves for staff to use as touching lots of books, library cards that were just in a patron’s mouth, etc are gross.

    8. Miso*

      I also work at a public library, but in Europe.
      Town Hall put up signs that we’re not shaking hands anymore (like we ever did that…), but that’s it.
      We already have hand disinfectants in the bathrooms anyway and they did try to get some for the doors, but of course everything was sold out already…

      We don’t have to worry about sick days luckily and we all wash hands pretty often anyway, so basically, nothing changed.

    9. Oxford Comma*

      Another librarian here.

      I have heard very little about what our actual library system has in the way of a plan, which makes me nervous.

      The university itself is doing all kinds of things. They’ve restricted nonessential travel to a bunch of countries, recalled students from study abroad. No word on spring break restrictions for students.

      Colleagues at several other universities have shared that they’re not supposed to travel at all.

    10. Ravenclaw*

      Library administrator in a state with a few cases. Given the overall sad state of our infrastructure, is anyone surprised that we don’t have a crisis response plan and I’m now drafting one? I wish we could communicate more, but we need to follow municipal leadership on this, and they are being quite slow.

  2. Construction Safety*

    They are discussing it ad nauseum.

    But, like most things, they won’t actually do anything.

    Hell, we had a guy come into the office with an open staph sore on his leg. <>

    1. I LOVE BIG BROTHER*

      Yeah, I look forward to the inevitable “can anyone work from home?” “no, literally none of our programs work if you try to log on from home, plus I have no printer” conversation like we had during the great smokeout of 2018.

    2. jamberoo*

      EEK.
      I once worked for an optometrist who insisted an employee with pink eye continue to come in. They hid him in the back lab where patients couldn’t see him. His job was unwrapping, RX verifying, and repackaging received glasses orders…

        2. jamberoo*

          Yeah. I hope they didn’t wonder why I did not go to them for my eye appts after changing jobs.

        3. Ego Chamber*

          Well, I for one feel far less unhinged for my habit of wiping down my new pair of glasses with 91% rubbing alcohol and then cleaning the lenses like normal before I wear them for the first time, so. O_o

        1. MusicWithRocksIn*

          Well – to be fair pink eye is a lot more contagious. You can almost catch it from hearing about someone else getting it.

    3. Blow it into a tissue*

      Even in this day and age, I still see a dude at work who comes into the bathroom and blows his nose into the sink, one nostril at a time, and leaves without washing his hands. I don’t know who he works because we have several thousand employees.

      2. Curmudgeon in California*

        Oh gross. I get slightly squicked by people brushing their teeth in the office bathroom, and that’s actually a normal activity.

        One place I worked half the people didn’t even hit the sink for a sham rince, much less actually wash their hands. That place gave me pneumonia.

      3. Ego Chamber*

        And you’ve never once involuntarily yelled at him “What the fuck man wash your hands!” I couldn’t.

    4. SondersonMC*

      Our company had just announced that all meetings with more than 50 people are cancelled.
      Take Our Kids to Work Day is also cancelled.
      National Meetings are cancelled.

      And there are signs at every entrance saying “if you feel sick, or have the following symptoms, do not enter the building, and return home”

      1. Det. Charles Boyle*

        SondersonMC, wow, are you located in one of the hot spots? My employer sent out an email on Friday saying they are monitoring the situation, and, that’s it. So, wait and see . . . (I’m located in Virginia, not a hot spot — yet).

      2. TrainerGirl*

        We had a meeting last week where we were told that if someone came in sick, they would be making other people “uncomfortable”. Yeah, that’s a dictate right there. And of course allergy season is upon us (Mid-Atlantic state), which means some people are going to be freaking out every time someone sneezes or blows their nose.

        1. Lauren*

          Our office is taking it seriously and even our clients told us not to fly to them, but our other office isn’t and people have traveled and got sick and are not staying home.

    5. A tester, not a developer*

      At least at my office the woman with MRSA told me she had it (despite our boss telling her not to!) so we wouldn’t go to the same meetings/use the same workspaces/etc.; I’m immunocompromised, so that was exciting.

    6. KaciHall*

      My job is discussing it. But only as a Democrat conspiracy theory and how they can’t believe people are buying into it. At least, that was the conversation between the owner/head boss and the office manager.

      It’s going to be GREAT once the schools here quarantine and close like the ones a few counties over! None of us in my department are set up to work at home, though in theory most of us could. (Except the two people that love in the boonies and don’t have internet at home because it’s not worth it for as show and expensive as it is.)

        1. KaciHall*

          I live in a VERY red area and the owners think I’m crazy for not openly during Trump. I’m not even openly DISAGREEING, I just didn’t share the opinion that the impeachment process was a witch-hunt.

          I’ve gotten very used to being quiet about my political leanings since I went to high school here, but it is getting harder and harder. This isn’t political, it’s reality. They think it’s a Gambit to get the election because there’s a pandemic every election year. I tried pointing out that China PROBABLY doesn’t share an election cycle with us, but it’s like debating a brick wall.

          1. Melly*

            I just saw my former daycare provider post this meme and what the fucked all over the place.

            1. pancakes*

              It’s horrifying that someone with such senseless views on virus transmission is involved in daycare. I was going to say I think it’s very much worth warning other people in the community about that somehow, at the very least with a review on all platforms the daycare is listed on, but if the community doesn’t mind leaving its kids in the care of people who live in a parallel universe of their own warped imagination . . .

              1. Gazebo Slayer*

                Yep. I’d almost be more worried about kids being exposed to people that disconnected from reality than I would about them being exposed to coronavirus! (Which is fortunately mild in children.)

        2. Nita*

          I just heard this BS from a family member yesterday. It’s spreading. The funny thing is, they couldn’t make up their mind if it’s a Republican conspiracy (to bring China down) or a Democrat conspiracy (to make Trump look bad). Pointed out to them that we’ve had at least three outbreaks of new viruses in the last several years, and that many of the affected countries’ leaders are old enough to be the prime risk group. May have been a wasted effort, since this person is not known for using their head outside of their workplace.

          1. pancakes*

            I don’t think people adroitly shift between lucid and senseless thinking that way.

      3. GreenDoor*

        Umm….last I checked, viruses don’t care who you vote for, what religion, you practice, or how much money you have. Oh! And they also diregard those imaginary lines known as “borders of countries.” How do people not understand this?

        1. Ego Chamber*

          The people who think it’s a conspiracy think the virus isn’t real. They’re on a similar level to the people who believe school shootings are faked to hurt the gun industry. You know, the “crisis actors” folks. It’s gross.

          1. Gazebo Slayer*

            Good thing patients’ names are confidential, or the kind of monsters who harass the Sandy Hook kids’ parents would probably be harassing them too. :-(

          2. rigger42*

            Then there are the people who concede it might be real, but insist that “Bill Gates’ Wuhan lab” released it into the wild. My parents heard this fifth hand at a cocktail party so it has to be true!

        2. Gazebo Slayer*

          Sadly, they do in some ways care how much money you have. Poor people are going to be affected a lot more by this, considering their frequent lack of affordable medical insurance or sick leave.

    7. esra*

      Yep, this is us, too. Despite a large number of staff being able to do their jobs from home, our ceo just doesn’t like it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      We haven’t made any strides whatsoever beyond a more comprehensive hand-washing poster in some of the bathrooms.

      1. Blackbelt Jones*

        Same re: working from home, except at a “non-profit”.

        (Also, no extra cleaning done or supplies available *or* hand-washing poster!)

    8. always a nurse*

      I know it’s gross, but an “open staph sore” is vastly less contagious that any respiratory illness. The patient would have to be actively touching the wound and then touching surfaces in the office, which you would then have touch, and have a break in your skin to allow the staph bacteria in, or get it in your nose/mouth via your hand. Even if it were methicillin resistant Staph (MRSA) you’d pretty much need direct contact with the wound.

      1. Construction Safety*

        Mostly agree, but we work in construction, scuffs, nicks, etc are the norm and he was wearing sort. It was oozing and nasty.

    9. pancakes*

      Who are “they” here, and what exactly would you prefer them to do? A government employee stationed outside your office to inspect workers for sores, coughing, etc? A consultant hired by your office?

      1. Mad Harry Crewe*

        Given the context, I would imagine “they” are “the big bosses/management at my job.”

  3. Alice*

    Anyone have suggestions about advocating effectively for vendors to offer reasonable sick time policies?

    1. Alice*

      Meaning, not my own employers, but vendors that contract with my employer and don’t offer enough sick time to their staff.

      1. The Bad Guy*

        I think the most effective thing you can do is keep vendors off site and make sure they have the tools to do work for you remotely. There’s really no way to bully another company into giving their employees paid sick time but you can make it easy for them to wfh.

        1. Seeking Second Childhood*

          ‘Vendor’ can be very hands-on. Here, it includes our facilities management company, security services, the corporate cafeteria, and an in-house temp coordinator. By the nature of those roles, only one person of 20 could possibly work offsite.

        2. pancakes*

          To the contrary, putting certain requirements in a RFP—paid sick time for employees, for example—could be a very effective way for companies to influence vendor practices without “bullying.” It wouldn’t work retroactively, but it’s something people should think about going forward.

      2. Random Thought*

        This isn’t an instantaneous solution, but it’s something to consider in your vendor selection/contracting process going forward. Mandating a certain minimum pay/minimum level of benefits is smart and not uncommon, especially today when companies can face reputational damage – because contract workers don’t always distinguish who the employer is when they complain… and just in general, “I work on a contract for Company X” – people will hear and remember “Company X.” When you rely on managed resources, you also have an interest in retaining those contract employees so it’s not a revolving door (i.e. think of the benefits of a security guard who has been around for a long time… who can recognize who does AND does not belong, can recognize unusual behavior, i.e. hostile employee, and knows when things are unusual (locked door left ajar, etc.). So asking the company to incentivize people saying around adds value even if it also increases the price of your contract.

      3. Sally*

        It’s really good to hear that people are thinking about this kind of situation. A good friend of mine is a dog walker, and since so many people are working from home, she’s losing income. And there’s not a lot she can do about it except try to get new clients. I worry about people like her who are rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, etc.

        1. Emelle*

          My neighbor is a pet sitter and she picked up hours by letting her clients that are in our neighborhood know that she had a 15 minute window for “work call walks”. Basically you give her 15 minute heads up and she will swoop in like a Puppy Mary Poppins and take your dog out for a bit. Basically she shifted the time of her walks- and some people that don’t usually use her because they always work from home are using her now with this plan. (But she is really strict about the 15 minutes and will not take anyone that she can’t get to their house in that window.)

  4. Mel_05*

    Mostly just with horrified fascination that people haven’t been washing their hands till now.

    If things get bad in our area my whole office can probably work from home. But so far there are only 3 cases in our state and none are close by.

    1. Jaybeetee*

      Right?? I have very mixed feelings about the realization that apparently I’m “ahead of the curve” on the whole handwashing thing. Who *are* these people??

      Canada is still minimally affected – I believe just about every case so far has been people who had recently travelled to more affected countries, and their SOs. AFAIK, there are only cases in three cities and not where I live. I have noticed it’s harder to find hand sanitizer lately, and someone actually stole a package of toilet paper out of my trunk that I hadn’t brought up to my apartment yet (my car was broken into for the first time last week! Yay!). But no directives at my workplace so far.

        1. Jaybeetee*

          Well, I’m assuming someone broke into my car for whatever they could find (not uncommon in my city, but had never happened to me before). Took off with a little ashtray of change I keep in the drivers’ console, rifled thru my glove box, and took the TP. I guess junkies need toilet paper too?

        2. Peep*

          The Costcos in LA county (especially I think Woodland Hills?) are bizarrely like…. zombie apocalypse / earthquake level of out of toilet paper every day. A few days ago a FB friend of mine posted a picture of a -line- to get into Costco in the morning. I’m pretty sure nobody needs that much toilet paper, please calm yourselves. All the drug stores in my area have signs at the front saying “out of face masks, don’t ask” and most are out of hand sanitizer — the guy at CVS said people cleared him out of a restock in like two hours. There’s a difference between being prepared and being insane, and it doesn’t help if everyone can’t be clean because some nutballs are hoarding the supplies away from them.

          2. em_eye*

            I went to like 6 stores looking for hand sanitizer yesterday. Every place was out. I’m only mildly freaked out by coronavirus but I’m about to start a long stint of work travel so I wanted to stock up while I still could. I was finally able to get my hands on some hydrogen peroxide and some “all-natural” wipes I’m very skeptical of.

            1. Diahann Carroll*

              The peroxide is a good alternative to the wipes and if 91% or even 70% running alcohol is sold out where you are. I’d take both with me if I were you when you travel (put the peroxide in a travel size spray bottle) and just spray your wipes before use, and you should be fine.

              1. fposte*

                70% is apparently more effective than 91% anyway–opinions differ as to whether it’s the evaporation rate being slower or the water actually penetrating surfaces better.

                1. Diahann Carroll*

                  Yeah, it’s the evaporation rate per the comment below (above?). I use both, and when using 91%, just spray a ton of it on and keep applying it for a straight minute (and then wash hands with soap and water as soon as I get home).

              2. Eukomos*

                70% alcohol is better, the 91% evaporates faster and the amount of time the alcohol stays on your hands correlates to how many microbes it kills. Anything over 60% is strong enough to disinfect, so once you’ve passed that threshold higher isn’t really better.

                1. KoiFeeder*

                  And never spill 100% or leave it open to evaporate, or the entire high school chemistry class will get drunk and have one case of alcohol poisoning.

            2. Shad*

              Honestly, it’s not that hard to mix up some hand sanitizer from a strong alcohol source (rubbing alcohol or strong liquor will work. Ethanol vs isopropyl isn’t going to be a material difference in this context) and something to thicken it. An aloe vera after-sun gel works pretty well and is going to help reduce the drying from the alcohol. The important bit if you’re using alcohol is that the final mix needs to be at least 60% abv.

              1. Curmudgeon in California*

                If you can get 190 proof Everclear, it makes a great base for hand sanitizer. Unfortunately, my state is one that outlawed it, making it hard to get for alcohol fueled stoves and extractions and tinctures.

                However, the 120 proof variant of Everclear can be used straight, as it is 60% alcohol.

                1. MayLou*

                  Honestly, just use soap and water. It’s at least as effective, it’s cheaper and it’s less drying on your skin.

                2. Diahann Carroll*

                  The state I’m bordering sells Everclear, but I’m not sure at what proof. I didn’t even know this was a thing until last week! I could have started using that years ago and had party-time drinks as well, lol.

                3. Curmudgeon in California*

                  The only reason to use hand sanitizer is if you are not near a sink with soap. The prime examples of this are when out shopping, or using transit.

                4. Shad*

                  The strongest I found at the liquor store was 151, so the mix is a little on the thin side as far as viscosity, but it works.
                  And since this is the bottom nesting level, yes, soap and water is generally as good or better, but soap and water isn’t always a option, and hand sanitizer fills in beautifully for the circumstances when it isn’t.

            3. Peep*

              Not sure if it still applies, but one of my coworkers said she found a bunch of small bottles at the dollar store. I definitely wouldn’t have thought of going there, so they may still actually have -some-… :(

          3. gmg22*

            The thing I really thought would be prudent to buy this week was a new thermometer — my old digital one consistently says I have a temp of around 94 degrees, which I’m pretty sure is wrong — and I haven’t had any luck with that either. I happened to buy several varying-size bottles of hand sanitizer a few weeks ago, which ended up being a prescient decision.

            1. MissMaple*

              I found a thermometer in the baby section of Safeway, fyi. My toddler decided to smash his on the floor last week and all of the ones on Amazon cost $$$ now.

          4. sofar*

            My friend is a doctor and patients are calling her in a panic because they can’t buy hand sanitizer. She’s been saying, “OK do you have soap? Great! Wash your hands with it. It’s more effective anyway.”

          5. Juli G.*

            I am a very systematic shopper. At my grocery chain, a sale comes up every 6 weeks where you can get Lysol wipes for 89¢ if you buy 4. Which is what I do every other cycle. Of course, it came up this week and they were no where to be seen. I was like “I just want my normal stock! I am not trying to hoard, I am a budget conscious planner!”

            1. Diahann Carroll*

              Lol that’s like me and my bleach. I wanted to get another bottle to make sure I can wash my laundry, and all the stores around me are sold out of Clorox. We don’t even have any confirmed cases in our state yet.

            2. cacwgrl*

              I do this too and now I’m like the hoarder in my workgroup. I buy several staples in bulk and if I can’t make it to the warehouse (they’re at least 90 minutes away), I’ll place an order through the app. So last week I ordered TP, towels, wipes and laundry soap, like I do nearly every 6 weeks. When I mentioned it to my coworkers, you would have thought I was stealing from their kids! I literally pulled my app up, which tracks my orders in store and online to prove that I am not hoarding any more than usual! My order that shipped in from out of town is not the reason Wal-Mart does not have TP and towels and milk! There is no milk to be found in my town today. No idea why, but all three grocery stores, the dollar stores, the Wal-mart, all out. We had milk during and immediately following the quakes, but are suddenly out of it now… So strange.

              1. Alexandra Lynch*

                I make the joke that there is a secret ritual in this area of the country: whenever bad weather is expected, everyone has to make French Toast. Because instantly, even if it is an inch of snow in the middle of winter and we get snow every winter, everyone rushes to the store and buys all the milk, bread, and eggs.

                To this end, I keep powdered milk, yeast, and four cartons of eggs in the fridge. Of course I keep plenty of food in the house, and even if I couldn’t get to the store for next week’s planned food, I could easily come up with something based on the freezer’s contents. And I always have extra cat food and litter. I can go hungry, but the Daughter of Chaos (her name is Nyx) cannot.

            3. pamela voorhees*

              When I went to Target, they had all of their cleaning supplies on display in the front. I thought, cool! You’re right, Target, I should buy more Oxyclean and Lysol wipes! And then I got to the checkout line, realized what my cart looked like, and immediately thought, oh no, I am the problem.

          6. SpaceySteph*

            Yeah everyone at my costco this weekend was buying TP and bottled water. I’m really perplexed by the second one… do people honestly think the water supply is going to get contaminated or shut down? Or is it because we’re in a hurricane-prone area and people can’t honestly think of any other way to prep than by hoarding water?

            1. MissMaple*

              Yeah, I went to Costco to get some fruit and other staples and the panic over bottled water was baffling! Like, the level of societal breakdown that would need to happen for the water system to stop working is not something I’m even close to imaging from this situation. I have to assume it’s people here thinking about winter storms and broken pipes, but this is definitely a different situation!

              1. SuperBB*

                My theory is that our brains can only prepare for one kind of disaster. In SoCal, we hoard canned food, toilet paper, and bottle water for earthquakes. I guess we should expect to see people on the east coast hoarding milk, bread, and eggs.

                I haven’t been to Costco, but I happened to be out of TP and paper towels, and picked up both at the local grocery store. They were a little low on the store-brand TP, but had plenty of Charmin. The cleaning product aisle was decimated, though.

              2. SeluciaMD*

                Per the water thing: there are lots of articles out there (here’s one from Scientific American https://theprepared.com/wuhan-coronavirus/) that talk about how to prepare and one of the first things on that list is to make sure you have a good supply of “potable water.” I think the issue is so many people now equate potable with bottled ONLY without thinking about, you know, the water that comes out of the tap. If it ain’t Desani now it’s apparently not potable LOL.

                1. Ego Chamber*

                  Yeah, tap water is ideal. Filtered tap water if the tap water runs out of treatment chemicals (if you always filter your tap water: cool!). Bottled water is for when the taps stop working, which could happen if as many people get sick as the estimates are saying and there aren’t enough workers to keep the water facilities running.

                  Some places are already in areas where natural disasters are a non-zero concern and people there aren’t overreacting to stock up their supplies just in case. If you live somewhere where the water has gone out, you’re super aware of the possibility that it could happen again.

                2. Alexandra Lynch*

                  One of the things I intend to get for my disaster prep supplies is a large water filter that does several gallons. It’s not that I’m a “prepper”…more that at least five times in the last six years there has been a boil order somewhere in the county, because our water infrastructure is old, and fixing it properly is both expensive and apparently not glamorous enough for the city government to do .

      2. Clawfoot*

        Canada here, too — my company hosts a lot of conferences, and the latest one was cancelled. I’m waiting to hear if the next one (end of March) will be too, and I suspect it will.

        Generally speaking, I’ve noticed that there’s a MUCH higher tolerance for working from home if you’re sick or suspect you might be sick, which is nice but I have to wonder why it hasn’t been that way since the beginning. We *can* work from home, so why was it ever okay to come to work with a cold at all? We also have an open-office, “hotelling” kind of situation where nobody has an assigned desk, so there are a LOT of disinfectant wipes around.

        They’ve also limited business travel to “truly essential” trips, and if anyone takes any personal trips, they’re asked to self-quarantine at home for the recommended 14 days, working remotely for the duration.

        1. CoffeeLover*

          Ya I really hope the lasting effects of coronavirus are that company’s take a more humane stance on sick leave/working from home. If you can allow it during an epidemic, you can and should allow it always. Don’t you want to avoid spreading illness at your business every year/all the time?

      3. Lucy P*

        Can someone please explain the whole TP thing to me please. I’ve read the articles about shortages, but don’t know or understand the reasoning.

        Our state doesn’t have any cases, so the panic is at a minimum right now. Most of the stores are out of hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol and cleaning products, but we still have plenty of TP.

        1. Sparkly Librarian*

          I think people assume they will have to self-quarantine (or even be publicly quarantined in some places!) for a couple of weeks. If the water and electricity stay on, the things you don’t want to run out of are food, medications, and toilet paper.

          I dunno; if I run out of tp but the water and electricity stay on I’m just gonna move to family cloth along with the cloth diapers.

          1. fposte*

            I think some of it is also just “What’s on the regular list for panic buying? Better get that.”

            1. Don't Call me Liz*

              Yeah, the usual “water, bread, eggs, milk (french toast!), and TP” that people in Atlanta do when there the slightest hint of a threat of severe weather. Took a minute at Costco yesterday for me to figure out what was going on. Sold out of TP, but we were there for paper towels so we were fine.

              1. Lucy P*

                Well, about an hour after my post, the state got its first presumptive case.

                4 hours later, local Sams club is out of TP.

                1. Gazebo Slayer*

                  Oddly, there appears to be no shortage of TP here in Boston, even though we have a cluster of cases (and actually had our first case back in early February). I’m not sure whether our stores are just really well stocked or if people here are just really chill and blase.

              2. SpaceySteph*

                I grew up in South Florida and now live in Houston, so our normal disaster stock up is hurricane related– batteries, water, canned food. Its been a weird mental exercise to consider that tap water and power are probably not high on the list of things to go, so I can stock up on frozen foods and eggs… and probably don’t need 5 cases of water.

      4. Steve*

        I have heard (from someone who researches this stuff) that Canadian cases are mostly coming from the U.S. now. This is likely because most Canadians are travelling to/from the U.S. (a lot more trips are to the U.S. than China, Italy, and/or Iran – China and Iran seemed to be the major concern in Jan / Feb, from people who had been visiting family over the holidays, but those concerns seem to be much less now). It’s also likely because the U.S. has awful sick leave policies and I suspect the virus will spread quickly there, which impacts their neighbours.

      5. Blerpborp*

        I wash my hands what I consider to be a normal amount but I’ve never been someone too worried about germs (whatever the opposite of a germaphobe is) so I’m definitely washing my hands more and using hand sanitizer a lot more when I can’t wash. My mom is a compulsive hand washer and my dad has never been that much of a hand washer so I had a 50/50 chance. Of course I keep telling him to start since he is almost 80 and really doesn’t need to catch anything let alone Coronavirus but also…try to get someone who’s almost 80 to do anything they don’t want to, it’s not easy!

    2. kz*

      To be fair, this is a level of handwashing that most people don’t normally practice. For instance, I’ve been trying to make sure to wash my hands whenever I arrive anywhere after taking public transportation, whenever I get home after being out and about in public, after going to classrooms and other shared spaces etc (in addition, of course, to washing after using the bathroom etc.). Maybe I should normally do that during flu season anyway, but it’s not like I WASN’T washing my hands before, just not quite as much.

      1. londonedit*

        Yes, same. Obviously I’ve always washed my hands after using the loo, and before preparing food, but now I’m making sure I wash my hands every time I come into the office after being outdoors or in other parts of the building, after I’ve been to any meetings, and again when I get home from work in the evening.

        1. Ego Chamber*

          “Obviously …”

          Not that obviously, unfortunately. I saw a thread going around Twitter about how there are now lines in the mens room because dudes are apparently using the sinks for like the first time ever. My brother confirmed that he’s never seen guys lining up to wash their hands in public bathrooms before this. (Ewwww.)

        2. CrystalMaven*

          I work at Mccormick Place throughout the year at conferences. I’ve consistently seen women exit the bathroom without washing their hands. Some didn’t even look at the sink. Many, while seeing me wash my hands, would turn on the water, put their fingers under for three seconds and shake. Lots of these people were doctors. I am NOT shocked by the spread in the US. People don’t take basic precautions.

      2. Risha*

        Exactly. I’ve always been washing my hands after using the bathroom or when they were dirty, now I’ve been washing them a little more often and begrudgingly doing it for longer.

      3. Amy Sly*

        I do love the variations on how to wash your hands … “wash them like you’ve just been chopping jalapenos and you need to put your contacts in” or the version of the CDC instructions captioned with Lady McBeth’s “Out damn spot” monologue.

      4. Maybe I'm gross?*

        Yeah, this.

        And when I pay attention when I wash my hands after seeing one of those graphics about the spots that people commonly miss when they wash their hands I’m like… yeah, the way I wash my hands on autopilot (because I’ve done it thousands of times in my adult life and don’t think about it much) is probably less than totally thorough in some of those spots.

      5. zora*

        I actually always do those things, every time I arrive anywhere, especially after getting off of public transportation, all year round. Once it becomes a habit it’s pretty automatic, and I don’t really want to get sick any time of the year.

      7. MusicWithRocksIn*

        I am luckily ahead of the curve here because with a baby in diapers and a dog with ringworm I pretty much exist in a state of constantly washing my hands. Yeay me! But I am trying to be way more careful about touching my face. And in case anyone is having extreme dry hand difficulties- I have found the very old fashioned wearing gloves to bed has worked like magic. Put some thick lotion on then cotton gloves and in the morning your hands don’t look like an old washer ladies.

        1. Deborah*

          In gardening season I wash my hands more and get dry skin, so my routine then is to wash-then-moisturise – works fairly well.

    3. Talia*

      Bear in mind that America isn’t actually doing a whole lot of testing, so “only 3 cases in our state” is likely deceptive– authorities think it was circulating in Washington state for several weeks before they actually noticed it.

      1. Gotta Wonder*

        My household has been joking that we might have already had it – all of us were sick with an upper respiratory bug during January. In my case, it ended up as bronchitis (I have a history of bronchitis, but this was the first time after about 20 years). We’re all better now, but we wonder if somehow it didn’t already blow through our area…

        1. BadWolf*

          That came through our area too — lots of coworkers sick at the beginning of January with an upper respiratory type thing.

          1. everlong*

            Yeah, I’ve been kinda wondering if I had it in January, too. I got really sick. But I wasn’t having breathing issues, so I figure not? But I don’t know.

            1. AGD*

              I’m feeling this way as well. I was sick for two weeks in early February after travelling to England, but figured it was ‘bad cold’ territory, not ‘flu-like symptoms’.

            2. Eukomos*

              This was a bad flu season way before the coronavirus got out of China, so it was probably that.

        2. Anax*

          Yep. I’m on week 3 of self-isolation with the flu, now – no good way to know if it’s COVID-19 or not, since only high-risk or seriously ill people are getting tested, and I’m in the Bay Area so there’s a non-zero risk.

          (I’m okay, just can’t seem to shake the fever, so I’m working from home per doctor’s orders. We suspect a secondary infection at this point, but it’s hard to know for sure without a physical exam, and those are also being kept for emergencies to reduce flu spread.)

          I like working from home, but I feel guilty for being out and under the weather so long!

        3. Curmudgeon in California*

          Yeah, I got the cold that became some sort of bronchitis in December/January. I thought I was going to have to hit urgent care. Mostly gone now. But I have run out of sick time.

        4. MistOrMister*

          I was thinking the same thing. I went in for what I thought was the flu on Christmas Eve. I tested negative but was told my symptoms were such that I probably had the flu anyway (apparently the flu test only test for certain strains and can give a false negative.) and was given tamiflu. But I have been wondering if it could have been the coronavirus. It would be interesting if there was a way to test for people who have already had it.

          1. Ego Chamber*

            Theoretically you should have antibodies left over in your system if you’ve had it but I don’t know if there’s a of test for that yet. I assume the test they’re using only detects the full immune response: that would explain why people in isolation can pop a negative and then test positive a few days later.

            I would love to have an accurate count after the fact, just for statistics, but the administration seems to be super invested in making sure that doesn’t happen, based solely on the amount of tests that have been requested by doctors but refused by the labs that are capable of processing the samples.

        5. Cece*

          Same! We have a business unit in Wuhan and most of our foreign staff made it out before the lockdown. Discovered this midway through a lunch meeting with some of those folks that I hasn’t met before (and why would I? They’re usually in China). Or maybe I’ve just had an unusually bad cold? According to my local health services I’m not a priority for testing, so I stayed home best I could and took other precautions.

          1. Lee*

            Same, though? I had a particularly bad bout of something like flu or strep in Chicago over New Years, and tested negative for both. When I took antivirals, I got much better though.
            Symptoms were a bad dry cough and a very high fever, with a painful sore throat (white spots in the back of throat)

            1. Ego Chamber*

              I’m glad you got better!

              Coronovirus symptoms are high fever and a dry cough. The dangerous part is if it progresses to pneumonia, and the damage it does to the renal system. I’m worried about the long term effects. :(

      2. Krabby*

        Yeah, I’m in Canada and I saw a stat a few weeks ago saying my province had tested more people for covid-19 than all of the US combined. The Seattle outbreak happened just after that though, so I don’t know if that’s still true.

    4. everlong*

      I had a coworker once watch me lather my hands and asked in awe, how did I get it to lather? Like, until then, she’d just poured the soup on her hands and then washed them off. Um. You’re supposed to rub them together to build up a later. WTF.

        1. Curmudgeon in California*

          Apparently not. I’ve seen so many people who just… don’t know how.

        2. everlong*

          This coworker had several other issues, including with boundaries and appropriate behavior, so I wish I could assume this was just part of them. But so many people wash their hands badly, so alas, I cannot blame the fact that she once announced that someone was pumping breastmilk.

        3. Librarian of SHIELD*

          We have a cooking program for kids, and I make them all wash their hands before we start. At the last one, one of the parents commented on how nobody ever showed her how to be that thorough about it.

          I remember there being some cute sketches about it on Sesame Street type shows when I was a kid, and I worked at a daycare in college where we got a thorough training on it, but “how to wash your hands” is just not a thing that people get taught.

          1. Sparkly Librarian*

            Our children’s librarians got a refresher passed down from a pediatric pulmonologist — someone who has taught a lot of little patients and their families how to keep from getting a potentially lethal respiratory illness. Of course we set it to music. (Doesn’t come across well without the visuals, though.)

    5. Three owls in a trench coat*

      There’s a woman in my building (different department) who always loudly chats on her cell phone while in the bathroom. It makes me cringe into the next week every single time. I haven’t seen her in a while but maybe the virus has made her change her habits.

      1. MusicWithRocksIn*

        There has been a lot on handwashing but another pro tip is to disinfect your screens often. We probably touch our phones more than anything else and if you wash your hands but then still type on the phone you were using before you washed your hands it didn’t do a lot of good. This goes for kindles and tablets too.

        1. MusicWithRocksIn*

          Oh – and steering wheel! Another thing we don’t think about how much we touch.

    6. research anon*

      For non-essential roles we are testing working from home this week two days.
      Meetings and conferences have been cancelled – the American College of Cardiology conference was just cancelled as was a collaborative meeting that we have with a large academic institution
      Most of my staff will have to be in the office. I am asking them to use hand sanitizer and to wipe down surfaces, computers and door knobs at the beginning and end of their shifts.
      My worry is what my company will do if all non-essential staff are required to stay home – not all of our work can be remote…. and people shouldn’t have to use their PTO for this –
      I worry most about the economic impacts of the virus thus far.

    7. TheOtherMother*

      Lucky us, my family and I work in the nation’s Covid19 hotbed, the Pacific Northwest. :(

      We’ve been told to work from home for three weeks. Today was day one. I spent more time on the phone with people today than I have this year combined. I only have a personal cellphone so now multiple people have my cellphone number. Ugh.

      Tomorrow, I’ll ZOOM for a meeting. We have important deadlines coming up so there’s lots of back and forth email and logging into systems – and making sure everyone has access to the system – to work on projects. I encourage people in other states and countries to plan NOW! Get IT on board and get people the right tools and access to tools so that they can continue to collaborate and get things done. Don’t wait to try to log into something and realize your passwords are all back in your office.

      We don’t have a separate office at home and try to use different devices to get work done. Two of us will be tripping over each other and there’s no going to a coffee shop to work!

      I’ve decided to track what I do each day, who I ZOOM or phone conference. And my hours. I’m fear I’m going to lose the boundary between home and work after three weeks. When we had the two weeks of snow in February 2019, I lost all track of time. I would remember something and log in at all hours, once at 1am. I don’t want that to happen again over these next three weeks.

    8. Struggle bus is real*

      Our office ran out of soap in the bathroom. Not due to unusual use, just lack of janitorial services…

  5. glitter writer*

    We are full-time remote writers to begin with, so mostly we’re explaining it to other people. And I’m trying to convince some friends who are new to remote work to get lunch with me in the coming weeks so none of us goes stir-crazy.

    1. Diahann Carroll*

      Yeah, I’m full-time remote, so I was ahead of the curve. My grandboss and another one of my colleagues is as well. The rest of my team is dispersed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia, so we’re watching what happens with them closely. My manager thinks it’s only a matter of time before our headquarters (where he’s based) will be shut down as a city an hour away from them now has two confirmed cases and we have an office in said city – they won’t close down one office and not the other. Plus, most of my company can work from home (we’re in tech), so it wouldn’t be too much of a disruption to just tell everyone not to come into the offices until this thing passes. We all have laptops, work phones, and/or conference speaker phones and headsets to be able to hold virtual meetings anywhere in the world.

      1. Sally*

        I used to work from home full-time, and it’s really isolating. I don’t love it, but sometimes I will work from home one day out of the week. My company just announced that we are all working from home for the next two weeks. So I’m going to have to figure out how to make it work for me. I’ll probably try to visit friends as much as I can, and work in the evening, which works better for me. I’ll try to take advantage of the flexibility of working from home, but I’ll still need to be available for some parts of my job during the day.

    2. Hats Are Great*

      I work for a small media outlet where most of the staff is full-time remote, so it hasn’t made a huge change to my daily life yet, but I am sooooooooo tired of reading and writing about coronavirus and handling the 50 billion complainy e-mails that come in every time there’s a new story or new development. “Why aren’t you promoting colloidal silver?” “Why did you quote the CDC when it’s compromise by Trump? The WHO is clearly the right source to quote!” It is just bringing out every reader we have who is utterly bananas.

  6. Eillah*

    I ride on the same train line (possibly the same train) as the New Rochelle patient. I’ve never washed my hands more.

    1. Bikelover*

      I read this at first as “I’ve never washed my hands before”. Good time to start, I guess?

  7. JokeyJules*

    we’ve been supplying staff who have to go out into the field with plenty of hand sanitizer and wipes. Our company is already very flexible on working remotely, so that wouldn’t be an issue anyway. The biggest potential concern for company operations is if none of us are able to do field work or need to quarantine, but as far as i know they’re preparing for it by trying to load up on opportunities to do work that can be done remotely rather than including field work.

    1. Catherine de Medici*

      My leasing office sent a letter the other day telling renters to inform them if anyone is sick if they have a maintenance request, so that the maintenance workers can take the appropriate precautions before entering the homes. Anyone with a fever will only have emergency services performed until 24 hours have passed since the fever broke. They are also wiping down common areas with disinfectant more frequently.

      1. Stormy Weather*

        My building is also doing more cleaning. I like what yours is doing for the maintenance workers.

      2. Ashley*

        I hope this is for non urgent maintenance requests. Plumbing issues can’t always wait among other maintenance issues.

        1. Catherine de Medici*

          They have rules for what classifies as a plumbing emergency. Basically, if you only have one shower/toilet and they aren’t working, then it is an emergency. If you have two bathrooms and only one is out, then it isn’t an emergency.

      3. LilPinkSock*

        My complex has stopped supplying towels in our little fitness center. I suspect our larger health club will do the same if (when?) the time comes.

        I’m glad your community is looking out for its staff this way.

    2. Parenthetically*

      Yeah, my husband’s job is a mix of office-based and field-based, and I’m very curious to see how things go with that. The office-based work can be done from home — a few of his coworkers WFH when they only have office things to do — but their field work obviously requires human presence, and is mostly done in pairs. They contract with private companies and government agencies for the field work, including on big infrastructure projects, so a quarantine could have a pretty big impact.

    3. Nita*

      Ugh. Our company is A-OK on remote work too, but several departments do quite a bit of field work. It would be kind of unfair if half of us could work from home, but the other half would have to keep running all over the city, getting exposed. On the upside, many of the field people have actual construction-grade respirators (and the ones who don’t could probably get fitted for them fairly quickly).

  8. Catherine de Medici*

    I work for the federal government and the general recommendations thus far are to encourage people to telework as needed and people should stay out of the office until they have gone 24 hours without any cold symptoms, although this is being left to the discretion of the employee for the time being. My agency is looking into making further recommendations, with the possibility of just having everyone telework for a while.
    My boss in particular has asked us to bring our laptops home every night, just in case.

    1. Mama Bear*

      Some agencies have specific polices folks can use. I know at least one person with severe asthma who has invoked some to use telework without the day in the office requirement.

      1. Kiwi*

        I have asthma and my personal plan is if more cases crop up in my area I’m working from home. My employer’s pretty flexible about it.

    2. Karen Hamrick*

      I also work for the federal government, and managers at my agency have been directed to send home anyone with a cough. Telework has been encouraged.

    3. Holy Moley*

      Sadly my federal job is not telework eligible so Ill be coming in until I get sick or they close down. Hoping that I wont have to burn my precious annual leave if something does happen but what can you do.

      1. Jaid*

        My fed job has a code for Office Open, Cannot Safely Report.

        Weather and safety leave may be authorized during periods of quarantine or isolation due to a quarantinable communicable disease if an employee is asymptomatic (does not exhibit symptoms) and they cannot perform work at an approved location (such as the home telework site). This supersedes the use of sick leave as would have otherwise been allowed during periods of quarantine or isolation under the sick leave regulations at 5 CFR 630.401(a)(5).

    4. Another Fed*

      Fed here as well. We were told last week that all OCONUS travel was put on hold until further notice, and then last night we found out no travel to DC either.

      1. SpaceySteph*

        I’ve been wondering about this. I’m about to go out on maternity leave so haven’t been in a few months personally, but our team does a lot of travel to the Los Angeles area. Wonder when they’re going to shut that down.

    5. everlong*

      Have they cancelled all travel? Last I heard, federal government was still traveling, while business travel tanks elsewhere.

      1. AnonPi*

        I think it’s dependent on the agency. Mine is no overseas travel, and travel within the US is only allowed if essential. Since we’re a research facility with visitors, we’ve also instituted rules about international travelers if they are from or have traveled through one of the high risk countries in the last 14 days then they can’t come on site. What they’ll do once it spreads more in the US remains to be seen. There’s been no discussion about telework, probably because the ones that make the decision get to work from home if they want anyways. Us hourly folk don’t have that privilege.

    6. Donovanable*

      Similarly a federal employee here. I’m getting telework approvals set up for myself (a whole production for the kind of job I do, which is almost always in person). I’m required to screen everyone I see for potential COVID exposure–unusual because I am not a front-line healthcare staff. In addition, my branch of federal service just approved up to 15 days of quarantine leave, at the discretion of the facility head (previously required much more to get this kind of approval).

    7. Katniss Evergreen*

      I’m a federal contractor working on-site with a certain health-research oriented agency. My boss said we’re anticipating any day now that our group will be directed to “telework, unless in exceptional circumstances to see urgent (read: necessary, time-sensitive clinical) appointments.” For anyone administrative, that’ll mean telework, full stop.

    8. Rachel in NYC*

      My office has been hurriedly making sure everyone has a laptop if they don’t and if they do, it’s up to date and everything works- now with reminders to take it home at night.

      It feels now like we’re just waiting for the email…

  9. S*

    Higher education institution in Europe – a few signs in the bathrooms telling people to wash their hands and the periodic email from upper management telling us to stay calm. Based on what I see around campus the good hand washing advice is not sinking in. Not feeling optimistic here.

    1. curly sue*

      Higher ed in Canada, and we’re seeing about the same. There haven’t been any cases within 1,000 km of us, so there’s no real worry locally, except that students and faculty do a lot of travelling. Some conference locations have been put off-limits for now, based on federal recommendations, and we’ve had a bunch of ‘please don’t panic, we’re keeping an eye on it’ emails. I haven’t heard any discussions about telework options or closure possibilities in the faculty at all.

      1. S*

        We are located in a major global city in the British isles (300 cases nationally, like 50 locally) and I’m frankly pretty blown away by how blase everyone is being. I understand the need to maintain calm but the impression one gets is of negligence.

        1. Kramerica Industries*

          I’m the other way with this where I think some are being too alarmist. I’m also Canada-based and I like our response so far. In my city, there have been news articles on how hospitals have dealt with past epidemics and how current facilities are preparing. My employer is a large corporation and from what I’ve heard from others, companies are doing a pretty good job at making sure people don’t feel pressured to come into work if they’re sick.

          Some conferences have been cancelled and I like that it sends the message of “we’re being cautious, but not blase because health is more important than the $$$ put into the conference”.

      2. sigh..*

        I’m also in higher ed in Canada but we have quite a few cases and just last week a bunch of people came up and visited from Seattle. So far only handwashing signs in the washrooms. No travel advisories yet.

      1. Elle*

        Yeah, I went through a large station on Saturday, and there was some really thorough hand washing going on – none of the usual dip and shake!

        1. Goofy*

          Agreed! I went to a show this week and had to wait in line for a sink to wash my hands — that has NEVER happened before at that venue.

    3. Majnoona*

      Higher ed in big state U in the US. *All* international travel has been cancelled (I can’t go to Toronto but Seattle is apparently fine). All study abroad students are coming home. We have been told to prepare to teach all our classes online if it comes to this and have been ask to teach one class online next week to practice. Some resources are provided.

      1. Eeyore's Missing Tail*

        Another higher ed person here. All of our spring study abroad students in China, South Korea, and Italy have come home and are under a two week quarantine. If anyone is going out the country for work, class, or personal, we are required to inform our international office (not real name, but I don’t want to out myself). Our faculty’s been told to take this week (our spring break) to move all classes online in the event we have to close. Our administrative specialist has received instructions on how to forward the office phones to local numbers and we’re all reminded to make sure our laptops have the vpn stuff.

        1. AbroadAnon*

          This is similar to my university.
          I actually work in the study abroad office, and we’ve cancelled all programs in China, South Korea, Italy, and Japan through the summer. Students in those countries have been required to return home and self-quarantine. We are anticipating more countries and more programs being impacted.

          Faculty and staff travelling to any country with a CDC rating of 2+ or a State Dept rating of 3+ must register their travel and self-quarantine when they come home. It has not been decided if someone travels knowing they will need to self-quarantine if they will be required to use vacation and/or sick days.

      2. Manon*

        Wow, that’s much more caution than my university (in the US) has.

        Only some study abroad has been suspended, and many students are traveling nationally/internationally right now for spring break. I’m genuinely worried things will get much worse in the aftermath of so much travel.

        1. Ego Chamber*

          “I’m genuinely worried things will get much worse in the aftermath of so much travel.”

          You’re not wrong to be concerned but try not to be overly concerned about it. We’ve likely had community spread in the states since sometime in January, if not December or earlier. People being in crowds are likely to spread it more and people who are travelling are likely to go to some crowded areas, so there will be an increase in illnesses when the students return. I also expect a dramatic increase in diagnoses whenever the administration gets their ish together re: proper testing or when the billionaires save us, whichever happens first (the Gates Foundation is currently dumping a millions of dollars into testing and facilities).

      3. sigh..*

        Has your institution considered the students who don’t have internet at home and rely on going to the library to complete assignments?

      4. Call Me Tired*

        Study abroad professional here.

        “I can’t go to Toronto but Seattle is apparently fine” is because it’s so hard for universities to be doing this on a case by case basis. We’re looking a potential level ups to 3 in Europe where we have a ton of students and it’s frankly not responsible of us to consider not taking these kids home, especially our undergrads. It’s still in progress, but I understand and can support taking them home. It’s on us if our students get infected.

      5. Rumbakalao*

        I’m in higher ed in DC and we’re all doing the same thing- a lot of mixed feelings about it though. Obviously there hasn’t been a lot of time to prepare for switching so suddenly to an online course format, and a lot of people (both students and staff) frustrated about the travel restrictions and what it means- people worrying about getting a grade for incomplete study abroad trips, parents concerned about their kids stuck in dorms with other sick people, people worrying about translating in-person curriculum to online for half a semester and possibly for the foreseeable future, etc.

    4. MuchNope*

      Higher ed library in Washington state.
      We’re prepared to go to remote classes at a moments notice. Various IT departments went all out last week getting laptops preloaded with needed VPN/software/apps/permissions and did an in-person boot up to make sure everything worked.
      Admin had everyone do a workload inventory of what could be done remotely and HR came up with webinars and training opportunities for people who couldn’t do their normal tasks from home. A second VPN server was added for higher traffic.
      I am actually stunned at how fast and thoroughly university admin pulled this together. They even reworked our ridiculous telework policy so classified staff weren’t left out.
      Now we’re all waiting for the word, and given how many cases are being confirmed, I expect it any moment.

      1. Curmudgeon in California*

        My university did an assessment early last November on people’s ability to do telework in case of emergency. The upshot is that most of the IT staff can WFH and is prepared to do so. It’s like someone was prescient.

    5. Kelly*

      Another higher ed person here in the Midwest. It’s unclear what is actually being done if there’s more an a few isolated cases. The only guidance that campus has sent out is concerning the individuals who have come back early from Italy and South Korea. We just a got a “helpful” reminder this morning via email to remember to wash our hands. We have not heard anything from both our HR office and the main one about remote work procedures and if we have to quarantine, if we have to use sick time or activate our short term paid leave policy.

      It’s also concerning that our spring break is next week. I have to work during it, and am irritated that we won’t likely won’t have any students who plan on sticking around because my colleague who is in charge of student staffing has not found anyone yet. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to shut down to the public next week and spend the week cleaning and disinfecting our spaces. I think that would be a more productive use of my time than babysitting the public desk and covering once again for my coworker’s basic inability to do the most simple and basic part of his job.

      Other state agencies have supposedly sent out some protocols for what to do, but none of those communications have been made public. The public transit agency isn’t doing anything yet, including reducing the chronic overcrowding that will only spread the disease faster if it hits. A colleague was indulging in some black humor with the comment that one of the campus bus routes could be one of the four horsemen of this plague.

      1. Public buses*

        Our pubic buses in our area have it stepped up – in that now they are deeply cleaning every 3 days instead of every two weeks. And also thoroughly every night.

      2. fposte*

        My worry is that cases will explode in my state over spring break and our students will be told not to return. There’s planning that I wouldn’t do this week that I’m moving earlier as a result, since I have a pile of key staff who are students.

      3. Lu*

        We have spring break next week too. I’m worried we are going to get a ton of cases. We’ve only got emails from administrators about washing our hands. Nothing about the possibility of prepping for moving classes online, etc. I’m really curious to see what happens. I don’t feel prepared.

    6. IT But I Can't Fix Your Printer*

      Higher ed in the US. Everyone (including staff) has been instructed to self-isolate for 14 days if you return from a Level 3 country. We already have one-day-a-week telework permission so I’m going to try to push for seriously-just-stay-home-all-the-time-my-internet-works-just-as-well-on-Tuesday-as-it-does-on-Friday telework permission, but I’m not actually in charge of anything around here so…….

      1. S*

        Nice of your places to enforce self-isolation on people (if possible). We are extremely international and probably had thousands of students coming back from places like Italy over a recent weeklong break – no instruction for them to do anything – so I am pretty surprised I’m not hearing about more cases.

        1. Rumbakalao*

          We got the same instructions, but the reality is that they can’t actually enforce this policy. They can’t actually keep track of where every person associated with the school is traveling.

          I also work at a university that combines PTO and sick leave (which is unfortunately not uncommon), so I imagine without a blanket rule for everyone to be required to work from home a lot of people realistically are going to come in with germs anyway.

    7. R*

      I’m wondering if we work in the same place or if all British unis are just doing the same ‘signs in bathrooms and occasional email’ routine. I’ve personally seen far too many students leave the bathroom without washing their hands in my time to feel optimistic. I’m surprised we haven’t had any mention of remote working yet, but maybe that will change once term ends?

      1. S*

        I have some anecdotal evidence (I work at one and study at another, both doing the same minimal response) that this response is pretty much the same across the board. Smashing it. Ditto the uneeven handwashing routines.
        All I’ve heard of remote working is an email from a head of division saying that remote work was a possibility on the table but that conversations were ongoing. I’m wondering if unis are just trying to hold on until the end of the month when term ends or something…

        1. R*

          It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is just the response of every uni. My team can go full remote work at least for a little bit but haven’t heard anything about it yet. I’m young but have asthma so keeping an eye on the situation – we have someone in the wider department with much more significant underlying respiratory issues who is still coming in to work, but I’m keeping an eye out to see when they go full work from home.

          I do think they’re doing their best to hang on until the end of term, I wouldn’t be surprised if we closed or went down to majority wfh over the Easter holidays or something.

    8. Drtheliz*

      Higher Ed in Germany, we’ve been given bathroom hand sanitizer and A Plan
      #Remote work for 14 days if ill/high risk, even if remote work is not usually allowed
      #Even if you can’t remote work (no living room laser) this will not be counted as holiday
      #If your kid’s daycare/school is shut, talk to your boss and we’ll work something out
      #Please book refundable travel

    9. Adjuncts Anonymous*

      Community college instructor in NC, USA: most of the college (not my department, though) was on Spring Break last week. Employees who traveled to China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Washington State, California, New York City or Westchester County, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oregon, or Texas are required to check with the HR office before returning to work. Official travel to these areas has been suspended indefinitely.

      Of course, they are also reminding us to wash our hands and to use sanitizer when necessary. There has been nothing about online classes or distance learning at this point, but our county is so far unaffected, and there have only been two confirmed cases in the state. My thoughts are with those of you more directly afflicted.

    10. Foxgloves*

      Higher Ed in London and everyone is taking it very seriously here- lots of hand washing, hand sanitiser everywhere, and strong encouragements to work from home if you’re ill- but no one is telling healthy people to work from home. I work on online degree programmes, and everyone is coming to us for advice for how we could do all teaching/ learning/ assessment remotely. We’ve had 60+ cases here and I don’t know anyone whose company has asked them to work from home until further notice. A few “you’ve been to Japan/ Italy so please work from home for a fortnight”, and one “you’re in two teams- one will work from home, one will work from the office, and you’ll alternate weekly”, but that’s about the extent of it. We’re all being very British about it.

  10. Erin*

    We haven’t made any decisions yet, but I think something will be coming about working remotely soon enough. Several conferences we were supposed to send team members to have been canceled, though. It was fun talking to a hotel reservations agent this morning about canceling a dozen hotel rooms, though.

    1. Loubelou*

      We’re in a similar situation except that a planned conference is still going ahead (at the moment).
      I’m actually concerned that very little has been mentioned at my organisation about working from home. I spoke to my CEO about it briefly and she thinks it’s unlikely it will come to that, but we don’t have a contingency plan in place. But then she’s really not keen on remote working generally.

    2. Curmudgeon in California*

      I’ve had two work-related conferences canceled already. Fortunately they were local.

      1. Sally*

        I’ve had several all-day conferences and off-site meetings canceled in the past few days,too.

      2. nymitz*

        We’ve had at least four major national conferences cancelled between now and the end of May, but then those attendees are mostly public health and health care, so kinda busy at the moment – I think it has more to do with likely conference attendance numbers than it does with stopping the spread of disease.

  11. DataQueen*

    We’ve been instructed to take our laptops and critical documents home each night, just in case. People travelling abroad should self-quarantine upon return. No pay/sick time/etc. will be docked (we have a great company!). And we’re meeting this afternoon to discuss upcoming large events – we are considering cancelling anything over 25-30 people for the next month or two, but we’ll see what happens. We actually deal with this all the time because so many of our events and staff are outdoors, so every summer when there’s a concern (last year EEE), we have to address it with our staff. We usually go with town/state/national guidelines and adhere to those, with an extra layer of “we do care about you so you do what you feel safest with”.

    1. DataQueen*

      Oh, and hand sanitizer stations have been added at every corner. Like no one washed thier hands before this?

      1. Mama Bear*

        Our landlord added sanitizer stations and posted handwashing/info sheets in the bathrooms.

      2. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

        I still have to tell people to wash their hands. It shocking how resistant people are to keeping their hands clean. It takes less than a minute.

        1. Mr. Anderson, Matrix CEO*

          And those non-shielding, open mouth coughers are now getting dirty looks from everyone (into your elbow people!)

          1. Curmudgeon in California*

            Yeah, about the elbow thing: My arm doesn’t bend that way. I cough onto the back of my arm.

            1. RoseMai*

              Any effort is appreciated. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen just full-on, open-mouth cough on the subway. So gross.

      3. calonkat*

        You can’t buy hand sanitizer in my town now (they identified one case in the state, but since they’ve tested under 50 people, whoop de doo) but you can buy all the liquid/hand soap you want. Toilet paper is gone, but tissue paper is still there. I mean, what the heck???? Why would you rather put alcohol on your hands than wash them and just REMOVE the yucky stuff??? And who needs a multi year supply of toilet paper? Are they planning to use that instead of tissues???

          1. Alienor*

            I read an article this morning which posited that people are fixated on toilet paper because they want to feel like they’re doing something, and toilet paper is a relatively cheap commodity that they know they’ll use eventually, so they can buy a lot of it and think “OK, I’m prepared.” (Full disclosure: I did buy a larger pack of TP than normal when I went shopping last week, but like…24 rolls, not hundreds of them.)

          2. Oxford Comma*

            I have a friend with Crohn’s disease and I understand why she wanted enough for a month.

            Everyone else….not so sure.

          3. Curmudgeon in California*

            Same here. I actually needed to buy TP this month, and had to go five different places before I found some. Annoying as hell. In Costco over the weekend I saw lots of people with TP and paper towels. I know they didn’t all need it. Yes, I bought slightly larger quantities on my regular Costco run, but otherwise nothing special – I shop in bulk anyway, and since I like in earthquake country I keep a good backstock of non-perishables anyway.

            1. Windchime*

              I’m in Washington. My sister also lives here, but on the less populated side of the state. Even so, her Costco was rationing toilet paper and bottled water. People were queued up to get their package of TP and a fight almost broke out when a couple of women tried to cut in line. It’s nuts.

          4. MistOrMister*

            I bought one pack of toilet paper. I already had abouthalf of one, so I am set for I would say at least 6 months. But I bought mine because I heard people were going nuts and buying all the tp in sight. I just didn’t want to be left with no tp in a few months if everyone is still in survival mode.

        2. Parenthetically*

          Our local grocery chain put a strict limit on TP, bottled water, bleach, lysol, and some shelf-stable staples. Five per customer. You can’t find rubbing alcohol or Clorox wipes for love nor money, but there were plenty of other cleaning supplies — and all the hand soap you could possibly want.

          So far we only have three cases in my state and a few healthcare workers in quarantine.

        3. Valprehension*

          My understanding is that the toilet paper shortage is somewhat related to supply chain issues (although once the stock started dwindling, people have also taken that as a sign to stock up irrationally…)

          1. gmg22*

            I assumed it was because people didn’t want to run out if they had to self-isolate at home, but that should mean we’re also running out of canned goods and the like. Maybe we are and I just don’t know about it … my local grocery store is in the middle of moving to a new building, so the shelves look empty anyway.

            1. pentamom*

              How much toilet paper are people (excluding people with GI issues) using that they would normally run out in less than a month anyway? It’s not like it’s something you buy every week in the first place. I don’t think even everybody buying their normal purchase of TP at once without hoarding would cause shortages everywhere.

          2. Risha*

            I mean, to be fair, once the hording starts, it can then become logical behavior. I got groceries yesterday and picked up a 12 pack of toilet paper that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have gotten until the next trip (as a single woman with three+ full rolls left). It wasn’t that I thought I’d get sick or have to self quarantine in the near future, it was that I’d heard the reports of stores selling out and didn’t want to get stuck hunting for it on that next trip if that happened to my usual grocery store.

            1. CorruptedbyCoffee*

              I’m in King county, so our response might be a little different than many of your workplaces. Our company president is part of the meetings going on daily with king county health. At first nobody was taking it seriously. We got an email that was like “wash your hands, and remember, you probably won’t even know you’ve got it!” Then the deaths started, the city, county and state declared a state of emergency and told all our high risk people to stay home for 3 weeks. Which I’m doing, because I’m immunocompromised.

              My organization sent out an email telling everyone “they have to make a personal choice” if they are high risk on whether to stay home. Personally, the health system around here is overwhelmed right now, so if I do get it I know I probably can’t expect care, so I’m seeing on the side of following the health departments guidelines. I do not have enough sick and vacation to cover this, so at least a week will be unpaid.

              At this point, about 1/3 to half our staff are out sick. I’m not sure how many of them are high risk, have the flu or have covid because they’re *still* not testing everyone, just people bad enough to need hospitalization.

              The library basically has said it will not close unless ordered to do so. Their current plan is to take 3 out of every 4 computers out of service and limit staff contact to 6 feet away from patrons and each other. It’s ridiculous because we hotdesk and serve a huge population that doesn’t or is incapable of observing general health guidelines, like hand washing or covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched someone cough on their library card and then hand it to me. Bodily fluids are a daily part of our routine.

              Some of the staff have tried wearing gloves, but pretty much everyone was having problems with hand sweat and cracking hands due to excessive hand washing. We’ve been instructed to wipe everything down with wipes every 30 minutes, but if you read the back of the wipes, surfaces have to be wet for 4 full minutes to kill viruses, and we have over 100 computers in one building alone.

              Someone tried to steal our industrial sized bottle of hand sanitizer. The stores have been out for weeks and we weren’t sure we were going to be able to get more, but they were able to ship some in. After that runs out, I’m not sure what we’ll do do, so I hope no one steals it.

              We’ll see.

              1. Mad Harry Crewe*

                I’ve heard that the local diners won’t stock their tables with full bottles of Secret Aardvark (kind of fancy hot sauce), because people steal them – they make sure that the bottles are never more than half full. Could you batch out the big hand sanitizer bottle into smaller, half-full ones?

                1. CorruptedbyCoffee*

                  Those are smaller and thus easier to steal. I figure it’s harder to lug the giant one off the desk and harder to hide. The little ones can go into hoodie pockets or purses, sadly.

          3. Djuna*

            Someone told me today (I’m in Europe) that our larger supermarkets don’t like to keep large amounts of toilet paper in storage because it takes up too much space. They order enough to fill the shelves and then re-order daily as needed. They are re-ordering every day now and it is putting the supply chain under a lot of pressure.

        4. everlong*

          I stocked up on toilet paper on the theory that if I’m quarantined for 2 weeks without notice, I’m gonna need that :P

      4. Diahann Carroll*

        Like no one washed thier hands before this?

        No, no they didn’t. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve seen over the years just waltz their asses out of the bathroom after taking a dump or changing their tampons without washing their hands. This is why, when I worked in-house, I never opened any doors without using a paper towel or napkin and I never touched any other communal item (e.g., coffee machine, printers, water dispenser, microwaves, etc.) in the office without using my sleeve or the bottom of my shirt (which I would then spray with 91% alcohol and/or Lysol once I got back to my desk).

        1. Curmudgeon in California*

          One job I had I would be sitting in the stall and listen as women would flush, leave the stall, and head straight for the door. It was one of those open plan benching environments, too (36″ of bench per person.) I got pneumonia within my first month of working there, in 2015. I left before the end of the year, even though I took a pay cut.

    2. Llama Wrangler*

      And we’re meeting this afternoon to discuss upcoming large events – we are considering cancelling anything over 25-30 people for the next month or two, but we’ll see what happens.

      I asked about this in a separate comment down thread, but I’m curious about how other workplaces are thinking of handling these issues. We’re client-serving (and serve young adults) so events generally impact our clients as well as our staff.

      1. Krabby*

        I just got asked to attend an emergency conference (~50 people) tomorrow about how to handle the virus. All I can think is, “why the hell is this an in-person event? We are all tech companies!”

        1. Ego Chamber*

          I saw a thing on Twitter yesterday about a university hosting a hackathon to “help stop the coronavirus.” It’s I think 3 days or something like that and no, it’s not virtual.

      2. DataQueen*

        Our events being cancelled will impact our clients – we deal with all ages and our services aren’t necessary, just nice to haves (for example, a homeless shelter versus a ballet). It will also result in lost revenue for us because those with the means do pay to attend.

    4. sacados*

      That’s basically what my office is doing too.
      1) No booking upcoming business travel (domestic or international) for the foreseeable future; and if you do need to book travel, must come with detailed Reasons why you can’t just get it done via conference call
      2) Anybody returning from international (anywhere outside US, even Canada) must mandatory WFH for 14 days
      3) Mandatory 14 days WFH for anyone who’s been to a large conference or gathering in the last 2 weeks
      4) Our SF office typically caters lunch every day, that’s also being reevaluated apparently (communal food dangers)

      Then they also sent out a memo to our San Francisco office telling people they were welcome to work from home per their own judgment, which about 24 hours later was changed to “encouraged” to work from home. Still for SF only tho, I’m in our Burbank office and for the moment there hasn’t been any particular guidance about our office, other than the fact that in general people tend to work remote as needed anyway.

  12. Miss May*

    I’m currently located in Wisconsin, and there are no active cases. We do have one immune-compromised person on staff, but so far, the company has only sent out a memo stating that if individuals are ill, please stay home.

    Personally, since we share computers and mice, I’ve been wiping them down with antibacterial wipes daily.

    1. sole*

      This is similar for my agency in Michigan – with no active cases, HR has just sent out an email laying out the basics everyone already knows (wash your hands, don’t touch your face, stay home if sick, etc.). There are disinfecting wipes available from the office manager.

      I’m currently immune-compromised, so I’ve had my office on lock down for several months already. I’m lucky in that I have a door that closes and I can do my work without much coworker interaction.

    2. Coder von Frankenstein*

      Just FYI, antibacterials offer no protection from COVID-19. Wipes and sanitizers need to be alcohol-based.

      1. Coder von Frankenstein*

        There are regular e-mail announcements, mostly of the “Be careful, don’t panic” variety, and my boss just got pulled into a planning session for our Emergency Operations Center. That’s at the big picture level. On a smaller scale, I’ve seen a lot of folks pulling out of plans to attend conferences.

        Nothing major yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.

        1. Coder von Frankenstein*

          Whoops, didn’t mean to reply to myself there – that was supposed to be a new reply.

      2. Miss May*

        Ah, yeah. That’s a typo on my part. I did ensure that the wipes I’m using are “full spectrum” i.e. viruses and bacteria.

      3. Glenn*

        There are at least three types of wipes that (as far as I’m aware) are effective: alcohol (ethanol or isopropyl alcohol), bleach (must be sodium hypochlorite, AKA real bleach), and “quaternary ammonia”. The first two types usually advertise what they are, but third category are usually just labeled “disinfecting wipes”. If the ingredients list contains the words “ammonium chloride”, this is probably what you have, and they should work against viruses as well as bacteria.

    3. Kelly*

      There’s a dozen cases being tested right now in Wisconsin, and there’s likely more. My sister works for the MN health department and she said that the half dozen or so labs there that have the ability to test for it are at capacity and there’s a bottleneck. She thought that the number publicly released there was maybe 25% of the actual cases in MN.

      Meanwhile, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bottled water and gatorade were all almost gone when I went grocery shopping yesterday. I may have to go to Menard’s or another hardware store for the first two items if it becomes necessary.

    4. Existentialista*

      Me too. Every conversation I’ve had in the last week is about the virus, but this past weekend it seemed like everyone in my town was out and about, being extra social because “it’s not here yet”. Traffic around our local shopping mall looked like Christmas Eve.

      At work, our big global manufacturing company has cancelled all travel and large meetings, recommends not attending trade shows, and recommended we take our lap tops home every night. We have a questionnaire for visitors about contact with affected areas or people with confirmed cases, and visitors are not allowed to enter without completing it.

      We just recently changed to a PTO system for sick leave, so we’ll see how that is handled as time goes by.

  13. Free Meercats*

    With great seriousness. The first US case was in our city and Administration started working hard on it immediately.

    All group meetings that aren’t absolutely necessary have been canceled. Work from home approvals have been sped up (they used to take forever), but most city jobs can’t be done remotely; we gotta provide services.

    Facilities has hired some temp labor to do more cleaning, all offices have gotten fresh supplies of hand sanitizer and spray bottles of disinfectant for touched surfaces.

    1. Windchime*

      I live in the same town. I work in downtown Seattle for a medical group’s IT department. We are all working from home until further notice. Apparently we will be told on each Thursday whether or not we should continue to work remotely or come in the next week but they are expecting it to last at least a couple of weeks. I’m not extremely worried for myself (although I do have asthma, so I’m being careful), but my parents are both in their 80’s and I worry for them. One person has died in a town not far from where they live so that’s a concern.

      I’m glad that my work is having us work from home. We were also asked to take our (work-supplied) hand sanitizer and wipes to a collection area so they could be given to one of our hospitals, as people have apparently been stealing them from the supply room. :(

  14. Murphy*

    I work for a university. Managers have been asked to check with their employees to make sure everyone is capable of working from home. The university is apparently considering going to “essential personnel only” which would mean in my department that we wouldn’t be allowed in the office and would have to work from home (which luckily we can, through virtual meetings). I don’t know if it’s going to happen anytime soon, but I guess they’re getting prepared. (We have a medical school and there are confirmed coronavirus cases in our area.)

    They’ve also banned work travel to China, Korea, and Italy, and suspended study abroad programs in those countries as well.

    1. Summer Smith*

      Another university staff member here. I work in IT, and I’m aware of an effort to make sure technology (and sufficient network bandwidth) is in place in the event the university cancels all on-campus classes and moves exclusively to virtual classrooms for a time. Not sure what that would mean for those taking laboratory-based classes.

      Regular emails (they seem to be daily now) are also sent campus-wide keeping everyone informed of what precautions the university is taking, travel restrictions, and other pertinent info. They also have a website set up to provide people more detailed information. And of course, we’re being told to make sure we take all necessary work materials (laptop, etc) home each day, in case the university shuts down campus at some point.

    2. Murphy*

      Oh yeah, and if you travel to a state with a declared state of emergency you can’t come to work for 2 weeks.

      1. Parenthetically*

        Interesting! Our governor declared a state of emergency after our first case. SOEs are as much about releasing certain funds and enabling certain actions as they are about it being an actual emergency.

        1. Murphy*

          My guess is that this is the only objective criteria they could come up with for locations to avoid domestically.

    3. TechServLib*

      This is comparable to what’s happening at the university I work for as well (US, medical school and major hospital connected to campus, several cases in neighboring counties). We’re making sure we can keep functioning if we go to fully online classes, and a campus ban of anyone who has traveled to a Level 3 country has been implemented in addition to study abroad withdrawals from those countries. Word of mouth is that it’s only a matter of time before we close, and we’re using this week to prep for that inevitability since it’s Spring Break. There is concern about students travelling over break unwittingly spreading the virus.
      Signs about handwashing and disinfecting shared devices like computer lab keyboards have gone up, but no bans on meetings or large gatherings like sporting events.
      Hand sanitizer is getting difficult to come by, but we have a bountiful supply of hand soap and disinfecting wipes.

      1. Murphy*

        We might work at the same place, haha

        My office is off campus so I see less of that stuff.

        1. Curmudgeon in California*

          I wonder if either of you work where I do. We get daily updates, plus an intranet site for the latest info, and we have a medical school plus a major hospital that can do its own testing.

          1. TechServLib*

            Assuming your username is geographically accurate, I’m on the opposite coast from you. We’re not getting daily updates, just sporadic “here’s what we’re doing now” emails. There is a landing page for university-wide info, but it’s open to the public and pretty boilerplate CDC language.

        2. Don't Call me Liz*

          Fits the description of my Uni too :) I can work from home and will continue to do so….

    4. J. F. Scientist*

      Also a university but very rural. They have a plan, but aren’t telling any of us what it is in advance. I teach science labs which are… very hard… to replace with remote work, and also instructional hours affect accreditation, and it’s a mess.

      Same with travel restrictions and hand washing encouragement. They’re cleaning common areas more frequently too.

    5. LuckyPurpleSocks*

      I also work for a university (in the U.S.). We also have travel bans right now, and everything set in place for people to work from home if possible (as needed). Some events which would have required people to travel have been cancelled, and students/faculty/staff have been sent regular emails with general guidance on staying healthy, and class and work attendance guidelines/suggestions if sick. IT is also preparing for the increased activity on university websites and email servers should more people start working or sending in coursework from home. Faculty and staff are bracing for after spring break, though, since we know that very little will stop students from hopping a plane to travel to the beach or wherever, which is when most people start to pick up the flu or colds ’round here. In the meantime, we’re washing our hands and staying calm.

      1. memyselfandi*

        Same here in my state that has active cases. In addition the university (where I have an adjunct position) has cancelled all meetings (except for classes) over 100 people. A small conference has been cancelled as well as a couple of other things. I don’t know what other universities in the state are doing.

        1. memyselfandi*

          Whoops! Just got an update – All events that are not related to classroom teaching are canceled until April 13th.

    6. Amarylls*

      State university employee in a major US city – no cases on campus yet but 15+ in the county. Admin is considering shifting classes to online format and asking faculty to start looking in to it, but no changes yet. The main plan is to possibly move courses online but to keep the campus open (similar to what other univs, like Stanford, Berkeley, etc are doing). Which means staff would probably still have to come to campus…

      I’ve been partly working from home over the past several years so I can do 95% of my work anywhere in the world as long as I have a good internet connection and can VPN to the campus network. Some of my coworkers (thanks to the fact that their bosses are very anti-remote-work) are completely unprepared. They may not have computers at home so the dept would need to buy laptops and set them up. I see no urgency, though, just business as usual.

      Campus-wide – there are new Purell hand-sanitizing stands around (the one in our building had no liquid in it though so it didn’t work). Business travel to China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy are banned (domestic travel to those places are discouraged), unless there is an emergency research related need to go (requires vice chancellor approval).

      They just had a campus meeting today and the question was asked why we aren’t moving to online now (before an outbreak) – the response was “well…. our friends at the university across town are having a 3-day trial of online courses so they’ll let us know how it works out”. Um, ok.

  15. OtterB*

    As it happens, we’re all working remotely until early May anyway, due to a major office renovation.

    Our main decision (not mine to make, I’m just a worker bee on this project) is about a workshop in mid-April bringing about 500 academics and graduate students to New Orleans from across North America. They are, I think, in wait-and-see mode. A similar, but somewhat smaller workshop was just held.

    Email from my boss last week that our organization doesn’t have a formal policy on cancelled travel but that they will work with us to make sure we don’t lost money on reservations for business travel.

  16. ThatGirl*

    So far, not much – there are a few signs up about hygiene and an email was sent out saying “stay home if you’re sick, if you need more than your sick time you have to use PTO” and that was about it. Our manager also reiterated that and talked about work from home if needed.

    The majority of us can work from home, but nobody companywide has mentioned that yet. However we do have a distribution center about 20 miles away and I have no idea what they’ve been told; seems like that’s a much higher-risk environment and obviously you can’t ship to suppliers from home.

    Also, we have manufacturing in China (Shenzen), and last I’d heard our office staff there was all working from home but again, you can’t manufacture from home. I don’t know if our shipments have been delayed or by how much.

    1. ThatGirl*

      Oh, and all work travel’s been banned for now – first it was just international, now domestic too (our parent company/overlord is in Germany and has companies all over the world).

    2. zora*

      Yeah, this is my company basically and I’m super not impressed.
      The last email from management was sent out on Feb 28 and there haven’t been any updates.

      Lots of statements about “don’t come to work if you are sick. Anyone with symptoms will be sent home”, but no mention of how they will deal with sick leave, because our PTO isn’t that generous, most of us have a combined 15 days Sick and Vacation, which doesn’t leave a lot for staying home for a 2 week quarantine.

      Most of our people work remotely frequently anyway, so I think they are assuming they will just tell people to work from home if needed. But of course, those of us who are office managers, etc are just being forgotten about, as usual. I don’t know if they would let me work from home if I was sick, or if they would let people not charge to PTO, they haven’t addressed it.

      We also have a lot of people who travel for client work frequently, and the statement about work travel that was sent on the 28th is basically “we won’t actively force anyone to travel if you are uncomfortable” and they haven’t updated that yet. So more than one person I’ve talked to went ahead and flew to a client meeting anyway, because they felt pretty doubtful leadership would be willing to lose the money if they just decided not to go and to cancel the meeting.

      A friend’s company is saying “Please turn all meetings into video conferences if at all possible. Don’t worry about costs from cancelled travel.” That seems like the appropriate level of urgency to me, and I’m pretty disappointed in my company. But not surprised.

  17. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    PSA of the US-centric nature for individuals, copied from the weekend thread:

    Unless you are immunocompromised, have preexisting lung issues, are very young or over 65, or are having true breathing problems, please do not go to an ER for cold/flu symptoms. One, it’s going to be expensive. Two, almost nobody has Covid-19 tests in the ERs yet anyway, the health department has to bring them out. Three, whether you have C19 or the flu or not, going to the ER will both expose you to everyone else’s germs and them to yours. Sharing is still not caring. (Four, I am not kidding, it’s going to be ducking expensive.) [This, minus the “ducking expensive” parts, are actually recommendations from my employer, which is a large hospital system.]

    If you legitimately feel that you are at risk of having been exposed (that is, “I just got back from visiting friends in Kirkland,” not “I have the sniffles and I ate Chinese food last week,” because ugh), call your state health department. They will talk you through the appropriate steps to take. If they do tell you to go to a local hospital, chances are very high that they will meet you in the parking lot in the Ebola moon suits, put you in your own Ebola moon suit, shuffle you in a side door and take you by the most back-route possible to a low-pressure containment suite for your testing. This is probably very scary, but it is only meant to keep anything from spreading to anybody else at the hospital, which is by definition full of susceptible people. In Indiana, our first two patients who they did this to, they confirmed that yes, they were infected, and then they were sent home with strict orders to self-quarantine because they had super mild symptoms. So the moon suits are not an indication that you’re going to be, like, locked up in the hospital and not allowed to leave or anything.

    If you just feel gross, start with a virtual or telemedicine visit. Some insurance companies offer these to their clients, or nursing hotlines. You can also google “(local hospital) telemedicine” or “(city or state) telemedicine” to find options. As a bonus, these are WAY WAY WAY CHEAPER than ER visits (or usually even regular doctor visits), with or without insurance.

    DISCLAIMER: this is my personal advice as a moderately knowledgeable individual, not official guidance from my employer. But I do work for a hospital and one of my degrees is in public heath.

      1. Door*

        I work for a local public health department and second this. For healthy adults without a confirmed exposure (even visiting friends in Kirkland would be borderline for us – we’re really looking for “I just got back from Italy” or “Someone who tested positive coughed in my face”), the absolute best thing you can do to protect your community is stay home until you’re symptom free for 24 hours.

    2. K-12 California*

      My county had been watching a patient on quarantine for the last two weeks. Just last week the patient reached a level of illness that necessitated a test for COVID-19. Patient was driven to the hospital but remained in his vehicle in an empty portion of the parking lot while a nurse in full contamination gear administered the test with CDC watching. Patient then went home for the rest of quarantine. Testing kit was sent in and confirmed COVID-19.

      The hospital did not want that individual anywhere near their facilities.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Yuuuup. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, the hospital is not actually where you want to be when you’re sick, because you are a captive audience for everyone else’s germs that they helpfully bring to the hospital to share with you. And the hospital who doesn’t have hospital-acquired infections on its regular metrics list is a rare beast indeed. So the patients don’t want you there, the hospital doesn’t want you there, the health department doesn’t want you there, unless there is no other option, for everybody’s safety.

        (Another bonus to virtual medicine – a lot of the hospitals that do telemedicine visits haven’t actually figured out how to appropriately bill for them. :P I never got a bill for either of the two I’ve done in the past.)

    5. Retail not Retail*

      I slept all day yesterday which seemed to kick the lingering cold/allergy flare up that had me exhausted and sneezing and congested. Like I told everyone – the dust/pollen in my face never made me cough, it’s all good.

      But I still needed to see my doc for a wrenched trapezius muscle. I called ahead of time. “I don’t have a cold I’m not doing that but are you taking walk-ins?”

    6. Retail not Retail*

      I am so worried about my mom though. She works at an elementary school and didn’t get the flu shot even though it was free. I don’t know what 8 years of seizures can do to a body but I am up her butt. “You’re cold? Why are you cold? Are you taking your allergy medicine?”

    7. Curmudgeon in California*

      There is an app you can get for your phone, Plushcare, that has telemedicine doctors available by reasonably quick appointments. They’ll even call in prescriptions for you. Even if you’re uninsured, the appointments only cost $99.

      No, I don’t work for the company. I have used them before, and the doctor was very nice.

      1. RoseMai*

        There’s lots of options in this space. Your insurance company might have a discounted rate with one of the providers. You can also visit on your own: AmWell (~$69/visit) , MDLive (~$75/visit), etc.

        There’s also concierge doctors, and they can come with totally free, unlimited telemedicine visits. If the annual fee to join is relatively low, you could save a good amount of money by joining.

  18. Karin*

    Suspension of all business travel, cancellation of multiple conferences, encouraging remote work, requiring visitors to fill out a form if they’ve traveled or been in contact with someone who traveled to a high-risk location in the last fortnight.

    1. Ms. Mad Scientist*

      Same for mine. Employer is encouraging people to WFH if they can, and will advance them up to two weeks of sick time if they need it.

  19. Sharkie*

    Nothing. Which is fine but I rather have a plan in place that we never need then BS a plan when we need one.

  20. Moth*

    We’re in the mountain west and recently hand sanitizing stations were installed all around the building. Two new full-time janitorial staff were also just hired to literally spend the entire day going around the building wiping down and sanitizing door knobs, water faucet handles, and other surfaces people touch. So far it’s still preventative precaution, there have been no diagnosed cases in our city, but it’s surely only a matter of time. Management is working on developing the rest of the guidelines that will be in place regarding working from home and such, but we have about 65% office staff and 35% warehouse/manufacturing staff, so it’s difficult to make guidelines to cover everyone.

    We have also cancelled all travel to several locations, which has been significant for us as well, since some of our offices and events are in countries that have been hardest hit. But maybe learning to do more of those meetings remotely rather than flying back and forth won’t be a bad thing.

    1. Brownie*

      “Two new full-time janitorial staff were also just hired to literally spend the entire day going around the building wiping down and sanitizing door knobs, water faucet handles, and other surfaces people touch.”

      That is such a magnificent thing to do, full kudos to whomever made that decision!

    2. LawLady*

      Our building is doing the same thing. I don’t think they’ve hired anyone new, but the security personnel are now actively wiping all the time.

  21. NPOQueen*

    All non-essential travel has been canceled, and the definition of “essential” has been raised to “the entire project would fail if you weren’t there, physically.” All meetings need to be virtual, if possible, to limit the number of guests we have coming in. They provide wipes for our keyboard stations, and the cleaning staff is supposed to disinfect more often. We are all being required to test our computers and make sure we know how to log in from home. Honestly, I think the response is over the top, but it’s much better to be safe rather than sorry, and easier to pull back on restrictions rather than to put them in place once people start turning up sick.

    2. SpaceySteph*

      One of my thin hopes is that out of this people will realize that virtual meetings and telework are actual viable ways to get the majority of work done, and business travel needs will drop. I don’t think places have really adjusted to 21st century teleconferencing capability.

      Although on the other hand, we’d then have a shortage or cockamamie letters to AAM about being forced to share a hotel room with a coworker.

      1. Rumbakalao*

        This!

        Not so much travel, but realizing that general work needs can be accomplished at home without the need for a commute would be great.

      2. The New Wanderer*

        Exactly! Does it really matter if I come in to a work-owned building or stay at my house to spend 6 of 8 hours on the phone with my colleagues? I like being in the office 1-2 days a week in the event I do get to see someone in person, but most of my work can be done remotely with no issues.

  22. Dragoning*

    We have several posters in the bathrooms and hallways instructing us how to wash our hands, have cancelled business travel to any hot zone countries, and have signs in the company health clinics on campus telling people to notify them if they have any symptoms and came from a region with an outbreak.

    We have pretty much always had things like like hand sanitizer at every desk and in every meeting rooms, although I’m not sure if the ones on various cabinets in the hallways is new or not. And many of us can already work from home if necessary, although I don’t think a lot of us are (we’re not in a hot area, so it’s less of a concern).

    Mostly, on a day-to-day issue, my coworkers and management aren’t really talking about it. We’re all aware of it, but there’s no panic or anything here. But I also work in Pharma, so the biggest topics on conversation are on treatments and vaccines.

    1. AnonyMouse*

      BigFed worker here. The plan is nonexistent to the point of callousness. My supervisor has personally expressed that she thinks that the Covid19 is no worse than the flu, hence our office shouldn’t be affected despite the fact that our personnel works in close and extended contact with the affected population.

      Anyone who has symptoms will have to use their own sick leave (which isn’t very generous). Doesn’t help that there are people who refuse to take this seriously or are heads in the sand about it

  23. fates_recorder*

    My small (~ 30 people) company is in MA and has basically no option to work remotely for 99% of staff. Right now they are focused on sanitizing; we have extra hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes available. Because of the nature of our work, masks and gloves are also available. No new policies have been put into place. Most staff have about 5 sick days each year and I haven’t heard any discussion about how to deal with sick time during this period. The business park that we are in has increased cleaning efforts.

  24. Antilles*

    Been looking forward to this thread since you suggested it in comments on Friday, because there’s a huge difference between my wife’s work and I, so I’d love to see the spectrum here. For reference, neither of us works in health care or similar industries; we’re basically stereotypical white-collar office workers. Also, our state has only two reported cases (a dad and his kid who actually traveled to China), and our county does not have any reported cases as of yet.
    My work has instituted the following: (1) a mandatory “stay at home if you’re sick” period, (2) a formal calendar event reminding us to clean our offices, (3) written large red font lists of things to clean regularly like door handles, keyboards, mice, etc, etc, (4) finally getting IT to set everyone up for remote work so we’re prepared (side note: FINALLY!), (5) our janitorial service is themselves wiping down all door handles and light switches as part of their normal emptying trash and mopping bahtrooms and etc, and (6) at least one email a week related to the current status of coronavirus globally and locally.
    My wife’s office is doing…nothing. No official response from management and to the extent anyone even mentions coronavirus, the management quickly jumps in with a polite “we support you if you want to get tested or use PTO, but the best thing you can do is just act normal”.

    2. Meredith*

      My husband works for a global corporation tangential to health insurance/pharma (just research, no patient care and no product manufacturing for end users), and the first time anyone mentioned it was Friday. They are limiting gathers to 40 (?!) people. As far as he knows, his trip from Philly to Chicago in 2 weeks is still on. I told him to wait for my doctor’s appointment on Thursday to assess how at risk I am, and then he’ll have an excuse to cancel. He’s also hedging his bets that they might cancel it first, which obviously will look “better” for him, but having a wife with immune issues should be a good enough excuse since they’ve mentioned if people don’t feel comfortable traveling, they don’t “have” to.

      1. Diahann Carroll*

        Yeah, he needs to cancel that flight regardless. Philly has confirmed cases, and regardless of your status, it just doesn’t make sense to risk it going through that nasty airport (though I get why he wants to wait to see what happens to you, but geez – employees should just be allowed to say “no” right now without any blowback).

        1. Meredith*

          Well, I don’t think the city of Philadelphia does, but one of the suburban cases is the town next to ours. Regardless, I feel safer with him home than around multiple crowds of unknown people.

          1. Diahann Carroll*

            I should have said the Greater Philly area, which includes Montgomery County, has it.

        2. Jessica S.*

          IMO, there’s no reason at all to cancel the flight over 5ish cases in all of Pennsylvania. I just flew from PHL to LAS and back a week ago and had zero issues at all. Flying is perfectly safe.

          –Jessica

          1. Diahann Carroll*

            Again – that’s of the people they’ve actually tested. They’re not testing everyone who gets sick. And community spread is a thing and you have no earthly clue how many sick people have come up and through those airports. Flying is not perfectly safe – stop it.

          2. Antilles*

            I just flew from PHL to LAS and back a week ago and had zero issues at all.
            Just for the record, you can’t actually say this due to the incubation period before you show symptoms – according to the latest research by Johns Hopkins, 97.5% of people show symptoms within 11 days of getting the coronavirus…which conversely means that 2.5 % don’t (for reference, this is basically the same odds of rolling snake eyes on a pair of dice). Also, around 1% of people don’t show symptoms until 14 days or later. So it’s within the realm of possibility that you could have picked up coronavirus on your return flight and just aren’t aware of it yet.
            Not saying you should have canceled the trip, nor that everybody should immediately ground all planes – it’s a personal decision as to what risks are acceptable. But medically speaking, it’s too soon for you to confidently say ‘zero issues at all’ because you’re still well within the period of time that you wouldn’t yet know.

  25. Maeve*

    We’ve been told that people who are sick shouldn’t work but part-time employees still only have the state-mandated paid sick leave (at least we have that) and the PTO for full-time hourly employees is very stingy. I manage one employee who has the ability to work from home and was sick all last week so he did that–he’s new so he hadn’t accrued any PTO yet. Our customer facing areas are theoretically being sanitized more but it’s up to each manager to figure it out, so I don’t know what changes have actually been made. In the admin building, where I work, there is a thing of cleaning wipes in the breakroom but I looked at them closely and it turns out they don’t disinfect soooo…I’m just trying to avoid touching things and washing my hands a lot.

  26. Anon for No Reason*

    Finance for a F500 company with a few thousand employees spread across several buildings in Midtown Manhattan. People are a little more alarmed around here due to the extreme population density and limited testing capabilities as Cuomo is still fighting for approval for private labs. I saw lots of gloves on the subway this morning.

    We all took our laptops home over the weekend to ensure everyone can connect remotely. No one wants to have to go that route – it is very, very hard to work with many large spreadsheets on a little laptop screen and being in the city, most people living within the five boroughs (aka me) don’t have space for a true office setup with multiple monitors. I’m used to using three at my desk. It would take me twice as long to get any reporting done.

    I have a hunch that everyone who can work from home will have to should an employee test positive. Unfortunately, in this industry, a lot of people will not have that option lest we want to show blank air on television.

    1. Anon for No Reason*

      My husband, on the other hand, is a physician. His hospital is not currently one of the ones housing patients – I believe most positive cases are getting funneled to NYP/Columbia but it’s likely only a matter of time. He will not have the option of forgoing work unless he gets sick. And if he gets sick, I get sick… can’t imagine how a quarantine in a studio apartment would work.

      1. Diahann Carroll*

        Yeah, quarantining in a studio with two people would be rough – you don’t really have anywhere to go.

        I live in a studio as well and work from home full-time, but, like you, I don’t have the space for a true home office setup. I have my laptop and one external monitor that’s about 21” that I hide away beside furniture at the end of the day (laptop goes back in its travel bag and in my coat closet at night), and I work from my dining room table. If push comes to shove and you do end up having to work from home, do you have the room to get at least one external monitor and put it away somewhere when you don’t need it? They even have smaller foldable/portable monitors on the market that may help you in a pinch.

        1. Anon for No Reason*

          That’s what my coworker and I were just looking into – purchasing external monitors. I could probably find somewhere to stick one. We keep enough crap on the floor as it is, what’s one more thing? We’re also planning to move to a two bedroom place in May so it would be temporarily stored somewhere inconvenient.

          I was just notified that my office will be doing a dry WFH run later this week. I just deeply hope it’s not tomorrow or Wednesday as the bulk of our reporting runs Tuesday and spills into Wednesday.

          I’m personally not too worried about getting sick as we’re both young and healthy, but his proximity to potential cases concerns me to some degree.

          1. Diahann Carroll*

            If you and your coworker decide to purchase monitors, ask your boss if the company will either buy it outright for you all or reimburse you for the expense before you buy it yourselves. This really should be a cost they absorb.

          2. Curmudgeon in California*

            Some of the newer TV set can be used as monitors, too, so check yours.

            1. Ego Chamber*

              Yeah, you’d save a lot of money by buying a small TV instead of a computer monitor, this was a very common workaround we suggested all the time when I worked at an electronics store. As long as it has an HDMI port, it should work (remember to get an HDMI cable) but check reviews to see if there are any issues using it as a monitor with whatever brand of laptop you have.

    2. Fitzwilliam Darcy*

      A family member in Manhattan is voluntarily quarantining himself after one of his higher-ups was confirmed to have C19. UGH. The whole company is closed and they’re working from home as able.

      Family member’s roommate is also voluntarily quarantining himself after his company closed and everyone is working from home.

      1. Nita*

        Also in Manhattan. The higher-ups haven’t sent us home yet. Not sure what they’re waiting for – someone testing positive? I hope they realize that at that point, anyone who’s been anywhere near them is also potentially exposed.

        1. What prevention?*

          That’s what I’m wondering, too. What are they waiting for!? The word prevention seems missing in a lot of dictionaries around where I work.

  27. londonedit*

    I live and work in London. The UK currently has just over 300 confirmed cases, and there have been three deaths here so far. Ridiculous panic-buying of loo roll notwithstanding, things haven’t reached general panic levels here yet.

    My employer has suspended all work-related foreign travel (we don’t do much as it is, but there’s a blanket ban nonetheless). Anyone who returns from any foreign travel at all is being asked to self-isolate and work from home (on full pay) for 14 days after they get back to the UK. And anyone who does happen to be diagnosed with coronavirus will be given full pay for the duration of their illness. Anyone who needs to take time off to care for someone with the virus will be given full pay for a maximum of two weeks.

    Apart from that, it’s all common-sense stuff – wash your hands, use sanitiser wipes on your computer/phone/desk, don’t come to work if you feel unwell. Everyone commutes to work by public transport here, so I’ve just been making sure I wash my hands properly when I get to work and when I get home again, and whenever I come back into the office building after being outside.

    1. AL (the other one)*

      I also work in London and commute through Clapham Junction daily…

      I have avoided snacking whilst commuting, and I now try to wash my hands as soon as I arrive at work…

      My employer has sent some very dry and boring memos around about what to do, but there’s been no mention of sick pay/medical status for the 2nd week of self isolation.

      I went round putting up handwashing signs in the bathrooms…

      Those of us that can work remotely are doing so.

      We’ve also had the international travel restrictions and sales people are reporting that many clients are cancelling in-person meetings.

    2. Agent Diane*

      Also UK. Also public transport. I wear gloves anyway so I’m happily keeping them on to press analogue buttons – shame it doesn’t work for touch screens.

      We’ve had a work email telling staff to stop nicking hand sanitiser from the toilets. IKR???

    3. Jules the First*

      And I’m also in London, but my office is totally panicking (possibly because we are international or possibly because 80% of our senior management are over 60). All travel is off limits unless returning to your home office; all staff who have travelled anywhere (including for personal reasons) need to WFH for 14 days after returning; all face to face meetings with clients are cancelled, as are all conferences and events. Internal meetings and events with more than 10 attendees are either cancelled outright or frowned on. We have hand sanitiser everywhere, signs up re hand washing, and are insisting everyone uses paper cups for their tea (I know!). Today’s indignity was an all-hands email requesting that staff “refrain from brushing their teeth” in office bathrooms. I’m half tempted to start brushing mine over the water fountains just to make a point.

      Based on the response when I tried to put through a new starter request today for someone joining my team in a couple of weeks, I think we will be mandatory WFH for non-core staff in the next week or so…which should be interesting for a company where 90% of staff do not have laptops.

  28. GymNerd 29*

    I work for a private tech company in Virginia. We’ve stopped all international travel and all discretionary travel. Anyone who has COVID-19 symptoms or has come into contact with someone with COVID-19 is required to self-quarantine for 15 days and cannot return without a doctor’s note. If we WFH, we don’t need to use PTO. If we are too sick to work, we’ll need to use our PTO. We’ve also been encouraged to to use video-conferencing for meetings versus having in-person meetings as much as possible.

  29. seattlejane*

    I work in private in-home childcare in Seattle, where most people who can are working from home at this point. I’ll continue to go to work to care for the children while my bosses work from home, unless anyone starts showing symptoms. I use public transport. I think it’s great that people who can work from home / practice social distancing. And, life goes on for those of us who can’t.

    1. Insert Clever Handle Here*

      Thank you for continuing to stay open for the families who aren’t able to work from home. I hope you, the kids you care for, and their families are all able to stay healthy.

  30. TomorrowTheWorld*

    My job is adjacent to a local government’s Health Care Agency and we have had many, many discussions about this, along with Very Important People on conference calls with the state, etc. It’s a bit tense.

  31. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

    Perfect timing. This is my day off but I have to work because someone has a cold and the default now is to stay home “just in case.” I asked management last week if we have a plan in place and the response was to wait and see what happens. Also, Wash Your Hands. So many people just don’t. The best/worst excuse I heard was “I washed them this morning.”

    1. sam*

      OH my god. my stepmom and I went to CVS yesterday to buy something completely unrelated to corona virus and the soap and cleanser aisles were EMPTY. This is a real reckoning moment for society coming to grips with just how many people do not wash their hands on a regular basis.

      1. Anon for No Reason*

        We’re running low on hand soap so I asked my husband to grab some on his way home from the gym this morning. He just sent me a picture of like three lonely bottles on the shelf at Duane Reade.

        1. Dragoning*

          This is freaking me out because I haven’t been shopping in weeks and haven’t stocked up on soap in a while, because I haven’t needed any, and now I feel like I need to just because I won’t be able to buy it.

          1. Anon for No Reason*

            I went to Morton Williams yesterday, an NYC grocery chain with small stores in most locations, and they were fully stocked in everything, so it’s not everywhere. Go first thing in the morning if you’re worried about stock – most stores restock overnight. Not so helpful here, as many pharmacies and grocery stores are 24/7, but better advice for those who live in an area where stores close.

              1. curly sue*

                Our CostCo is completely out of toilet paper and paper towels, but that was already going to happen thanks to the Wet’suwet’en solidarity blockades cutting off the rail lines. It looks bad, but it’s just bad timing.

            2. sam*

              if you’re in NYC, I’ll also note that the Pioneer on the UWS appeared to be fully stocked with everything, while the Fairway looked like it had been ransacked. So now you know to go to the lowbrow market* :)

              *Pioneer is not my first choice for perishables, but for TP and bleach, it’s fine. My family and I describe it as “just a very large bodega”.

              1. Anon for No Reason*

                That’s actually not too far from me. I’m going to check out the new Morton Williams that opened on 59th and West End later today. It’s absolutely enormous and has its own bar attached called Morty’s. Since no one really lives down there, I can’t imagine it will be quite as bad as more central stores.

          2. Emily*

            pssst…. i can personally assure you that most shower gel is basically the exact. same. stuff. as hand soap. We just package it and market it differently. This does not apply for ANTIBACTERIAL hand soap, but for REGULAR soap it is a great substitute.

            1. Copenhagen*

              I’ve just used dish soap for my hands. If it gets my knives clean from raw chicken, I trust it to keep my hands germ free as well. And any spirit over 60% disinfects just as well as hand sanitizer. I used the denatured stuff that is used for cleaning/as fuel in out door stoves to wipe down all my electronics yesterday, since my store was out of alcohol wipes.

              1. Emily*

                dish soap is really similar too, but is harsher because it needs to cut thru more grease. with how often you wash your hands during the day I don’t recommend it for regular skin use unless you’re lotioning up all the time right after. same with rubbing alcohol, it will dry your skin right out. if you’re out of regular hand soap, go with shower gel most of the time and maybe like 2 – 3 dish soap washings per day when you feel especially germy, like when you get home from work.

          3. Oxford Comma*

            I would try smaller groceries, drug store and I would go earlier in the day. The big box stores can’t keep it in stock, but I noticed my neighborhood grocery store still had plenty of toilet paper and soap.

        2. NerdyPrettyThings*

          This makes me so glad that I spree-buy hand soap whenever Bath and Body Works has a sale.

      2. Jaid*

        However, Bath and Body Works is chock full of hand soap, lotion, and candle. It however, was out of hand sanitizer.

        1. Blerpborp*

          Weirdly, hand sanitizer is sold out everywhere here except Bath and Body works! The one I went to on Saturday had tons! (I was about to say no cases in my area yet but did a quick google and today there is the first- one “presumptive” case in the county where I work, so I’m glad I got hand sanitizer and toiler paper when I did!)

      3. Bostonian*

        Ha! This is the ONE TIME I’m actually kinda glad that my husband buys at least a 2-month supply of all essential household items because he hates shopping.

      4. fposte*

        I cynically suspect that quite a few people who are panic-buying soap and cleanser aren’t washing any more than anybody else; it’s the same logic that I use when I feel I’ve read a book just by downloading it to my Kindle.

      1. a small owl*

        OMG that’s an amazing comment.

        I overheard an older elementary school kid and her mom talking after church yesterday – the kid had drawn a smiley face on her palm, and her Mom was saying that might do that every morning, to make sure she was washing her hands very well during the day (the idea being if you got home from school and could still see the smiley face, you weren’t washing well enough).

    3. Meredith*

      I’ve heard hourly. Like, obviously wash in/wash out of the house and your office, wash them before you eat, wash them after playing with animals, and wash them after using the bathroom. But god, now that I’m thinking about this so much I have the urge to just go wash my hands…

      And I’m running low on clorox wipes, which apparently are no longer available anywhere in the US… should have gotten some a week ago.

      1. Sarah in Boston*

        They are. I just bought chlorox wipes (technically I bought Lysol wipes) in JobLot in MA. And that’s a remainder/odd lots chain, so there ought to be plenty of regular stores around with stock.

        1. Windchime*

          My local Target had disinfectant wipes and TP this weekend. They weren’t my normal brand but I was able to pick some up. I have several containers of liquid hand soap and, if that’s gone, I can switch to bars.

        1. Ego Chamber*

          I don’t think most paper towels can survive being submerged in soapy water for days without disintegrating and if you’re going to use cloth, just wipe the surface down with dish soap/bleach water on a kitchen towel or use alcohol in a spray bottle?

          Disinfecting wipes are a convenience item. Making your own is less convenient than using the method they were intended to replace.

    4. Curmudgeon in California*

      Yikes! I wash my hands even at home when I use the bathroom, because ewww. First thing I do when fixing food is wash my hands. There are sinks right there in most homes for that very reason…

  32. writerbecc*

    Hi from Seattle. It’s…weird around here right now. Most of the major employers (Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, Boeing, Facebook) have told employees to work from home until the end of the month. My wife works for a state school and her campus is closed for the next two weeks, so she has a meeting this morning to figure out how they’re going to make that work. She can’t really do most of her job remote.

    I’m waiting to see if my office is going to implement an all-remote policy. We already have a telecommute 1 day a week policy, I don’t know if they’re going to expand it. They disinfected the office over the weekend. We’ve been told to work from home if we feel under the weather, but that’s about it so far.

    I’m washing my hands so much my skin is cracking.

      2. writerbecc*

        I have about four different hand lotions I cycle between; one of them’s high in shea butter, another has oatmeal in it. The issue is I have eczema on my fingers and washing my hands so often irritates it. But I go nowhere without hand cream these days :)

    2. Not So Little My*

      Spouse and I work in tech for different large employers in Seattle. Both of us are working from home (eating all the foods and trying to keep from driving each other crazy), and our employers have told us to work from home until the end of March. All of my company and team meetings have moved online, and non-critical business travel is cancelled. My team turned all our video screens on in our standup this morning, which helped me feel less isolated.

      1. The New Wanderer*

        Same, both of us working from home in Seattle area. Neither of us have end dates yet for the work from home precaution – I was told to plan for a month just in case. I also could go to the offices as they’re still open (and the commute is probably amazing!) but there are probably so few people around it’s not worth it.

        The antibacterial soap and lotion section was completely cleaned out of our Fred Meyer yesterday, but plenty of other types of soap like body washes were in stock. I didn’t check the TP section (we stocked up at Costco before it was a thing). They were oddly out of tofu too, although I hope that’s unrelated!

        The kids still have school in our district but one of the teachers said about a quarter of students are out (caution, not illness) anyway. I know they’re being pretty strict about hand washing, so that’s good to build better habits. I still have to make spring break plans for them, assuming everything will be on track in early April given that all the camps involve day trips to places like museums and fun centers.

  33. TimeCat*

    I will say I am genuinely concerned they will close my office (which has my kid’s daycare) and my employer will just tell everyone to work at home and ignore the fact that, with daycare closed, I will have no childcare and will not really be able to work.

    I guess at least we have the telework option.

    1. Mama Bear*

      A lot of folks are worried about this. If they close schools, they will likely close daycares or at least the childcare in those schools. People who still have to work will struggle with no childcare. I’m also worried about people who work in childcare because it’s very likely they will be laid off or struggle financially if a closure goes on too long.

      If you do WAH with a kid around, ask for flexibility. I worked most before my spouse left for the office, when the kid went for a nap, was at a friend’s house, was playing with something, was watching a movie….I fully admit movies were my go-to when I had a meeting. I took my Skype call in the kitchen with the kid watching TV in the living room.

    2. Lily Rowan*

      I don’t know your details, but is there any way you could do part-days? I’ve known a lot of parents who could do a believable half-day of work, even with kids home. (Some email checking throughout the day, a couple of hours when the kid is asleep….)

      1. TimeCat*

        I think my spouse and I would have alternate schedules. I know my regular babysitter is $20/hr and with demand potentially even higher, there is just no way I can afford that full time.

    3. Ranon*

      Ask one of the daycare workers if they’re willing to come work at your place if there’s a closure? We’re floating that idea plus asking one or two other folks with kids at our center of they’d like to share, should it come to a closure- we’re all geographically close so it’s certainly doable. And particularly if your workers wouldn’t be paid for a closure there’s some mutual benefit

    5. nm*

      I very much hope that the office would be understanding in that situation. Best of luck to all of you.

  34. Lily in NYC*

    I work in a quasi-governmental office and our CEO keeps telling people they are overreacting and it’s not a big deal. Because he REALLY doesn’t want us to start working from home. We have two employees with close connections to the sick family in Westchester and all we did was tell them to work from home for a few days. Our senior staff is meeting about it right now so maybe things will change today. I don’t think we will take action until the Mayor starts telling staffers to work from home. It seems like private companies here in NYC are taking it much more seriously. I know Columbia University is closed this week. I have a feeling our CEO is going to have to start changing his attitude very soon.
    My sister is the #2 at a Federal agency and she shut their Seattle branch – the public may not enter the building and the staffers are working from home.
    Random: I have NEVER seen the NYC subways looking so nice and clean.

    1. NYC NFP*

      Columbia University isn’t closed. They aren’t holding classes today or tomorrow in order to get everything set up for remote classes for the rest of the week. The university is open and no Columbia student, faculty, or staff has been diagnosed with COVID-19. This is how misinformation spreads.

      My organization has banned all international business travel and domestic travel must be approved by the Director. We are getting our network set up so that people can work remotely if needed, and encouraging people to hold meetings by phone or video rather than in person.

      We’re reviewing our contracts to see how much money we might lose if we need to cancel events, as well as thinking about how long we can wait before having to decide whether to cancel events. We’re analyzing our cash flow to determine how many months of overhead we have in case our fundraising events under-perform due to low attendance (or having to be canceled).

      Our staff is taking everything in stride; some of our Board members are more panicked though.

      1. Lily in NYC*

        By closed, I meant not holding classes. Pardon me for not using the perfectly correct term, but in no way did I imply that anyone there was infected with COVID19.

        1. NYC NFP*

          Thanks for clarifying; you may have meant “not holding classes” but that’s not what you wrote. (And classes are suspended for two days, not the entire week.) I didn’t say you implied anyone at Columbia was infected. I included that as additional information since you said the University was closed for a week and this is a thread about COVID-19; people may have wrongly drawn the conclusion that the entire school closed because of the virus, when both of those things would be wrong.

    2. Justin*

      Super empty this morning too, though people were still holding the poles with bare hands, like… don’t do that anyway yikes.

      1. Stormy Weather*

        Nobody was holding the railings going down the stairs when I took the train this morning, but the crowd was about the same.

        1. fposte*

          I do worry about the collateral damage from things like people falling downstairs, not getting treatment for severe non-virus health problems, etc.

          1. Curmudgeon in California*

            Yeah – I can’t go up or down stairs without using the railings. But that is specifically what hand sanitizer is for – disinfecting while you are out and about.

  35. Can I get a Wahoo?*

    Elementary Ed Thread. I’m at a private school with lots of resources so we’re doing a lot of planning for distance learning and teachers having to take time off, but my friends at public schools are sharing that they haven’t gotten any messages yet.

    1. Retail not Retail*

      My mom is a special ed assistant and has already had flu A and B rip through the school.

      She’s hourly and so worried about a quarantine financially. I told her to talk to her union rep and go on up the chain until she gets an answer.

      1. Muriel Heslop*

        We have been decimated by flu as well. I think we are wrapping up – it’s definitely tapered off. It’s hard to worry about what *might* happen when we are grappling fiercely with what is already happening.

    2. Muriel Heslop*

      Public middle school. No messages except emphasis on cleanliness/handwashing, making sure students wash hands (already stocked up on sanitizer).

      Related: This morning I finalized transferring an OCD student to Homebound status for the remainder of the year. I worried her parents would resist, but they are relieved. I thought I might get some pushback from district but it sailed through. Her stress level was increasing and there was NO learning taking place within that stress bubble. I am so happy this worked out. We have no confirmed cases in our county.

      1. Diahann Carroll*

        As someone who suffers from OCD with fear of contamination as one of my top triggers and compulsions: thank you for working with that student to get her out of there. Everyone likes to brush off our concerns with, “Oh, it’s not that bad” or “It’s just in your head,” but when your mind is going a mile a minute, you can’t hear that – you just have to get away from the thing that’s going to infect you at any cost. You are absolutely right that she would have been too terrified to learn anything.

        1. Cymru*

          Reminds me of that Dumbledore line, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

    3. Person from the Resume*

      I don’t understand how a school without any kind of remote learning system already in place can implement one for their entire student body in any reasonable amount of time.

      Additionally the student at home needs a decent internet connection for any kind of video or teleconferencing software. This will disadvantage the already economically disadvantaged.

      1. Shirls*

        Yeah, there is literally no way my (large, urban, public) school district could effectively take learning online. We have not received any guidance on what would happen to teaching and learning if schools close, although we have gotten guidance on what the district expects us as teachers to do if we are quarantined (sick time). I am also concerned about what happens if any of our district’s 100+ schools close – will we all close?

      3. Anonymato*

        Kiddo’s school said they’d provide both online and hard copies of materials, exactly because of this, but I wonder how/when that is happening. I mean, do they send the materials now and have parents hold on to them “in case”? Or try to get them to parents somehow once schools close? (Ha!)

        In the meantime, how is it helpful to wash hands only before lunch? Kids need to wash hands when they get to school, after recess and before snacks too. We’ve been making the point way before coronavirus, and it’s still not happening. I makes me truly mad that the county “recommends” but doesn’t mandate teachers to oversee this.

    4. Nita*

      So my kid’s school hasn’t been making sure the kids do any kind of hand cleaning until last week. For real. They wouldn’t even give them time to put sanitizer on their hands, or run over to the sink in the cafeteria to wash, while they wait for their class to get called for lunch. They had a really bad flu season, and anyway cold and flu aren’t exactly a new thing, but you’d think the administration doesn’t know hand washing cuts down on germ spread. I even brought it up with the principal two years ago. No result. It takes a new scary virus to get them to follow basic hygiene rules. Why?!

      1. TeacherBot*

        I work at a HS and I’m just hoping that they decide to close schools of/when it shows up around here. The thought of using up all of my precious sick leave days is abhorrent, and my school never has enough subs anyway. We cover each other’s classes during our planning time. So what point should I self-quarantine, and pass the burden on to my colleagues? And if a quarantine lasts longer than five days, I’ll be out of them anyway!
        The uncertainty is what will get me.

        1. Nita*

          I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. Teachers have it the worst. One of my son’s teachers does a lot of caregiving for her sick mom… she must be feeling so trapped right now. If you’re union, I hope the union will step up and get everyone to not be penalized (and possibly paid?) for taking more sick days.

    5. more anon than usual*

      My school district (in Oregon) has a confirmed case at one of our middle schools and they decided not to close the school. Just told sick people to call in sick, with no special reassurances of any kind in place (I personally have lots of sick leave available, but…) . My school (which is a different school in the same district) is not even cancelling/postponing things like class parties or non-academic club meetings.

      That’s…a decision all right. Our union is not screaming about it, either, which is yet one more reason that I am not impressed with the leadership of our particular union.

  36. matcha123*

    I work in Japan as a ‘part-time’ worker. We have daily announcements over the PA reminding us to wash our hands, gargle, and to cover our coughs. Full-time staff are allowed to work from home a few days a week or can come into work slightly earlier or later to avoid the crowds on the train.
    I was told that I could choose to work from home, but since I wouldn’t be able to access my work files or the internet, it doesn’t seem much worth it.

    1. TiffIf*

      This is the first I’ve heard gargle being recommended. Is gargleing effective? (Also, gargle what?)

      1. TomorrowTheWorld*

        Very warm water and salt are good to gargle if you have a scratchy/sore throat associated with allergies or a cold/flu. (But not if you have strep throat, that needs antibiotics)

        1. fposte*

          It’s soothing for bacterial sore throats, too; it just won’t cure them (but it doesn’t cure viral ones either).

    2. Mameshiba*

      Also in Japan here and my company pulled together a work-from-home/flex time policy at the end of February once the government announced to close schools. We have a “special circumstances” leave type for parents/at risk people that I believe is paid. International business trips prohibited, I believe domestic as well, and no in-person meetings over a certain number of people. Hand sanitizer and signs everywhere, everyone is in masks.

      Unfortunately our head office in the US is behind on this since it’s just now becoming a serious issue in the US. As late as mid-Feb they were still planning a large in-person conference for March with hundreds of attendees from all over the country and some flying in from the US. They’re not laughing at our concerns now.

  37. miss_chevious*

    My company has been issuing travel restrictions and mandatory quarantine procedures for those returning from high risk locations for over a month (much of our work can be done remotely). As of this week, that includes restrictions on visitors to the office, including vendors, company partners and clients, etc. Group meetings over 25 are cancelled.
    Additionally, all of our facilities have engaged additional cleaning services to sanitize common areas and points of access multiple times a day. The company also has a central internal web page with information about the virus (including many of the links Alison provides above) and location-specific guidance about our current policies.

  38. ABinSC*

    I work in an admin-type capacity for a large medical school/teaching hospital that has a huge presence in the community. Right now it’s a weird combination of remaining calm to avoid panicking the general public, whilst at the same time girding our loins for battle. Luckily my department does not have direct patient contact, and we will be able to do a large part of our work at home.

    1. Anon for No Reason*

      How are medical students being treated? I know a number of schools have pulled out of clinical rotations or barred from hospital access, while others are considered potential resources should situations escalate.

      And I know a lot of schools are cancelling Match Day ceremonies next Friday, which makes me sad but is understandable. Opening my husband’s results was such a special moment for us.

      1. ABinSC*

        Other than suspended travel, classes and rotations are carrying on as usual right now. Our state only has 2 confirmed and a handful of potential, so behind the scenes the university is getting things lined up while there is still time.

    3. Lovecraft Beauty*

      Same. My higher-ups are being super aggressive about “be ready to work from home” but we can’t shut down entirely because we are literally one of the institutions researching a COVID-19 vaccine. And being on campus is inherently kind of risky, because this is where the patients in bad shape come!

  39. Count Boochie Flagrante*

    So far, cancelling travel between sites (woohoo! I don’t have to wear a tie tomorrow! Bigwig’s not coming!) and kicking up janitorial services. They just announced cases in my state late last week, so I’m waiting to see what happens next.

    That, and loading on the overtime because our clients are freaking out and overburdening all our systems and phone lines.

  40. jamberoo*

    SF tech here. I don’t know anyone who’s going to the office anymore, we can all work remotely and are through the month.

    Even better, a huge group of us just returned from a week-long global conference in Paris — constant mingling with coworkers from multiple countries. China, Japan, and Singapore were disinvited; South Korea arrived the day before their country was marked a no-go. I stayed extra days to enjoy the city (Louvre the day before it closed) and have been staying home ever since to be on the safe side.

    1. Competent Commenter*

      My husband works in SF tech and has a 2+ hour commute on public transit each way. He telecommutes one day/week. Given that much of their work is computer based (and all of my husband’s is, unless they want an in-person meeting), and their company has had difficulty recruiting enough people with the doctoral-level skills they need, I’ve long thought (and muttered to husband) that they should offer telecommuting as a standard thing. My husband has been there less than two years and has hesitated to rock the boat. He also feels like he’s more productive in the office and appreciates the face time. But they’ve announced that everyone’s working from home now starting this week. I’m hoping that this will trigger some long-term cultural changes there and he’ll telecommute more. I’m essentially single-parenting because of his commute and it’s killing me too!

    2. B*

      California event independent contractor here, all my work for the month has been cancelled. Will see what May has to offer.

      1. Glitsy Gus*

        I have several friends who work in events here in SF and some of them are starting to worry they won’t be able to pay the bills if this goes too long, especially those that work at the Opera House and the other city buildings.

        I hope you’re able to have work pick back up soon.

    3. Glitsy Gus*

      I’m also SF Tech. Our Tokyo office is closed with everyone there working from home until further notice. We’ve also been told that national travel is fine, but no one should be traveling internationally for work without talking it over with the Brass (we have offices all over the world, but so far Tokyo is the only one in a hot spot). There was a conference that was supposed to happen next month, but it’s looking like that will be cancelled. I’m not a conference attending person, or even very much of a business travel person, though, so most of this part doesn’t’ directly affect me.

      For us locally, so far it’s pretty much business as usual, though managers are encouraged to be very liberal with WFH options right now and we are not supposed to come in if we are sick. We also have way more sanitizer and soap around than we used to, which is good.

  41. Annie o Mous*

    Nothing, which is a little surprising. We are in state, without confirmed cases, so maybe that’s why. My only concern is we work with a vulnerable population, kids and people who may or may not have access to quality medical care. I feel like they should have said something by now.

    1. ThatGirl*

      I’m near Chicago, which doesn’t have a *ton* of confirmed cases but a worker at a Chicago school was diagnosed late last week and she went back to work for a week after coming home from a cruise … feels like she should have self-quarantined for a few days? Also, she’s a paraprofessional working with medically fragile special ed students sooo… yeah I really hope that doesn’t have huge ripple effects.

      Also, trade shows and conventions are cancelling left and right which is not great for our economy.

      1. ...*

        Live in Chicago and I’m SO MAD at that lady. I hope none of those children suffer because they have health issues. I’m just incensed at people not thinking of others.

        1. ThatGirl*

          I know that kids and teens seem to be less affected over all, but if they already have health issues… yeah, someone dropped the ball there big time. Not to mention other teachers she could have spread it to, and kids’ families…

    2. Majnoona*

      I’m in a state with no cases because it’s one of six states that hasn’t started testing *at all*. The latest we heard was they will begin testing, but they have no tests, and will test only using CDC guidelines, whatever they are. So, no idea how prevalent it is here.

        1. Diahann Carroll*

          Yup, and some that are only testing if you appear to be on death’s door. Otherwise, you gotta wait it out at home and pray you don’t have it (they either don’t have enough or don’t have any testing kits).

        2. Archaeopteryx*

          I’m in Seattle and only patients with severe symptoms are even close to reliably being tested. Asymptomatic patience, even with exposure, are being denied testing, as are those with only mild cough and fever unless they get a reporter to call and ask why they aren’t allowed to be tested. I’m guessing they just don’t have the amount of tests and her staff needed to test everyone preventively, which is ridiculous because asymptomatic people can spread the disease.I am in Seattle and only patients with severe symptoms are even close to reliably being tested. Asymptomatic patients, even with exposure, or being denied testing, as are those with only mild cough and fever unless they get a reporter to call and ask why they aren’t allowed to be tested. I’m guessing they just don’t have the amount of tests and/or staff needed to test everyone preventively, which is ridiculous because asymptomatic people can spread the disease

          Also although many employers Such as mine are allowing people to self quarantine Without losing pay or PTO, they’re only allowing that you’ve officially been told to self isolate by a medical professional. Which you’re not going to be if you can’t be tested. So there are a lot of people who aren’t allowed to stay home from work yet because they can’t get tested.

          2. Archaeopteryx*

            Dang I don’t know why my speech to text copy pasted that entire paragraph twice. If my pre-carpal tunnel wasn’t so bad I would type everything on this website out by hand by now. But it’s just so much easier to talk!!

    3. Annie O Mous*

      Also I get in to work earlier than most everyone. I have been wiping down what common areas I can with Lysol wipes. Kitchen, microwaves, copier, handles of stuff. I gives me peace of mind. At this point I just don’t want to get sick with anything, let alone Corona.

  42. 4Sina*

    First active case here in Missouri AND the family members of the positive case broke quarantine. Same area as the cultural institution I work in – we have weekly emails updating us on policies, monitoring the situation, and risk and safety tips (“don’t touch your face!”), but I assume this will escalate. Because we have so many programs and events, I imagine we’ll be seeing some interesting roadblocks ahead. No word on working remotely; it has been discouraged in the past.

    1. Little Girl Blue*

      I’m in the St Louis area and am spending today baffled by the man who broke their family’s quarantine status.
      Our mail production facility (the building I work in) has added several sanitizer stations (in addition to the ones we previously had by bathrooms).
      The company globally has limited travel to only essential meetings with higher approvals needed to authorize a trip. No travel between company facilities at this time. I canceled a client work trip to the east coast that was supposed to happen Wednesday.
      They are now also talking about limiting contact between the office side of the building and the production side in order to protect the essential production workers. The people on my side of the wall are more able to work from home, but the mail production cannot be done remotely.
      Final steps have not been put in place on the division internally, but now that Missouri has a confirmed case, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens this week.

      1. 4Sina*

        I feel horrible for everyone exposed, and I really am trying not to villainize this guy in every way but I think about all of the people potentially exposed needlessly that night who may not be able to afford to take time off, get medical help, or who will actually be at risk of dying.

        We have a few international trips that are difficult if not impossible to facilitate remotely that are still a go but I assume we will follow suit with what it sounds like yours is doing with travel; likewise, we depend on critical staff who cannot work remotely.

      2. Little Girl Blue*

        Since I posted this, we received an updated travel email this morning that we are now supposed to limit incoming visitors as well. Meaning, no hosting clients or vendors at onsite meetings that aren’t absolutely necessary. Mechanics, cleaning services, things like that are exempt.

      3. Jaid*

        I just read the story and the man took his daughter to a Father-Daughter dinner dance.

        ಠ╭╮ಠ

    2. samecoin*

      the worse part about it was that it clearly came from a place overwhelming privilege. Growing up in the area and Knowing the schools and communities involved it was clear this was a case of “The rules do not apply to me, peasants”

      1. Diahann Carroll*

        Yup – that dude is an ass. Anyone who winds up infected because of him should consider suing.

    3. AngelicGamer, the Visually Impaired Peep*

      Is that the family who had someone go from O’Hare to Union Station to St Louis that tested positive? Or is this someone completely different?

      1. 4Sina*

        It’s the same family. The young woman DID do the right thing once she started experiencing symptoms, but her father broke quarantine despite promising to self-quarantine with the rest of the family.

        The incredible entitlement of knowing you could be a carrier for a pandemic but deciding to take your teenage daughter to a father-daughter dance (creepy!) anyway with so little regard to the people who can’t afford medical care or to take time off is astounding. I’d say it’s a heavy handed allegory for St. Louis if it wasn’t real life. Glad everyone in the thread here also recognizes it for what it is – privilege.

        Some other cases tied to local companies are breaking in the area as well (you can find out who by googling). So, we’re in for an interesting week.

  43. Our very own Lisbeth Salander*

    I work in academia in Europe. My University has decided to advise all staff and students against travelling to risk areas, and all planned visits from risk areas are to be cancelled until further notice.
    Staff and students who have recently visited risk areas are to work/study from home for a two-week period after returning home.

    There’s been one case in another department, no serious illness. A handful of people who’ve been to risk areas are in self-quarantine. There’s a lot of information and we’re very calm about the whole thing.

  44. KGB*

    My sister’s company used it as an excuse to cancel the annual trip for top performers. They travel overseas to an area not currently impacted. In prior years they have traveled to this same location when American’s were being murdered and officers patrolled the beaches with AK47’s. There was no question of canceling the trip then but they canceled this year. Everyone involved is positive they canceled to save money vs the actual virus. It’s just the virus is a better excuse.

  45. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    As far as what my employer is doing for employees — we only have three cases in Indiana, last I looked, but they cancelled all business travel out of state so that people didn’t feel forced to make decisions about whether they were or were not interested in going through airports. My whole department up to the director level is all remote anyway, so that’s not an issue. I’m not sure what’s going on on-site as far as restrictions or whatnot, but people are definitely being encouraged to stay home if they are having any respiratory symptoms, and we have enough PTO that that’s reasonable IMO. And it’s a hospital system during flu season, so they’re already dripping in signs about hand-washing, respiratory symptoms, hand sanitizer everywhere, cleaning, etc.

  46. Silver Radicand*

    I work at an airport, managing a department of the parking. Our traffic has been way down in the last week, and most of my employees don’t keep very high sick time balances so I just had a conversation with them that we would be doing our best to try to keep as many hours available as possible, to minimize the impact to them, but that I’d have them doing some less typical tasks such as cleaning to do so.We, of course, have gloves and as much hand sanitizer as I could get and my employees are very aware of the coronavirus as they regularly handle customer items. My corporate, unfortunately, is not offering any additional sick or vacation time, so most of my direction has been based on what I myself have read.

  47. Gazebo Slayer*

    My office has said “if you’re sick [with anything] stay home” and is offering sick leave, though I’m not sure how much – unfortunately, I and one other person in the company are 1099 contractors with no sick leave and a role essential to our daily supply chain that involves physical goods and thus can’t really be done from home. My boss has sent mixed messages in the past – he has told me taking unpaid days off for sickness are OK, but repeatedly and anxiously asks me about how I’m feeling if I do and has definitely implied he expected one doctor’s visit to take care of my chronic condition right away. He also has come in apparently contagious himself because, as he said, his job (and mine?) just needs to be done, and when I was working a second job and having trouble combining that with the sometimes 50-60 hour weeks here he told me disdainfully “I work a lot more than you do.” So I don’t know what they expect from me, and I’m afraid they’re just going to tell me my contract services are no longer needed if I ever get sick for more than a day or two. Which… I guess is part of the deal when you’re a contractor, but this job is the vast majority of my income, I have few other prospects, and I only am paid $16 an hour in Boston.

    1. Cor*

      Yikes, are you sure they haven’t illegally misclassified you as an independent contractor? This level of control over your hours doesn’t seem consistent with it, but I’m not a lawyer. Might be worth looking into though.

      1. Gazebo Slayer*

        Probably. But I have a godawful work history, no in-demand skills, and no bargaining power, so I’m not doing or saying anything about it. I’m lucky to have this job at all – I’ve had much worse.

  48. RabbitRabbit*

    I work in a combined hospital/clinic/med school/university that has successfully treated a COVID-19 patient and is well-equipped for pandemic infectious disease cases. We have solid plans, frequent updates (sometimes daily as needed), and a hospital response team coordinating everything. The CDC guidelines are being followed for travel and other cases.

    Current plans are strengthened restrictions on inpatient visitors, cancelled all business conference travel for at least a month, self-quarantine based on return from ‘hot spots’, and discouraging congregating in very large groups.

    1. RabbitRabbit*

      Oh, and we’re being encouraged to stay home if ‘flu-like symptoms’ are being experienced. Work-from-home requirements are not in place for office/non-essential staff yet.

      1. RabbitRabbit*

        “Encouraged” is not the right word – “told” is. We have a decent PTO plan here, so that’s good.

    2. Half April Ludgate, Half Leslie Knope*

      I also work for a health system/university, one that’s kind of a leader in this area, so it’s been non-stop over here. I’m in PR and our team has been doing round-the-clock media and outreach work, as well as helping with our extensive pandemic planning process.

      We’re still finalizing our PTO/self-quarantine but we’re limiting visitors, cancelling travel and requiring self-quarantines from certain areas/clinical staff and recommending virtual meetings. I’m currently working to potentially cancel all on-site events for the next few months. I feel like COVID is taking over my life! It’s all we talk about or work on lately.

  49. Catalyst*

    We are all well set up to work from home, so self quarantine is not a general concern for us. We have been canceling big meetings and/or gatherings and a lot of travel. Lots of emails have come out with what to do if you recently traveled etc. I think my company has been handling it quite well.

  50. Rosemary*

    Public university in the U.S. (non-affected region) here. We have signs up in the bathrooms and admins emailing us to tell us not to panic.

    Meanwhile, we have a major annual conference coming up in May with ca. 3000 attendees (mostly U.S. and Canada, but some from Europe, especially the U.K.) and we’re trying to figure out if and when that would need to be canceled.

    2. Justme, the OG*

      I also have a large industry conference at the end of May and it was suggested I hold off on all travel arrangements just in case. There are no confirmed cases there yet but it’s a large port city and popular with tourists for spring break.

  51. Please make it stop*

    We received an email last night that all offices were now work from home for the next two weeks. I’m already remote, so it doesn’t make a huge difference for me. All non-essential travel has been cancelled. I have a trip planned for the first week of May that I have not yet booked. I asked if it was considered non-essential and was told to keep in touch with the organizers for guidance which surprised me. Important travel, yes, but I’m not sure I would consider it essential.

    I’m a little concerned that our department is 24/7 and deals with life or death situations. I’m working on a plan for what happens if we have multiple people out. It could get a little scary.

    1. Teekanne aus Schokolade*

      Goodness, could you share a little more about your industry type? Is your trip in May work related or do you mean your firm is monitoring/approving your personal travel as well?

      1. Jules the First*

        I’ve been asked to inquire about destinations on staff personal travel, but so far we’re not prohibiting it, just demanding that they wfh for two weeks after they return.

  52. sam*

    My company has updated their policy multiple times since the crisis began.

    Generally – if you don’t feel well at all, for any reason, work from home. International work travel is now banned completely, domestic work travel is discouraged and can only occur with company leadership approval. If you’ve taken personal travel or come into contact with anyone at risk, you are required to self-quarantine for 14 days (work from home).

    (we have fairly comprehensive work from home capabilities).

    1. TiffIf*

      This is pretty much exactly what my company is doing right now. My particular office is in a state that does not have a record of an outbreak yet (there is a cruise passenger case who is currently in a local hospital but I’m hoping that proper protocols were followed in transferring a known positive case to the state and proper protocols are being followed at the hospital).

  53. coughita*

    Hi, all. I survived SARS in Beijing AND in Toronto, and MERS in Abu Dhabi! Here are some tips:

    1. Wash your hands.
    2. STOP. USING. MASKS. There is a shortage, and healthcare workers need them more than you do. They are only sterile for a very short time, and it’s wasteful. If YOU’RE sick, by all means, use a mask if you feel more comfortable.
    3. Hand sanitizer is good, plain old soap and water is far better. Out of hand sanitizer? Get some rubbing alcohol and aloe vera.
    4. Who is at risk: not healthy adults. I have chronic respiratory problems, and even I’m not a good candidate for, you know, coronavirus death.
    5. Go outside? Wash your hands. Your partner came home and you gave them a hug in their coat? Wash your hands, change your shirt.
    6. If you have children, PLEASE do not send them to school if they are at all sick. That’s in general, as a former teacher, but it’s really important now.

    1. Steve*

      There is zero alcohol available for sale in the greater Seattle area. It would make terrible hand sanitizer but there isn’t even any bleach. Some places have limited stocks of hyrdogen peroxide.

      1. coughita*

        Then just don’t use it, fam. You got soap? Do soap. Soap is better and won’t leave your (okay, MY) hands a cracked and bleeding mess!

        1. Rusty Shackelford*

          Except, if I just got off the elevator/subway/Uber etc., and want to sanitize quickly, soap isn’t really an option.

          1. coughita*

            Have you tried just eating your own hands? Healthy low-carb snack AND a great way to avoid touching subway railings!

            1. fposte*

              But please remember not to touch your mouth with your raw hands; hands should be cooked to a safe temperature before consuming.

          2. ...*

            My routine has just been come into work, wash hands and sanitize phone immediately, proceed with day. I’ve been skipping the very crowded bus in lieu of uber and I will say paying $12 instead of $2 to get to work is getting old. I might just start walking as its above 40 degrees and only 2.5 miles. I figure walking has to be good right? The streets aren’t so crowded that I need to brush up against anyone or anything.

          3. Avasarala*

            Don’t touch anything on public transport, use your sleeves or elbows to press button elevators. Wash your hands once you get there and don’t touch your face.

      2. Diahann Carroll*

        I am not a doctor or healthcare professional, but if you guys are truly out of rubbing alcohol, peroxide, and disinfectant wipes and sprays of any kind for the foreseeable future, you may just have to buy the highest proof vodka you can find and put it in a spray bottle to use as a quickie disinfectant until you can get somewhere with soap and water.

        1. Copenhagen*

          Everything above 60% alcohol works which might make it difficult to find spirits that will do. But they do exist (I’m looking at you Stroh Rum 80%…).

          2. Curmudgeon in California*

            For booze, anything that is above 120 proof is good (120 proof = 60% alcohol).

    3. Ferret*

      But note that most N95 masks available to the general public are designed for working with hazardous materials (e.g. for builders, carpenters) and don’t actually have any filter on the air going out so will do bugger all to protect anyone else

    4. AnonRN*

      The CDC is saying that sick persons can wear surgical masks (not the N95 masks, which honestly need to be fit-tested and can make it hard to breathe for people with chronic respiratory issues) to prevent droplets from spreading.

      I work in a hospital and our guidance says that if we’re treating a suspected case: N95 mask (we get fit tested annually) and eye protection. If we ourselves feel sick: call the employee health department for guidance. They have recently cancelled all travel to hot-spot areas (I don’t know how much of this was likely in the first place, but like many teaching hospitals we have an international group of medical residents.) Our union is pushing for any quarantine time to be paid by the state (we’re state employees).

  54. Delta Delta*

    I’m self-employed as an attorney so I can sort of make my own rules. If I have court appearances I think I still have to appear in person (my regular courts haven’t said otherwise yet), although I think if I was not feeling well and felt concerned they may allow me to call in. With clients, anyone who’s told me they don’t feel well, I reschedule or meet with by phone/skype.

    I am concerned that I have a conference to attend in Chicago later this week, and I’m not sure if it’ll be cancelled. I am really looking forward to it, but I also completely understand if it gets cancelled.

    1. sam*

      FYI, the federal court in lower manhattan (SDNY) just banned people who have traveled recently to the five hotspot countries (plus some other rules).

    2. Delta Delta*

      Updating: I just heard a court in my area has issued a standing order that if anyone (attorney or client) is exhibiting flu-like symptoms that they may call in to their hearings as long as they are not evidentiary hearings. This seems like a smart way to go.

    3. Liz*

      I’m an assistant to a quartet of self-employed attorneys — they’ve already reassured me that I can consider my sick leave unlimited for the duration, and we’ll work something out with regard to working from home. (For some reason no one wants coffee they haven’t prepared with their own hands right now, so that’s a big part of my duties gone.)

  55. AndersonDarling*

    I’m in healthcare and we are ready to implement work from home. But I’m worried about nurses and other health workers. So far, the only communication has been “make sure you have childcare plans.” But if you are a nurse, tech, or doctor and your kid’s school is closed and daycares are closed, what can you do? Not everyone has family to watch their kids.

    1. Sophie Hatter*

      I really wonder how healthcare facilities are faring… they’re the ones who need to be staffed more than ever, what happens if a bunch of workers stay home?

    2. Overeducated*

      Oh, that’s frustrating. School and day care ARE most people’s childcare plans. We don’t all have, or can afford, nannies on retainer.

  56. Ms. Cellophane*

    I work as a staffer for a law firm. They are staying on top of the status of things. But in the worst case scenario, staff does not have the ability to work from home. If we are forced to stay home, we will likely have to use PTO, which will SUCK. Attorneys have the ability to work remotely, but not staff.

    1. Mistress of the Calendar*

      Hello fellow law firm staffer! Our firm is finally starting to consider what’s necessary from a technical standpoint to allow assistants and paralegals to be able to work remotely, but I don’t know what’s being considered for the other staff (file room, mail, reception). We were told this morning in an all-hands meeting that if we need to stay home because we’re sick with anything, or have an at-risk relative at home, or were having anxiety attacks about the whole situation, or any other reason, to take the time off and not worry about it, and that if we wanted to drive or take a cab/Uber/Lyft instead of public transit, the office would cover the cost, no questions asked. It was a surprisingly generous standpoint from an office that’s been slow to move with the times, despite being in the San Francisco area.

      I was also personally told by my attorney that if I needed to work from home he’d make sure I got whatever I needed.

      My husband works at a Big Tech Company in Silicon Valley. The company shut down its campus late last week to all non-essential personnel, so he’s working from home for the next few weeks.

  57. Kitty Cathleen*

    Basically no one at my level at my job can work from home. I suppose if they truly wanted to set something up they could, but that’s not going to happen now. We’re being advised to wash our hands frequently and stay home if we’re ill, but there’s no discussion of what to do if you need more days off than you have available PTO. New hand sanitizer dispensers have been mounted near the doors and elevators. Anyone with a company-issued device has been mandated to bring it home. Any work-related travel has to be approved by an executive vice president.

    The impact is probably more noticeable at my employer for people who are higher up than I am. As someone doing day-to-day processing work, it almost feels like nothing has changed. I find that concerning.

  58. notMichelle*

    Staffing firm in a major metro area that has confirmed cases – we’ve been getting emails about best practices, limiting travel, cancelling training workshops, and now pushing for us to make sure that we have all the necessities to work from home (testing the apps, making sure there’s a good set up). Honestly, it feels like we’re getting ready to shut the offices down soon.

    1. Jack Be Nimble*

      I’m in a major metro area with about 15 confirmed cases – my office is cancelling international travel, encouraging remote work, and distributing hand washing posters. Our office tower has been noticeably less-busy lately, although public transit has been crowded as ever.

      That’s what really scares me – transit is really crucial in our city. So many people are dependent on the trains, and there are a lot of people who don’t have sick leave or health insurance using those same trains to commute. I’d be okay if I got sick, but what about my neighbors and fellow commuters who have to chose between working sick and missing rent?

      1. notMichelle*

        Yeah, I just heard that the head of Port Authority has corona, so that’s not good. I have to make several transfers for my commute and I just make sure I’m doing the best I can with preventative measures.

      2. Filosofickle*

        I’m basically a WFH hermit already but my partner travels to school by subway several days a week. If I get it, that’s probably how.

  59. saradactyl*

    I work in Austin and before SXSW was cancelled we were all going to be remote the entirety of next week. Now that the event is off we’re expected to be in the office barring our normal one remote day a week. The company is letting anyone who takes public transit use the company Uber account and we’ve cancelled almost all company travel.

    1. Diahann Carroll*

      The company is letting anyone who takes public transit use the company Uber account

      I love this in theory, but rideshares are not anymore safe to travel in than trains and buses since you have no idea if your driver is sick and you’re in a much smaller space with sketchy ventilation. You also don’t know if any of the passengers they’ve picked up have had the virus either or whether the driver has been cleaning their vehicle between rides (sometimes they can’t).

        1. Diahann Carroll*

          This is true, but then I think about the Uber driver in NY who got it from that lawyer in Manhattan…yeah, still not safe enough for me (I’m stressing because I rely on rideshares to get me back and forth from appointments and I’ll need to take one Saturday morning – yeah).

  60. Sammy*

    Everybody who can isolate themselves should. It will help protect those who can’t. It will reduce the inevitable stress on the medical infrastructure. It will save lives.

    This is what I’m doing and I’m endlessly grateful that I’m able to (can work from home and do not have kids). The network is infected, leave the network if you can. Tested numbers in the U.S. mean nothing. There are certainly tens of thousands of cases and most of them are out touching stuff at Target right now.

    I socialize very little and I just found out that my partner’s mother, who I had dinner with and hugged at the end of February, has clients who frequently go on cruises. That’s all it takes. Thankfully since that day I have been out of the network nor do I have any symptoms so that’s at least one removed vector.

    1. RabbitRabbit*

      We’ve managed to test fewer than 2000 people in the US, last I checked. South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day. I worry about the 15-20% rate of infected people requiring hospitalization – that can bog down a health care system very fast.

      1. londonedit*

        Wow, latest figures are that nearly 25,000 people have been tested in the UK (population here is about 67 million). 319 people have tested positive so far but the numbers are continuing to go up every day at the moment (that’s up from 273 yesterday).

        1. Dragoning*

          The US Administration is trying very hard to pretend this basically isn’t happening right now.

      2. Majnoona*

        I’m in a state with no cases because it’s one of six states that hasn’t started testing *at all*. The latest we heard was they will begin testing, but they have no tests, and will test only using CDC guidelines, whatever they are. So, no idea how prevalent it is here.

    2. Diahann Carroll*

      This is me, Sammy. I’ve only left my apartment once since this thing really started popping off here in the US, and I’m avoiding major gatherings altogether – this means I’ve had to exchange my tickets to the symphony for dates late in the spring (I may end up canceling everything if this doesn’t die down by early May).

        1. Diahann Carroll*

          Not gonna lie – I’m mainly only concerned about keeping me and my mom safe as we both have underlying medical conditions that could make catching this virus deadly for us. I like to think that even if we were both perfectly healthy I’d be a good citizen and still keep my behind inside, but who knows? Maybe I’d be as blasé as I’ve seen other people be about it.

          1. Alexandra Lynch*

            Good to know.
            I just texted my ex, who has CHF, COPD, and diabetes, that if it got epidemic around here I’d pay to have groceries, cat food and litter, etc. delivered to him so that he didn’t have to go out to the grocery store with a lot of people who work jobs where they can’t take time off because there’s no paid sick leave.

  61. Beancat*

    I work for a placement company. The placement company says “we follow our client’s directive”. So if the office we’re placed at decides to stay open, there we are as well. As far as the office I’m placed at, they’re beginning to direct people to take their laptops home every night just in case. Other branches around the country are beginning to roll out exclusively working at home, but not here yet.

  62. Re'lar Fela*

    We are a domestic violence services agency. Our administrative office has been given clear directives to stay home as needed (thankfully we have a fairly generous sick leave policy). We’ve not yet discussed working from home, but I imagine that’s coming soon as our state now has two confirmed cases less than an hour away from us.

    We also operate a residential shelter and non-residential case management for clients, so that’s trickier. Our shelter is a 24/7/365 facility and our non-residential clients won’t stop needing case management, so for the time being we are just sanitizing everything like crazy and encouraging clients to let us know if they’re feeling sick so that we can a) get them medical care if needed, b) take extra precautions in terms of cleaning, and c) quarantine as we’re able so that illnesses don’t spread. Essentially we are taking a “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” approach for the moment. Our statewide DV coalition has sent out some best practices info for handling infectious diseases and has promised to stay in touch as the situation changes in our state. We’ll see what happens!

    1. Re'lar Fela*

      Oh, and I’m supposed to be flying to a conference on Sunday. No word on whether or not that’s still happening. [Insert shrug emoji here]

  63. Steve*

    I work at a small tech company in Kirkland, WA. A day or two after the big tech companies announced WFH policies, mine followed suit.

  65. RandomWords*

    I work for a construction company with offices and construction sites across the country and internationally. We’ve received two communications: one reminding us to wash our hands and sneeze/cough into a tissue, and one last week discouraging (but not banning) international travel. So they’re doing very little.

    1. Retail not Retail*

      What are the recommendations for the workers? Is being outside safer? I hope it is since even the indoor days are in a leaky greenhouse.

      1. RandomWords*

        Just went back and checked in case I missed it, but it’s the boilerplate CDC guidance: wash your hands, don’t touch your face, cover your mouth with you sneeze/cough, seek medical care if you have symptoms. No mention of whether people who work outside are safer, or what they’re doing on worksites.

  66. Potato*

    My boss seems to be convinced it’s no big deal, so not responding at all, including continuing to have large gatherings. I’ve been avoiding my one coworker who likes to cough and then immediately touch me as much as possible and washing my hands a lot

  67. AlexandrinaVictoria*

    We have one case in the area. One. And the person’s father went to a function at a hotel over the weekend, so anyone in my company who was at the hotel at the same time is being instructed to work from home and self-quarantine for the next 14 days. Meanwhile, the “normal” flu has ripped through our offices like a tornado, and we still only get 4 sick days per year. I am immunocompromised and ended up in the hospital for 3 days. No more sick days for me this year.

    1. Diahann Carroll*

      Omg, that’s awful. I used to work for a company that only gave five sick days a year and 10 PTO days – like, what the hell are people supposed to do with this? All it takes is one bad cold, not even the flu, or a slip and fall during the winter, and you’re done for the year. These businesses should be ashamed of themselves.

  68. Temperance*

    National law-firm employee here.

    All non-essential travel has been banned. All travel to Seattle, Italy, Iran, and China has been banned; if you have personal travel planned, you are barred from the office for two weeks after your return.

    Employees who have been exposed (or exposed to a person who has potentially been exposed) are subject to a two-week home quarantine.

    1. LawLady*

      Also at a big law firm. Very similar approach. It’s tough for staff, but lawyers can work from home, so they’re really emphasizing that if you feel at all poorly, you should work from home.

  69. Mike C.*

    I work for the largest employers in Snohomish County and it took way too long before middle management begrudgingly allowed folks to work from home en mass. It was like pulling teeth.

    Shockingly it’s working out just fine, who would have known! Some are already talking about coming back but that’s an absolute pipe dream.

    1. fposte*

      My hope is that a legacy of this virus will be better work from home policies and a few more sick pay laws.

      1. pancakes*

        It isn’t just better policies that are needed, though—many places in the US don’t have the infrastructure. Approximately 40 million Americans don’t have access to broadband internet. There’s a good article about this on Cutylab titled “There Are Far More Americans Without Broadband Access than Previously Thought.”

        2. fposte*

          Right, and I’m associated with a project about that. But making WFH more normalized isn’t going to hurt those people, and it’s going to help a lot of others.

  70. Aneurin*

    Few-thousand-employee company here, main office (2,000-ish) in the UK. Response so far:

    – Lots of signs & email reminders about hand washing, and I’ve noticed big hand sanitiser bottles appearing around the place (all bathrooms already have the wall-mounted ones in addition to the sinks).
    – Recent big conference/event switched from onsite to online presentations.
    – All employees (where relevant, ie not warehouse positions) given laptops, with teams carrying out dry runs of all team members working from home (on a rolling basis, so the whole company isn’t at home at once).
    – I haven’t heard of any quarantine cases yet but in such an event you’d be expected to work from home (if well), with paid sick leave (dr’s note required after 1 week off) kicking in if you wind up ill.

  71. Ellie*

    I work for a hospital in a state that hasn’t had any confirmed cases yet – we are getting periodic updates but more in the way of preparing for the influx of paranoid people to our ER’s and making sure we can still stock our respirators we need to do autopsies because people are buying them left and right…generally as far as employee health goes they are treating it exactly like the flu. Work with your manager to work from home if you show symptoms, self quarantine for 14 days if you have recently returned from one of the WHO travel level 1 or 2 restricted countries, and continue standard hygiene practices (hand washing, cough or sneeze into your elbow/shoulder, don’t lick strangers, etc).

    1. Diahann Carroll*

      don’t lick strangers

      Can you tell my five-year-old niece this? I swear, this child will put anything in her mouth – I’m terrified for her.

      1. KoiFeeder*

        Get her a labrador or a corgi. The dog will lick/eat anything before she does, and a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s, so clearly even if she takes it from the dog it’ll be sanitized!

        (this is a joke)

        1. Diahann Carroll*

          Lol! She actually wants a dog, but I just can’t see that happening – she probably would try to eat after it for shock value. She thinks it’s hilarious when we’re all screeching after she puts some dirty foreign object in her mouth.

          1. KoiFeeder*

            That’s why I suggested those two- they’ll eat /anything/, especially the corgi. Sir Fusspot once ate an emetic and begged for seconds (after eating an entire bar of pure dark chocolate).

  72. Justin*

    I just got back to the office from paternity, and…. things are mostly the same here. A lot of signs and everyone is using napkins to open doors. We had plenty of cleaning supplies in the first place. They’re telling anyone who seems sick (though these folks don’t have The symptoms) to stay home, and we’re lucky as we do have sick leave etc.

    But we can’t yet work from home officially until there’s an official clarion call, which may occur in future weeks. We use a gov’t database for our work (I work for a university but located inside a gov’t so we can’t really use it from home without special permission. Currently on hold with the state to get my permission (along with much of the office) in case we have to work from home.

  73. Miraculous Ladybug*

    Office worker for a local chain of cafes in New York: So far, on the office level, we’ve gotten the same guidance as from the CDC from what our founder is calling the “Ad-Hoc Coronavirus Task Force,” which is to wash our hands, sanitize often, stay home if sick, etc. Now that we’re under a state of emergency more might happen but right now it feels like the office is in a sort of waiting / holding pattern. Bated breath, etc.

    On the STORE level, though, is where things are really starting to change: we’ve suspended a bring-your-own cup program, have stepped up sanitization of all stores, and we’re really pushing our paid sick leave to our hourly workers to make sure they know it’s available to them and to use it if they need it.

    So far I’m pretty impressed with the response, and I feel like the store level is where it really matters for us. Probably more to come since it doesn’t look like this is slowing down any time soon.

  74. Crazy Chicken Lady*

    My employer is making sure that all employees can work remotely if needed. All- including admin staff. I’m glad that they are trying.

    I have two kids in college. The he oldest is set to graduate next month. His university may be moving to online classes after spring break. He’s supposed to be traveling to Princeton later this week for an admitted grad school student event. Not sure yet if it’s on, but he’ll spend some time in DC and New York this week anyway, even if he never makes it to New Jersey. Other kid is in Montana, which isn’t exactly a hotbed of Coronavirus activity.

    1. Sunflower Sea Star*

      I have two kids (+ one of them is engaged, so an almost SIL as well!) graduating this year, and I honestly can’t decide if I hope graduations happen or not. I don’t love sitting through the long, long ceremonies but they all want to walk, so…. I guess we will see how that plays out.

  75. Alton*

    I work in higher education in a state that hasn’t been very affected yet, and so far we’ve mostly had notices sent out about self-quarantining if you travel to high-risk regions. Some student programming has been affected. I’m starting to be more cautious about spending time in high-traffic parts of campus, such as dining locations. I’m hoping that if things do get worse in my state, HR will be good about letting people work from home. My position doesn’t normally allow for it, and it would be hard for me to be productive without access to my office, but I’m prepared to ask about temporarily modifying my schedule if things do get bad.

  76. Smithy*

    I work for a large international humanitarian organization it’s been striking compared to a friend who has a job with a large company in the entertainment field.

    My organization already has a team focused on staff safety as well as a health team. So very early on, those teams were working together in updating staff or organizational choices, letting staff know where to go with questions,and sharing regular updates. By this point, the overall approach has been so methodical and thoughtful, it’s made everything feel very “keep calm and carry on”. Even with all non-essential travel canceled, more working from home, etc. – every choice has been announced so calmly, it’s made a difference.

    My friend’s company’s senior leadership has really let the worries of a massive impact to tourism make people very concerned about their own employment futures let alone illness. I’m not saying her fears of a large down-turn in tourism having an impact on her industry are unfounded – but it’s hard to see someone terrified of losing their job. It’s brought this larger level of anxiety to her overall life that is making processing all news difficult.

  77. Princess of Pure Reason*

    I work for a healthcare organization that includes two big academic medical centers, both on the forefront of all this. We get daily emails with updates to things like travel restrictions, meetings and conferences (no conference travel or participation allowed either attending or hosting – with a note that the organization will incur the cost of your plans having to be changed/cancelled, currently no meetings with over x number of internal attendees are allowed), where to find information and resources for both employees and the general public, what to do if you’re hourly rather than salaried re: PTO, etc. My job can be accomplished remotely (as can my entire department) and we already work remotely two days a week, as do many who don’t have patient facing roles or other jobs that can’t be done remotely. The infrastructure and culture around remote work are already in place and I am so glad for it. That plus clear daily information and updates from the hospitals and I feel exceptionally fortunate.

    1. Sherm*

      Similar place here. Not quite at the forefront, but everyone is very concerned. All business travel to and from is suspended. We are encouraged to conduct all meetings via Skype etc. I expect soon that anyone who can work from home will be working from home.

  78. BlueWolf*

    We’ve received various notices and updates as the situation has progressed. They have increased sanitizing of the office. Complete ban on travel to CDC Level 3 countries. Also, only essential travel to Level 1 or 2 countries. They have also requested that we notify the firm of any planned international travel (personal or business) to determine any actions that may need to be taken. They have also asked people to bring laptops home each night if they have one in case of any sudden need to telework and are also working on plans for mass telework if needed (since not all staff currently have telework capabilities). They have also implemented limitations on visitors who may be at risk (based on travel to affected countries, contact with people who have traveled to affected countries, or a person diagnosed with the virus).

  80. Matilda Jefferies*

    I’m in Toronto. Nothing at my job, except for a note from the CEO with the usual advice about handwashing and so on. No direction about working at home, which seems odd given that we’re moving to a new open plan/ flexible seating office in the next year or so – I would have thought the org would at least bring it up as a possibility in a “discuss it with your manager” way.

    I’m also curious about if – or how – this will impact the plans for the new office. It seems to be that soft surfaces like cubicles would be at least a little bit helpful in preventing the spread of germs; and the idea of “every desk is everybody’s” seems a little unhealthy at this point as well. We shall see.

    1. Matilda Jefferies*

      Anecdotally, I have a friend who works for a software company with offices all over the world. Her job is threat assessment and business continuity planning, so she’s up to her eyeballs making sure they have employees and backup plans in all their various countries.

    2. Bree*

      Also in Toronto, working in health care (but not in direct service provision).

      We’ve got a new hand sanitizer stand in the lobby, stations throughout office. Extra facilities cleaning of doorknobs, etc. Reminders that staff are always expected to take a sick day/work from home when ill (not just COV-19). We’ve got a pretty good remote office setup and sick leave, so this makes sense. Staff asked to voluntarily disclose any travel plans to HR – business travel out-of-country is cancelled.

      1. Bree*

        Also, the water in our office bathroom sinks has always been cool and suddenly it’s nice and warm. Probably not a coincidence, though I don’t think it’s actually more effective at germ removal. Not complaining!

  81. Retail not Retail*

    I have to chip away at anonymity because my “offices” are… a zoo and a baseball/soccer field.

    Both places are city owned so got the “disinfect EVERYTHING” before our city got a case but after the first state case.

    We sprayed down wooden fences. Like… okay? And at the game saturday they said disinfect any ball that goes into the stands but there was nothing where I was stationed and most balls the fans tossed back themselves!

    The local cases were announced yesterday when I was off – tomorrow will be interesting.

    Of course most maddening about zoo job is 90% of the staff works better without the public so if we’re shut down because of crowds, would we still go to work?

    Also woo! Spring break! Jobs at tourist locations!

  82. Admin of Sys*

    Hand sanitizer has shown up next to all the doors, but other than that, nothing of our day to day work process has changed.
    That said, I’m in IT, and what we’re working on has shifted. We’re in massive planning mode for having most of the staff working remotely. The existing vpn manages when we’ve got snow outages, but that’s only like 30% of folks dialing in usually. We expect that it will get entirely overwhelmed when the entire workforce goes home and tries to remote into work. As such, we’re testing 3 or 4 potential solutions and also trying to figure out what the folks who generally don’t work from home will need to do. (endpoints/firewalls/etc)
    Mind you, all of this is somewhat unrealistic, as our local ISPs are going to fall over and die if the entire town tries to use the same cable internet service to connect all at once. And that’s not even considering the at-home kids trying to stream netflix at the same time as the parents try to remote into work.

    1. Admin of Sys*

      Forgot to say – I work in IT at a private university. The university has setup travel restrictions for CDC2 or higher, requires self quarantine for anyone who does visit those areas, they asked spring break students to reconsider international travel and anyone who travels to a state with an outbreak to monitor themselves for symptoms. But we’re off campus, so idk if there’s been changes to residence / dining / etc.
      I did just see Princeton basically said all classes post spring break will be remote. wow.

    2. Dragoning*

      Last year, we got hit by the polar vortex and every single employee in the area was WFH or taking the day off unless they physically had to be in the building for something (so…almost no one). Except no one could WFH because our VPN was bogged way, way down.

      1. Admin of Sys*

        Yeah, I really hope a lot of other internal IT departments are thinking through the complications of trying to send everyone home for 2+ weeks. But honestly, if we were a smaller university or company, idk that we’d be able to spin up the solutions we’re testing right now. I think a lot of folks are going to be very disappointed at their actual ‘work remote’ options when / if it comes to that.

  83. IT Kat*

    Federal government on-site contractor here.

    We see lots of emails going back and forth for the government employees.

    My contracting company (which is a huge one) has given nothing but the standard ‘let us know if you’ve traveled recently’ and ‘stay home if sick’. Still expected to come in as normal.

    My company hasn’t even given us hand sanitizer.

    1. IT Kat*

      Oh, and I forgot to mention, we’re in a desk-sharing situation too. Which means shared keyboards, mice, chairs, etc….

      1. Diahann Carroll*

        Your company really needs to get you guys hand sanitizer and wipes if you’re sharing equipment. It’s negligent not to.

  84. Anon for this Thread*

    So far, we’ve gotten an email from HR about hand washing, touching things, etc. and “If you do not feel well, have a cold, cough or fever, we ask that you stay home and seek proper medical care.” For reference, we get 5 sick days per year, and vacation is paltry on top of that (up to 15 years you get 10 days, at 15 years you get 15 days). There are people in my office that are probably out of sick time by now due to the flu and other illnesses that went around earlier. There’s also a person in my office that is sick, a lot, with respiratory issues, and she hasn’t been asked to go home or given a laptop.

    Office work here, and probably 99% of my work could be done remotely on an ongoing basis. I drive 25 minutes to an office to log into a computer system over a thousand miles away, then use email and phone to communicate with colleagues and customers all over the world. That being said, I was given a laptop (without asking) and my manager making sure I’m getting set up with IT to be able to work from home should there be “bad weather” or “if you have to stay home for an extended period of time”. I’m concerned because not everyone has a laptop, and we only have a few cases in our state so far, and while I’m happy that I’ll still be able to work and get a paycheck, I’m concerned about my coworkers. I have a printer, high speed internet, extra computer stuff at home, so I’m good, but again, I worry about the others, like people who have rent and small children and all sorts of expenses could blow through all their paid time off and be out of luck for the rest of the year. HR hasn’t said anything about paying if people have to stay home due to a government mandate.

  85. That Girl from Quinn's House*

    Is there anyone here who works in a coverage related service sector job where calling out is just…not done? I’m thinking back to my lifeguarding days, where The Pool Must Be Open so we had people lifeguarding with the flu and fevers and all sorts of contagious maladies.

    I’m glad I’m not there any more because between that sick policy and the number of senior citizens who used our pool, we’d have a tragedy on our hands.

    But I’m curious how the service sector is handling this.

    1. MatKnifeNinja*

      Show up. Call in sick means no pay for part timers.

      If you tested +, those two weeks you are burning through all sick, PTO and vacation. Use STD if you got it.

      My boss thinks this is all over blown nonsense, and beside wash your hands and cover your mouths, that’s about it.

      Nursing friends are worried are getting static from the higher ups saying “the flu kills (x) amount more every year, and you weren’t screaming for PPE last year, buck it up.

      It has gotten so bad at the local hospital, they pulled the masks, gloves and hand sanitizers out of the exam rooms because people are stealing them. Now everything is rationed, and locked in the med room.

    2. Retail not Retail*

      If I still worked at grocery store, I’d be drugging myself through any cold or allergy flare-up. We had no sick time. 2 personal days and vacation that had to be taken in week chunks. (It could be less than 40 hours based on what you worked last year.)

      At my current job, we are definitely non-essential. But the crews that had to come in on thanksgiving, christmas eve, and christmas? The animals need care! They need food!

    3. Dragoning*

      The idea of being in a public pool right now is making me shudder, even though I know it’s chlorinated to all heck.

      1. That Girl from Quinn's House*

        Chlorine kills most things within 15-45 minutes, depending on level of chlorination. But that doesn’t help you if the person swimming right near you is contagious, or if the pool is not chlorinated correctly.

    4. probable vector, victor*

      I work for a tiny business in tourism/travel sector. My boss has not said or done absolutely anything at all. Not even telling people we should start sanitizing the tablets every single customer handles. Full timers have minimal PTO (8 days per year). I’m in Austin, where most people are just angry that SXSW was cancelled and think coronavirus is overhyped – a lot of individuals and businesses in entertainment, tourism, and hospitality industry stay solvent by the grace of SXSW. That is not an exaggeration. In my old job we used to make so little money December-February that we’d all be hanging on by the skin of our teeth, saying well I’ll pay that bill after Southby… maybe I can wait to pay March rent until after the first weekend of southby… I’ll get that tooth pulled after southby.. Oh I’ll have a working car/phone/glasses after southby…

    5. Puffs*

      Bike messenger here. Yup, you have to show up to work to deliver all of the documents to everyone who is either there or not.

  86. Malory Archer*

    Healthtech here, with offices in SF and NYC. We’ve always had unlimited PTO and very flexible WFH policies, so we’re not very affected thus far. WFH is encouraged for those who are sick with anything and mandatory for anyone who’s been to a high risk area, and all travel has been suspended for 30 days (to varying degrees of enforcement…)

    Management has generally been pretty awesome and has repeatedly messaged that no matter whether we want to WFH or come into the office (both are still open) they support us. I’ve been coming in because I like the face time, but I expect it to be a ghost town for a while. They are getting rid of a lot of the communal snacks though :(

  87. Stormy Weather*

    I work for a large non-profit as a contractor. A lot of people are working from home right now. I haven’t yet been told I can and I’m not sure I’m allowed to as a contractor.

    There are containers of disinfecting wipes in all the conference rooms and in random places. On Friday, CIGNA came to our office (not sure why they chose us) and passed out little bottles of hand sanitizer with their logo on them.

    I live in NYC and go through a couple of the busiest subway stations. I’m more worried about exposure there. Or falling down the stairs because I don’t want to touch the railings.

    1. animaniactoo*

      Ditto on living in NYC. Did you see this morning that the Mayor is advising waiting for the next train? I still have a large red mark on my forehead from hitting the keyboard with it.

      2. Stormy Weather*

        Spoken like a man who gets a ride to City Hall every morning. Sheesh.

        I go through GCT and Fulton. Waiting for the next train is NOT going to help.

    2. Anon for No Reason*

      Also NYC and I go through Columbus Circle and Rockefeller Center. Luckily my train ride is short (and I’m about 25 minutes away from work by foot, so walking is certainly an option that I really should start taking) and I know the feel of the track well enough to avoid holding on to poles. I saw quite a few people wearing gloves this morning.

    3. Malory Archer*

      I saw the MTA wiping down the emergency call boxes in one of the stations the other night. At least they’re *trying* to help?

  88. aelle*

    Global engineering services firm in Germany. They’re taking it very seriously. We get updates and instructions from our CEO every few days. Early on, our engineers coming back from assignments in China were quarantined with full pay. Now the instructions are: all non essential in-person meetings and travel must be cancelled (phone conferences strongly preferred), no trade fairs or cons for work purposes, remote work is encouraged, no handshakes (or hugs or air kisses, since we have a culturally diverse staff, and people complied on the spot), and we are strongly encouraged to be conservative in getting a sick note if we feel unwell. We are instructed to air offices regularly, got the drill on proper hand washing, and the cleaning staff apparently also has special instructions. Also candidates and other non-employees coming to our offices must self disclose in writing that they did not visit an affected region in the last 14 days.

    Our main client (with a separate industrial site) has put in place very conservative self disclosure instructions as well, with anyone with a temperature or a couch being denied entry. Since it’s cold and fully season, it means a ton of remote work / sick leave anyway. We haven’t seen any major impact on delivery yet, but we’re planning for it

  89. I was never given a name*

    Today is my first day on a new job (accepted offer a few weeks ago). Got email last week that first-day onboarding would be remote via video call. I’m still going into the office this afternoon to meet up with my manager, but that was optional. The entire company is remote-optional for the next two weeks.
    Most memorable first day I’ve ever had, to be sure!

    2. AvonLady Barksdale*

      While it’s not at all the same thing, a few years ago I started a job on the day the internet went down at the office and, because of construction, didn’t work for a few days and we all got sent home. It sucked, but it certainly made the transition slightly easier because I could deal with a lot of the first-day nerves at home.

      I’m just glad they didn’t call you and ask you to postpone your start date!

      1. Retail not Retail*

        My first day had some high straightline winds after about a week of rain. So I was getting enrolled to clock in/out and we heard a pop! and a huge crash. Transformer blew so parts of the grounds were without power, all the radios only worked on one channel (so we heard everyone’s chatter), and oh yeah. HUGE tree went down right next to a building. Massive hole where the roots were.

        This does have me wondering if there’s a point to job hunting right now.

  90. Katrinka*

    I work in a school (in the office). We have about 1,000 students and staff in the building. And hundreds more people come through in any given week. We are encouraging our students to wash their hands frequently, I’ve stocked up on larger bottles of hand sanitizer than usual (67 oz.) and Clorox wipes – every office here will have them both. Our head custodian is giving each classroom a spray bottle of a disinfecting spray that will kill flu and Covid-9 germs so that they can spray desks and communal areas frequently. At this point, that’s all we can do. While there is one confirmed case in our county, it’s an older woman and she’s in the hospital. But we’re basically holding our collective breath. We know there will be more and at some point we’ll probably shut down. We are in a low income area. These parents/guardians can’t afford to take time off the job if they or their student are sick. We already know this because the flu hits us hard every year.

    1. Katrinka*

      Oh, and for the time being all already-scheduled field trips are continuing, but no new ones can be planned. Some of the high schools had international trips planned, they have already cancelled those.

  91. Fiddlesticks*

    My boss is being an idiot. He has literally said that EVERYONE, as in everyone in the country, should just go on and get it at at once, then the economy can get back to normal. We are all overreacting, etc., and he won’t reschedule in-person meetings to teleconferences or postpone large workshops that we’re putting on. I am the sole caretaker for three elderly relatives, one of whom is partly disabled, and one of whom has MS and cancer, and I do NOT appreciate this cavalier attitude. They don’t need me to get coronavirus and be quarantined and unable to assist them, and they certainly don’t need coronavirus themselves.

    I live and work just outside Seattle. I can’t believe my boss is being so stupid about this.

      1. Fiddlesticks*

        Thank you. Yes – this is partly how this disease will continue to spread, because some people won’t take any reasonable precautions even though we live in the national hotspot right now! It’s just infuriating. There have been some rumblings that the governor may take more stringent actions about restricting large crowds and regional movements, but unless he imposes telework requirements, it won’t help workers with situations like ours.

    3. Salty Caramel*

      Great galloping gophers, what an idiot. I’m sorry you’ve got to deal with that.

    4. Ferret*

      I mean even if everyone or nearly everyone is eventually infected delaying and reducing the peak has a substantial benefit in terms of reducing the overall impact, and particularly the burden on medical services – which therefore increases the survival rates

    5. emmelemm*

      Wow. I’m sorry, that is just idiocy. Even being at super low risk myself, just seeing the news reports about how many of the residents of that one nursing home have died makes it super clear that if it gets into a place where it can be spread among the elderly, it WILL be a problem.

      Fun side note: my office used to be *literally* on the same block as that nursing home. Imagine me seeing it on the news! (I now work about a mile away.)

    7. Diahann Carroll*

      Yes, because what’s a few million lives when we need to be focused on the stock market? The fuck?!

      1. Gazebo Slayer*

        I bet he’s thinking almost entirely about *his* investments, too. It feels like every day I see people plumb new depths of “screw you, I’ve got mine.”

  92. Not Today Satan*

    Mine is not at all, unless you count posters telling you to wash your hands. Employers are not ready for this thing. We need to start preparing for scaled back operations, a big increase in telecommuting, and extra paid sick time now. But it’s not happening.

  93. Roxy_84*

    Standard company-wide informational emails, but as of last week they also:

    – banned any business travel to CDC warning level 3 countries
    – banned non-essential business travel anywhere
    – started requiring SVP approval for essential business travel to non-warning level 3 countries
    – recommended against personal travel to warning level 3 countries, offering to reimburse all cancellation costs
    – will require 2 weeks of paid self quarantine time for anyone returning from a warning level 3 country

  94. Dezzi*

    LMAO we are totally screwed (sorry if I shouldn’t be using that word here, but honestly anything less just doesn’t do the situation justice). We just released a policy, of sorts….which doesn’t actually address what to do if we have a staffing shortage. Which we will. And we’ve got legally mandated staffing ratios. So that’s going to be fun. I don’t know if they have a plan but they don’t want to tell all our frontline workers what it is (because it’s probably going to require them to do things like stay at work for 24+ hours at a time, which sucks even if you are getting paid for sleep time), or if they legitimately don’t have one.
    We provide services to a lot of really vulnerable folks, and we didn’t start trying to stock up on PPE until last week.
    Most of the stuff that gets done in offices can be done remotely. The vast majority of what we do, with over 5oo staff? Cannot.
    We’re screwed.

    1. Dezzi*

      That said, things we have done: stopped any unnecessary trips, cancelled big activities, instituted twice-daily disinfection of high-touch surfaces in our office building, asked all staff to take their temperature daily before reporting to work, and suggested avoiding having staff work at more than one site (without taking into account that we have a pool of PRN staff whose entire role is filling it at any site where we need them).

  95. Not my usual user name*

    All US offices and almost all ex-US offices of my company have gone to work from home for the foreseeable future. I am US based and there are several confirmed and pending confirmed cases in employees based in my office and a few other offices. It’s frustrating that we are hearing updates from local news channels before we here them from company officials. We have been given a reasonable amount of information about the virus, what signs to look for, what to do if you think you are infected, etc. The overall message is don’t panic and carry on from home.

    Out of an abundance of caution I stocked up on food and household supplies this weekend, shopping at a very early hour to avoid crowds and having my husband pick things off the shelf so I didn’t have to touch anything. I have no symptoms at all and feel fine, but suspect that several of the cases worked in the same building that I do, so I’m preparing just in case.

    1. Not my usual user name*

      Oh, all travel is suspended, all buildings in the US are being deep cleaned and sanitized, and the onsite daycare is closed.

      1. Majnoona*

        Oh, in addition to banning all international travel, they are also (and clearly reluctantly!), agreeing for domestic travel to pay for “for any reason” travel insurance, fully reimbursable flights, and will reimburse for hotels or fees we can’t get back for now. Also a constantly updated link to what they know is going on in the area (which isn’t much)

  96. The Original K.*

    They’re testing remote work this week 1/3 of the company on Wednesday, 1/3 on Thursday, and 1/3 on Friday. There’s a LOT of discussion around it since so many of us use public transportation.

  97. Lyudie*

    A major industry conference was just cancelled and at least some of it is going to be done virtually instead. We’ve cancelled all non-essential/non-customer travel. We’re healthcare-adjacent so maybe more conservative in some respects here, we have a lot of employees with clinical backgrounds. We’ve had a few “we’re monitoring the situation closely” emails and I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear we are recommended to work from home in the near future. Interestingly, there is also a corporate movement to flex seating/no permanent cubes which seems like not a great idea right now.

  98. animaniactoo*

    Company’s response: Self-quarantine WFH for 2 weeks following any overseas travel has been in place since the beginning of February.

    Last week they added more dispensers and bottles of Purell everywhere, and added 3 days of PTO for everyone, 2 of which may ONLY be taken as sick days and are not able to use for vacation. Our normal PTO allotment is: 5 days in Year 1, 8 in Year 2, 10 in Year 3, 13 in Year 4, and then 15 days for Year 5 and beyond.

    However, our Mayor has just told us – in an epic out-of-touch-with-reality moment – to avoid overcrowded trains and buses. Go ahead and wait for the next one if the one that arrives is packed. “Common sense”. Yes. I will arrive at work somewhere around mid-day if I follow this advice…

    1. animaniactoo*

      Also – stated that more thorough cleaning is being done in the offices, but truthfully I have not seen much sign of that.

      1. animaniactoo*

        Update: IT is currently going around turning on VPN permissions for everyone to be able to work from home if need be. This is major, as there has been a long-standing policy of NOT allowing VPN connections for any but the most urgent matters, and then only on a case-by-case basis.

    2. Nonke John*

      animaniactoo, I’ll match my contempt for Mayor Bill against anyone’s, believe me. But in this case, my understanding was that he was specifically addressing people who are sick but have no choice but to use public transportation. My home station is Grand Central, and my office is on 14th, so I’ve never encountered this phenomenon known as a less-full subway car, but if it works for your route, the bus often does make it easier to avoid close contact with multiple people.

      There’s dark comedy in being harangued at to bike to work when I’ll by someone famous for using an SUV to get to the gym when he’s blooming with health, though, for sure. Maybe he could start ferrying citizens with the sniffles to work?

  99. NYWeasel*

    Our company is following a lot of similar policies as noted above—discouraging travel, encouraging working remotely, etc. But, I sort of have to question their approach when a colleague came in the office after flying through an affected area. They sent him home immediately for self-quarantine but no one came by to disinfect his work station. His coworkers were left to spray Lysol and hope for the best!

  100. Meredith*

    My company is very generous in that we close on snow days for the local school district. If you have children and your local school district is closed, or it’s too treacherous to get to work, you are also welcome to work from home. Ditto for if you are sick, or you have a plumber coming over, or you have a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day.

    Obviously, some employees are better equipped to do this than others, and some prefer it more than others. But we are creating a plan to work to 100% remote work if the local schools close down to control an outbreak (we’ve already had local schools close for cleaning because of possible exposure, but nothing long-term yet). They are moving everything they can to the cloud and making sure people have the ability to remotely access our office network/desktops, as well as making sure everyone has a home office set up that works for them.

    As someone who is immunocompromised and lives within a mile of someone who was just diagnosed, depending on how this week goes, it might be my last week in the office full-time, regardless of what everyone else does. I got my home office ready yesterday, including extra monitors!

  101. Destroyer of Worlds, Empress of Awesome*

    My company isn’t doing diddly. We have hundreds customers in and out of here every day, the boss is a traveling guy who travels overseas on the regular, yet we have no plan if anyone gets sick and……we have no sick leave and no health insurance. Which just thrills me, as someone who is immunocompromised.

    1. Jaid*

      Oh wow, I haven’t heard from you in a huge minute. I hope your job is better than that last one… ;-)

      1. Destroyer of Worlds, Empress of Awesome*

        IKR? Things have been crazazy….this job is better but I really need benefits and PTO. It’s not full time work (~30 hrs per week), but for this point in time it works for me. I make a decent hourly wage and have access to take home heavy equipment (things like trackhoes, stump grinders, pressure washer, lawn vacuums, etc.) so the timing is….fortuitous…..considering I’m starting to remodel my home. This place has its issues, but the last place had a whole damn subscription so I’m ultimately better off.

      1. Destroyer of Worlds, Empress of Awesome*

        I’ll deal. And I have a super duper employment attorney already so I’ve got that going for me. LOL….

  102. Kristi*

    I work in engineering for a large manufacturing company. My office is mostly engineers and related professionals, plus a laboratory. All international travel is banned. Domestic travel is allowed only if absolutely necessary and approved by executive leadership. No meetings of over 25 people allowed. No conference attendance allowed. And there are hand-washing signs everywhere. We have a generous sick leave policy (basically, if you’re sick, stay home and you still get paid.) So anyone who comes to work sick already gets peer pressured into going home.

  103. Chris*

    Nothing from my employer so far. I intend to raise the subject in a staff meeting tomorrow.

  104. Staja*

    WFH is encouraged in our China office (which just reopened today after being closed since then end of Jan), Italy, Korea, Japan, and the Bay-area. All international travel has been postponed. Most large company gatherings have been postponed. Individual departments have tested WFH viability (my team tested last week). I work in Finance for a software company.

    Waiting to hear any company word regarding employees in our building who have been exposed. I’m in NH, and our local patient zero didn’t listen when asked to self-isolate.

    1. Holy Moley*

      Oh wow. That is not okay. I do not understand people who don’t listen to the self-isolation. Its like they just dont care about anyone else

  105. Josephine Beth NotAmy*

    Anyone else work in home visiting roles? I work for a non-profit that provides in-home support services to families of young children, teaching parenting skills, etc. I personally work with about 20 families and supervise a group of staff who work statewide. We do a lot of our staff meetings and one on ones remotely, but obviously the day to day stuff is in person. The guidance I’ve seen for schools and childcare doesn’t really apply, and despite the formation of a Coronavirus Committee (don’t even get me started…) there’s been zero info from leadership besides “wash your hands”. My group is pretty stressed about it and I really hope we get some info today.

    1. Anon for this one*

      I do. We are recommending calling before in home visits to make sure visit is still on, that no one in family is ill. (We do that with flu outbreaks as well). We have staff working from home for their admin time. We will do staff meetings and supervision remotely. If a home visitor is sick and can’t see families for several weeks, we try to juggle it so a supervisor or someone else can visit them. We will suspend intakes if it is confirmed in our county.
      I agree that the guidance isn’t really a good fit. It’s hard to know what to do.

  107. Mae B.*

    My company has put out a policy where all personal travel to any of the countries on the CDC advisory list must be disclosed to the company (there is zero work travel done at our jobs so that isn’t relevant). If anyone travels to a place on the CDC list or lives with anyone who traveled to a place on the CDC list, they are not allowed to come in to the office for 2 weeks. Due to privacy and security rules and laws our work is impossible to do from home, so there is no teleworking or checking in if we aren’t in the office. We also never see or meet with clients in person in our office, so there is no need for us to deal with them bringing it in. The 2 weeks is not paid unless we want to use our own vacation days. We will get as many 100% paid sick days if we actually do get coronavirus. If anyone doesn’t tell HR about the travel to the CDC places, or anyone doesn’t stay home for the 2 weeks, the penalty is firing. We live in a state where there have not been any cases so far and I’m keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way.

  108. What’s with Today, today?*

    I work for a small family media company and it is business as usual. We’re in Texas, and our city and hospital system officials are telling us we should be far more worried about the common flu(during on air interviews on our station). My media company boss is also a state rep., he participates in a few weekly calls with statewide updates, but I’m not privy to that info. South by Southwest was canceled, which shocked the hell out of me. I’m going to the Houston Livestock Show next week for a concert, hoping that doesn’t get canceled as well.

  109. Ali G*

    We’ve always had pretty liberal flex time and WFH policies, but we’ve reinforced that you should stay home if you aren’t feeling well. We have a good leave program and people feel able to take off when needed.
    The biggest thing going on now is we are convening a conference in late April, and we are already within the cancellation period, so we are biding our time for the next few weeks to see how it goes. As the conference organizer, I really don’t want to cancel, but obviously once you fall below a critical mass, it’s not worth holding anyway.

  110. AvonLady Barksdale*

    I work remotely from a different state from my company’s home office. My company sent out an email about precautions and staying home. We all have the capability of working from home, so they’ve recommended that people take their laptops home every night just in case. Knowing the people in my office, there is a lot of frantic discussion and, probably, hand-washing police. One person in our office is immunocompromised, very dramatic and HATES working from home (they refuse to do so), so it’s been a little rough for some of my co-workers.

    Our most senior people are in travel-heavy roles and so far no changes have been made or suggested. One co-worker flew to Seattle for a presentation and I know he was unhappy about it, but he absolutely could have declined to go so that’s on him (he tends to be a little overly concerned with what the clients will think when… the clients will think he’s trying to stay safe and will probably appreciate the video conference!). We– the entire executive team– are scheduled to attend an industry conference in LA in less than three weeks, and so far it’s still on, though I expect it will be cancelled. I’m still planning to go and moving ahead as if it’s happening. (I got upgraded and I have a feeling it was because the flight will be empty.)

    But my biggest concern is that I have an interview tomorrow with an organization that hosts a massive conference, and presenters/vendors are dropping out of the conference right and left. I am, selfishly, concerned that my interviewers will be pretty distracted by everything. Trying not to let that get to me too much in terms of my own nerves but also trying to be sensitive to these unusual circumstances.

  111. Sarah-tonin*

    i’m a public librarian in illinois and we’re mostly amping up our sanitation procedures – like having extra wipes and sand sanitizer around, and wiping down the (public and staff) computer keyboards each night (although a lot of us wipe down the staff keyboards each shift anyway). I’d hope we’d close if it got bad enough – I am not risking my health, even if our closing is an inconvenience for our patrons. but I don’t see us closing, although they sent out information on how to protect ourselves, and that they’re going to have more sanitation supplies around.

    1. Retail not Retail*

      I was wondering about how y’all are reacting to books being returned. You can’t disinfect them feasibly and you have no idea where they’ve been.

      If god forbid my mom or I got it, what would I do with my library books? Call and be like… please waive the due dates?

      1. Bella*

        If the library closes they’ll make sure to advance your due date. If you are sick, just let them know and I’m sure they’d be more than happy to extend your due date.

      2. Sarah-tonin*

        if you get sick, give your library a call and they might be able to renew the items or change the date.

        I know if someone called either of the libraries I work at and requested a new due date, we’d renew it if possible, and if other people were waiting for it (we can’t renew it if others are waiting) we’d change the due date (it’s not an indefinite thing and they might only give you a couple weeks, especially if it’s a popular item).

        it varies from library to library, so I can’t speak to yours specifically, but I’m sure they’d be willing to help you out! :)

        unfortunately I don’t know what we’re doing about sanitizing materials – I don’t work in that department and haven’t heard anything so far about that. but it would be good to know!

  112. Lily Rowan*

    My major East Coast University has cancelled all non-essential travel (including domestic) through April, strongly encourages you not to travel on your personal time, and strongly encourages cancelling events of more than 100 people, as of last week. My non-academic office is telling everyone to bring their laptops home every night, just in case.

    There’s more hand sanitizer around the office, for now.

    1. Syfygeek*

      I’m at an East Coast Uni too. Semester Abroad students have returned to their homes, travel is discouraged, wash your hands, and “Facilities is Deep Cleaning EVERYTHING!!”

      Except they’re not. Last week I had to put in work orders to get soap in the bathrooms in my building. And to get the paper towel dispensers fixed. This week is spring break, and with all the students traveling, and going on an amazing amount of “booze cruises” next week will be worse.

      And oh yeah, we’re a place that had an outbreak of a childhood illness in the fall (vague enough?) so we’ve already had practice with self-quarantine, and it didn’t work then.

  113. Deliliah*

    I’m in NYC which is full-on freaking out at the moment. The governor asked people to avoid crowds, lol. He also suggested people wait for “non-crowded trains” to commute, which is also LOL.

    My office has about 765 bottles of Purell, rubbing alcohol and Clorox wipes strewn about. We’re having a “work from home drill day” on Wednesday to address anything that needs to happen should we all need to work remotely. 75% of us have laptops and *could* be working from home currently.

    1. Justin*

      Is the city freaking out? I guess I haven’t been out and about that much, but things have been calm each time I have ventured out.

      Well, the NEWS is freaking out.

      1. Anon for No Reason*

        Same, things seem pretty business as usual here in Midtown. I went for a walk to a fitness class yesterday afternoon and the city was as alive as ever.

      2. Miraculous Ladybug*

        I feel like it’s freaking out for NYC which is to say, the proportion of people who don’t care at all has slightly decreased.

        1. Deliliah*

          Yes, this. People are actually taking precautions and not just throwing all care to the wind as usual.

    3. That Girl from Quinn's House*

      I liked the part where DeBlasio said, “If you’re sick don’t take mass transit. Stay off the subway. If you have to take mass transit take the bus, it’s less crowded.”

      Yes, very helpful.

  114. Bunny Girl*

    I work for a University and they’ve taken some steps. They have suspended international travel to places that the CDC has a high level of alert for, and have made it mandatory to report if you are having a gathering of more than 50 people, or if you are having international visitors. They also put some signs in the bathroom telling people to wash their hands because apparently PEOPLE WEREN’T DOING THAT??? If this was you, you’re nasty.

    If push came to shove, I doubt they would close though. Our current administration has this huge We’re hardier than the rest Hurr hurr attitude and have kept us open in various other dangerous conditions (blizzards, -30 weather when most students have to walk 25+ minutes between classes), so I can’t imagine they would close even if we had an outbreak.

    1. Tina Belcher's Less Cool Sister*

      I’m shocked they’re so cavalier about safety issues. Maybe it’s because I work for a private but there is so much parent pressure to take care of their little dumplings, I feel like a lot of our (extremely proactive!) response is at least partially to ward off parental accusations that we’re not doing enough to protect the students.

      1. Bunny Girl*

        Nope. Our chancellor has a super toxic masculinity laced attitude about appearing tougher than the other schools. We had one day where the other three schools in our network closed because of a snow storm and we stayed open despite dangerous conditions and this dude puts out on Twitter that “we don’t mind a little snow.” There were at least 50 accidents that day throughout the city.

    2. fhqwhgads*

      It’s not just that people weren’t doing that – although I’m sure some weren’t – it’s very very very likely that before the signs a significant number of people were doing what they considered “washing their hands” but weren’t actually doing it long enough, or scrubbing enough parts of their hands, for it to actually constitute having washed hands.
      The thing that I’m glad for during what’s happening now is that hopefully word has spread about what it actually takes to wash hands (as opposed to making ones hands wet and soapy for 5 seconds), but my fear is that once this is over people will go back to their old way, not realizing – no it’s not just during an outbreak that you should wash your hands the way the diagrams said – that’s ALWAYS how hand washing should happen, even if you might do it slightly less frequently than during an outbreak. (but always always always do it after using the restroom)
      People are gross.

  115. Twiggs*

    Swedish retailworker here. We’ve stocked up on alco gel. That’s pretty much it. People are talking/joking a lot about it though. And since the small town we’re at is a hot spot for tourists, I think people are more.. on edge maybe? Today two busloads of Italians showed up. I did hear some (local) customers mutter a bit, but nothing I felt the need to adress.

    We all have paid, unlimited sick leave, and everyone is always told to stay home when sick since we work with food.

    Personally I’m not that worried. People were freaked out about both the bird- and swineflu, and most pulled through. If I am wrong, so be it, but I’ve learned long ago that me having anxiety about a thing won’t change the outcome. At least not for the better.

  116. A Poster Has No Name*

    My company has done emergency preparedness testing at my location should we all be instructed to work from home, but that’s not really an issue, anyway.

    There’s a webcast tomorrow on company preparedness. Today I saw maintenance staff sanitizing door handles and other places that I wouldn’t normally see sanitized, so that’s a thing.

    I’m curious (as I posted in the Friday thread, but it was pretty far down), how the virus is affecting your business? Particularly those with manufacturing & supply chain dependencies.

  117. Kaboobie*

    My company is an unusual case. We just purchased a company that does DNA testing and has added COVID-19 to an existing respiratory panel. It has been tested in China and in France, and they/we are currently applying for emergency authorization to market it in the US. So our CEO met with Mike Pence last week along with the big US diagnostic companies.

    On the employee side, they rolled out a survey that visitors to any company site need to fill out, and they will refuse entry to travelers coming from high-risk areas. Business travel to China and South Korea has been halted, and any other travel that is not customer-facing (for conferences, etc.) is being discouraged. Since a local biotech company (that I worked for 20 years ago) had several people become infected at a conference last week I am glad we are taking these precautions.

    There is a learning center and training module on our internal website that we were encouraged to view. We are asked to stay home if we have any flu-like symptoms. Our EHS person had put sanitizer hand pumps in all conference rooms last week, and this week they are atop the water coolers as well.

    1. pancakes*

      The idea of the US government making a deal with a private DNA testing company is pretty horrifying. I’d much rather see the CDC import test kits from countries that are better prepared, like Japan or South Korea, rather than help a private company market itself, or, worse yet, try to use this as an occasion to chip away at civil rights.

      1. Cat*

        Having done similar tests myself I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the DNA tests are for the virus (probably some sort of RT-PCR assay) not the host. RT-PCR (“DNA testing”) is a super common way to test for RNA viruses in plants/animals/humans and it is basically just seeing if the virus is there or not. The host’s DNA is not what you are looking at and it’s actually a pain if you end up amplifying it instead of your target because that causes false positives. I know “DNA testing” gets a bad rap, and I’m certainly not sending in a sample to 23andme or whoever, but it’s actually a huge umbrella that covers a lot of important medical tests like this one.

        Just googled it and yeah CDC is doing RT-PCR for their tests.

  118. Crona*

    Husband is a VP in IT. Spent the weekend trying to figure out what to do about the 20%of the workforce without effective internet in their homes. It’s a lot more difficult than people think.

    His major issue is this: Most of the “mission critical” people in his company have devices and internet and can VPN from home. The rest are in areas of the USA without internet and where it would be difficult to use other means (e.g, cellphone tethering or hot spots or portable “hockey puck” devices). In short, if they don’t have reliable internet, it’s because it’s virtually impossible to to get it where these people live. So working from home might be impossible.

    An example: one of the people who has to review and sign off on things daily lives where the local cable company and internet can’t get to his home b/c it’s remote. He doesn’t have reliable cell service. It’s in an area where he can’t get satellite tv. Something about the geology of the area and signals. So he will have to drive daily several miles (over 15) down tot he local McDonals and sit in the parking lot. He’s going to have to work in his car while using McD’s WiFi. So far, that’s the only solution.

    If anyone is interested google “ For the First Time, Census Bureau Data Show Impact of Geography, Income on Broadband Internet Access” and look at the yellow areas on the map. That’s the type of area my husband is trying to deal with.

    Oh, the kicker: it’s a healthcare related field that must be open if there’s an epidemic.

  119. Specks*

    Our office is doing something very helpful tomorrow — we have a test mandatory work from home day, so we can see how it functions and where the weaknesses are and are not surprised if it becomes necessary. Now, it’s not a problem for most of us — we are a global NGO and working remotely is par for the course for the majority of staff — but it’s helpful to see how the whole organization operates for a remote day.

    We have also been told to stay home if we’re the slightest bit sick (either wfh or take sick hours), and our managers instructed to make this as easy as possible. People also have the ability to self-quarantine starting now if they feel like they’re at a higher risk by discussing with HR. Our state has had a few cases, but there’s nothing endemic here, so they’re getting ahead of the curve. Generally, people at the organization are very supportive of sick days, accommodating health issues, etc, so I trust them to handle this well.

    Less helpfully, we’ve been getting updates and guidelines what feels like 5 times a day. It’s entirely too much, no truly new information is provided, and it feels stressful and distracting for most coworkers I’ve discussed it with. So would recommend not overwhelming people with emails.

    3. zora*

      We’re the opposite on updates, we haven’t gotten an update since Feb 28 from our leadership.
      So, I think somewhere in between is the best policy ;)

  120. AnotherBrickInTheWall*

    Teacher here — we were asked to submit lesson plans and materials for a full week to send home with students for spring break in the case that we need to close for the week of post- spring break. We also suspended our usual attendance policy for students (e.g. having more than 5 absences in a quarter will no longer affect your academic standing).

    Lots of hand sanitizer and santizing wipes made available to students and teachers, and handshakes are banned (we’re asked to greet students with a bow or elbow bump in lieu of handshaking for the moment.

    1. Morningstar*

      Since people are being advised to cough/sneeze into their elbows, can we also do away with the elbow bump?

    2. Sparkly Librarian*

      I walked through schools on my visit for the last two weeks with hands up, waving and jazz handing… “Hi! How’s it going? No hugs today! No hugs today — too many germs!”

    3. OyHiOh*

      My children’s school district sent out the following email last week:

      “What is coronavirus?
      Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough and shortness of breath. These viruses spread through coughing or sneezing, much like the flu.
      What can I do to stay healthy?
      Again, the risk to the general public in the U.S. from this virus is considered low, but just as is recommended for other respiratory viruses, people can protect themselves and others by practicing everyday actions:
      Practice good hand hygiene.
      Wash your hands frequently – remember to wash your hands after coughing or sneezing
      Wash with soap and water, or
      If soap and water are unavailable, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol to clean hands
      Avoid direct hand contact to the eyes, nose, and mouth
      Practice respiratory etiquette.
      Cover your nose and mouth when coughing and sneezing.
      Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
      If you are ill, you should try to distance yourself from others so you do not spread your germs. Distancing includes staying home from work or school when possible.
      Additionally, we have cleaning practices in place to help avoid disease transmission.
      Feeling Sick? Stay Home!
      As always, we encourage anyone who is feeling ill to stay home, especially if they are experiencing cold and flu-like symptoms.
      We will continue to work closely with local, state and national health officials to monitor this situation and will provide additional communication as needed.”

      They are not – for the moment – suspending absences policy. So, yes, please stay home if ill. But also, don’t let your kids miss school because every hour counts! (We’ve got a 4 day school week here because of a stupid union fight two years ago . . . . )

  121. IWishIHadaFancyUserName*

    We have a handful of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in our greater community area. Management’s made zero response here, not even forwarding info put out by the local health department and hospitals, even as other local agencies and organizations are implementing contingency plans. Only a few jobs here could be performed from home. Clients are still showing up in usual numbers.
    Front line staff have taken it upon ourselves to wipe down keyboards, mice, desktops, doorknobs, and other high-touch surfaces, etc., in our offices and workshop rooms, but basically we’re on our own as far as dealing with prevention.
    Staff reaction ranges from making jokes about stockpiling toilet paper to serious concern on the part of some of our staff who have compromised immune systems.
    Practical impact here has been negligible. That will likely change if someone here actually gets sick.

  122. How would you bring up WFH?*

    This is more of a question for the community. I work at a non-essential healthcare provider business that needs most of its employees to be on site to operate, but I’m in a role that can be done 100% remotely. I’m probably the only one in this business who can work from home; everyone else has to be on site to their jobs. I’m unsure how I can bring up working remotely in this kind of setup. Details:

    * I’m in a large city with already a significant number of cases, and have to take public transit to get to work.
    * The business has a definite “butt in seat” culture, both from management and staff.
    * Management hasn’t shown any move toward even considering remote work arrangements (understandable given 90% of the staff can’t work from home).
    * I have one report whose job is not remote-able. I’d feel weird working from home when she can’t.
    * I don’t have anyone vulnerable in my close circle and I’m young(ish) and healthy, so my risk–for me personally and for my loved ones–is thankfully on the lower side. But obviously I don’t want to be a vector for others.
    * I’m definitely concerned how bosses and colleagues would perceive me after things have calmed down, if I work from home when they can’t.
    * I’ve been here for many years, and I think I’m known as a reliable worker.

    Anyone in a similar situation? How did/would you bring up WFH?

    1. Llama Wrangler*

      In a similar situation, do not have any suggestions. I am thinking about asking to stagger my schedule.

  123. Bluesboy*

    Work in a bank in Milan (North Italy).

    The government has shut down the entire region anyway, so no-one in, no-one out, but my company had already cancelled all business trips. We aren’t allowed to have any guests come to our offices, although we are still allowed to attend meetings in other people’s offices, as long as they are in the same city. Working from home encouraged although not obligatory. Anybody quarantined or with their offices closed is on full pay even if they have a job you can’t do from home.

    Not connected to my company, but all schools are closed, so plenty of parents have childcare issues, especially the parents who work in healthcare or single parents who can’t work from home. And there isn’t really a good solution, as we are encouraged not to use grandparents who are more vulnerable, and obviously it isn’t like there is any kind of group childcare solution that works since that would defeat the whole point of closing the schools. My family is fine as our son is 11 anyway, my wife was working at home and now I am.

  124. Beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk ox*

    My office is requiring anyone traveling to countries on the CDC’s list to report to the company and work from home for two weeks after their return. They’ve increased our cleaning schedule and the number of hand sanitizer stations around the office.

  125. Blaise*

    K-8 Catholic School here. We tossed all expired sanitizer and anything less than 70% alcohol, the custodians are cleaning bathrooms twice a day now and periodically wiping down doorknobs and light switches, and we’re supposed to wipe down all the desks at the end of every day and anytime we can otherwise. We also discussed how to send assignments electronically should we be closed for a long period of time. All good things to discuss, but a bit over the top IMO. Not to mention I have a student who is allergic to cleaning wipes so I won’t be wiping anything down until students leave for the day.

  126. Another name*

    We received an email blast telling us to wash our hands, avoid sick people, and stay home if we are sick – with information about our sick leave and telecommuting policies, and a link to our state health department website.

    I was also told last week that one of my team’s priorities is supporting other teams in working from home.

    I asked what that support is supposed to look like – specifically what am I supposed to do? ( I don’t provide direct support and we already have a telecommuting policy in place. )

    I’m still waiting for an answer.

    1. Another name*

      Also we are a BYO-hand sanitizer and wipes organization. If the cleaning crew is stepping up the cleaning at all, I haven’t noticed, so I’m working through my personal stash sanitizing things that I touch.

  127. Nuke*

    Telling us “stay home if you don’t feel well” but only giving us PTO by the week… 2 whole hours after being here almost 3 years! Takes a month of solid work to get a day off. Our work could definitely be done from home but they don’t let us because of security issues, I suppose.

    But at least they’re individually wrapped the bagels in the cafeteria, in plastic that gets immediately thrown out. Lol.

  128. NCKat*

    We are in the Southeastern US.

    1) No business travel abroad
    2) If you go on personal travel abroad, consult Risk Manager upon return
    3) If you exhibit any of the symptoms associated with COVID-19, go home immediately and self-quarantine for 14 days. You can work from home if practicable.
    4) Company handed out sanitizing wipes which we are expected to use on work surfaces and equipment.

  129. OrganizedHRChaos*

    I am HR for a travel agency and we have been hit hard. We have laid off about 25% of our staff this month.

    1. AvonLady Barksdale*

      That’s so awful, I’m sorry! I hope you’re able to re-hire them when things subside.

    2. Crona*

      So sorry to hear that. I thinkt hat a lot of people are going to lose jobs. It’s heart breaking.

    3. Exec Assitant*

      Oh man, I’m an exec assistant for 2 VPS and have been emailing out travel agent every day to cancel some trip or another. I know their office is busy with cancellations now but I can’t imagine how slow it will be in the coming weeks…

  130. Nonprofit Panda*

    I work right outside of DC. We had an employee go to CPAC and a bunch of CPAC related events (ex: dinners and happy hours). Almost all of us take public transit. It is not critical that we be in the office. But for whatever reason we are all still required to be here. The only guidance we all have is to wash our hands more often. Not sure if the higher up are aware of CPAC guy, but he sits next to me. sigh…

    1. AvonLady Barksdale*

      It’s so weird to me– well, maybe not– that my partner has not been asked to telework for his Fed job.

    2. Anon for this one*

      Was CPAC at the Gaylord this year? My kid was at the giant anime con held there in mid February, and I was waiting for bad news.

      1. Nonprofit Panda*

        Yes It was at the Gaylord from the 26th to the 29th of February, so if your kid’s thing was before that then you should be fine!

    3. Nonprofit Panda*

      Update! Upper management found out about CPAC guy and sent him home, but didn’t say anything to anyone. My boss won’t confirm that he was sent home for this reason, but I’m not an idiot. Did I mention he ate the communal banana bread I brought in this morning? And because we are “going green” we don’t have plastic cutlery so he just picked up a piece. sigh part two…

  131. Senor Montoya*

    I work for a large state university. University (and the system as a whole) is taking it quite seriously. They have online info that’s frequently updated. Provost has instructed all departments to make and submit plans for dealing with extended closure (or rather, closed to all but essential personal), especially re teaching. The message is: keep teaching although not in person. Our department is meeting this week to discuss plans. For us, that means doing class online in some form, advising students online in some form, any other work that can be done remotely should be done remotely.

  132. Ann*

    Largest health insurer in the state that has public spread of covid-19. If you had specific exposure at identified locations during date span then work from home. Ongoing monitoring if further spread in community. Have to prepare for increase in health insurance claims as well.

  133. hello*

    Parents were told to avoid China, Iran, Italy and South Korea during spring break, but if they do go, their kid needs to stay in self quarantine for 14 days, which will count as excused absences. For staff, we were told that travel for work would be covered if travel was delayed or if we got sick, but for personal travel we would have to risk it with whatever days we have stored up. Other than that pretty standard, wash your hands, etc.

  134. Lemon Ginger Tea*

    My office actually just met to discuss this, which is notable because the last time all of us met in person was 2018 (for real).

    We were told to be more judicious in our travel, and to make efforts to switch to conference calls or video calls for things we would normally travel to attend in person. Also since we’re a company with a handful of locations throughout the country, try to pass off projects to local regional offices that can drive to attend rather than flying.

    We also had a reminder to work from home as much as needed. The boss made a point of saying he would welcome a temporary extra sanitizing effort where everyone takes turns wiping down the office doorknobs and other heavily trafficked areas. We’ll see if that ever materializes.

    1. Lemon Ginger Tea*

      Also several of our large clients have apparently set policies such as:
      -no international travel or else there’s a 21 day required quarantine when the employee would work from home after returning
      -domestic work-related travel needs to be approved and reviewed by a board as well as 14 day quarantine
      -at least one client has implemented a total lock-down for their building, meaning only employees may enter the building; client meetings and other events with non-employees no longer happen on site.

  135. Michelle*

    Museum worker here- email was sent from management. Told us to wash our hands/use hand sanitizer (I do this anyway) and stay home if you’re sick. There are monitoring the situation and will let us know if further measures are required. They are also having a COVID-19 meeting at the corporate offices tomorrow afternoon. Several school systems have cancelled field trips, but otherwise it’s mostly a “wait and see” situation. We have over 400 children/teachers/parents in the museum as I type this and a large leadership group in the rental facilities.

    Only 3 directors are allowed to WFH on an “as needed” basis but if we close, no one else can WFH, so after a day or two I don’t know what those 3 people will work on. They pay full-time workers if we close for snow, no word about if we would get paid if we close for COVID-19.

    No hand soap, sanitizer or alcohol in any of the locals stores (I have a decent stock at home because you are supposed to wash your hands even if there is not a international virus outbreak). No fights over toilet paper or paper towels.

  136. Owlimentary*

    I’m actually currently updating our business continuity plans for our team for coronavirus (based on the wider guidance we’ve received from higher up). My office has been pretty good – wfh is pretty common here anyway, and we have a strong culture of not coming in if you’re even remotely infectious (I turned up with a cold early in my time here and got told not to be in the office the next day pretty firmly). But we’re in the UK, so pretty sensible sick leave anyway (if I have six instances within a 12 month period, someone will ask my boss about it, if it’s over a week for an instance, I probably need to go to a doctor or something, maybe), and it’s a particularly lenient employer on top of that, so we’re probably not the norm. We’ve been less good in our non-UK offices, but I think some of that is down to specific location managers not being very trusting of their staff working from home, because it’s not the norm in those locations. My manager has been working to try to change some of those views and bring it more into the usual run of things.

    In general, we’ve been identifying what work is business critical and who will cover what in the event of building loss and staff illness. My role is extremely not business critical, so I’m designated sub for a couple of other people if/when things go downhill. It’s all been clearly documented and communicated, which I’ve found super reassuring.

  137. Points for Anonymity*

    My fantastic employer [UK] has suspended the usual SSP process and is offering full pay, indefinitely, to anyone affected by coronavirus. They have also increased our cleaner’s hours, are revising the travel policy (we are an international aid charity so have staff based in many of the high risk areas) and looking into remote working options.

    1. Points for Anonymity*

      Also relevant that a dedicated ‘COVID19 working group’ has been set up and is meeting weekly to enforce these new measures. It’s made up of members of the leadership team, HR, international programmes and medical, and IT.

  138. The Great Octopus*

    Interestingly enough, kind of like a joke here. We have real concerns but no panic which is nice.
    We bring in products from China which is a real disruption and have put in emergency plans to keep our stock rolling, and we also have a warehouse in Texas (in a city with a confirmed case) that we are currently battling it out with the higher ups on their garbage plan to deal with Coronavirus. The warehouse has planned that people will work from home when they get sick, and they’ll roll in temps to ship as needed. Which is great, but how will warehouse workers work from home during this time? They don’t get good paid time off or sick leave, so they’re forcing them to take unpaid time off for the sniffles, and think that will be effective at keeping sick people out of the office (it wont, they have kids to feed and bills to pay)
    But up here, we kind of joke about it but the real plan is if sick work from home and hope for the best.

  139. Lora*

    A local biopharma company (i.e. people who should definitely know better – Biogen) had a big executive conference in a huge Boston hotel. 175 people attended, not counting the various waitstaff, front desk and cleaning crews of the hotel itself, nevermind the hotel guests. One of those guys was sick, and flew in and out of Logan. 25 people are showing symptoms presumed to be coronavirus due to that meeting, two of whom flew home to Indiana. Testing still pending. Neither me nor my colleagues are thrilled with how the CDC has handled testing, for various and sundry reasons. New York state public health has decided to do their own testing. One of the executives who tested positive also infected her son, and his entire school closed. A few other schools were temporarily closed for sanitizing, while the executives’ kids are in quarantine.

    Nobody else wants to be That Company, so Takeda has pre-emptively told all 5000 Cambridge MA employees to work from home if they can and work split shifts if they cannot, staying as physically far apart as possible.

    My employer has banned all international travel. ALL international business travel. If, for some reason, you desperately MUST travel for work, you need the CEO’s approval. You are unlikely to get it – I just saw a guy who asked the CEO and was told no, for a site that really needs his help. If you undertake personal travel to a high risk area, you will be quarantined. I was supposed to travel to our main site where I have a project and it was canceled as of late Friday night – then I found out via the travel agent, Switzerland had been planning to either send everyone on the plane home right away or quarantine us anyway, they don’t feel the US is handling things correctly and of course they’ve already shut the border with Italy. This morning I found out one of my colleagues, with whom I was supposed to spend 90% of my visit, has been quarantined due to exposure. There are several hundred cases in Zurich already, where I would have been in a super-busy train station to get a train that is used by a ton of people daily.

    There are a lot of posters and email reminders from EHS about handwashing. The local drugstores and drugstores in Switzerland and Germany have run out of hand sanitizer, but we’ve been making our own since we actually have lots of pharmaceutical-grade alcohol and gelling agents laying around. We have a lot of essential personnel, so this should get interesting…

    1. blackcat*

      Whenever someone asks if some event should be canceled, I just keep saying “Biogen.”

      Don’t be like Biogen!

      I’m worried for the hotel staff, who may not have been tested and may not have sufficient PTO/sicktime to not continue to spread it. I haven’t seen a statement from Marriott, but I really hope they’re doing right by their employees.

      1. Lora*

        The first thing I thought of was, “oh my god the dishwasher/bussing staff.” Because if anyone was exposed it was them. One of my crummy high school jobs was banquet waitressing for those type of events and even if the infection really only happened at one table full of people, the waitstaff for that table, the bussing staff and the dishwashers were all exposed, and then they probably sat around eating leftover chocolate mousse-in-a-champagne-glass desserts afterwards with the other ~10 folks and one of the line cooks…and depending on the timing, the head cook might’ve made the staff a buffet meal to eat on break during the speeches, where they would sit and eat with the staff from other events…

        We also have a new policy of minimizing visitors of any kind including vendors, everyone must fill out a questionnaire. They’re giving out sanitizer at the guard stations.

        1. blackcat*

          Yeah. I’m also in the Boston metro area, and some schools near me are closed due to members of their community testing positive–all roads lead back to Biogen, it seems.

          We’ll see what happens. Right after that Biogen conference, I was next door at the aquarium, which my small child WHO TOUCHES EVERYTHING IN SIGHT. So I’m hoping the contagious attendee didn’t hang out and do touristy stuff after they wrapped up….

    2. Cheese Cheese Cheese CHEESE*

      There are c.40 cases in Zurich, not ‘several hundred’. There are only around 370-380 cases in the whole of Switzerland. The situation is confusing enough without pulling wild estimates out of the air…

    3. washing my hands at all times*

      Obviously the situation isn’t good, but hindsight is 20/20 – that meeting was held following all the CDC and WHO travel restrictions at the time. There was a larger multi-company biotech meeting three days later. The recommendations changed quite a bit since Feb 26th. Based on the other comments to the thread many companies still have less restrictions than Biogen had at the time of the meeting – I’m not sure it’s fair to say they should have known better.

      1. blackcat*

        Oh, I completely understand that they acted responsibly given the information at the time. But the “don’t be like Biogen” is more like “Don’t inadvertently spread this disease to dozens of people thanks to one sick attendee who probably didn’t wash their hands enough.”

        1. washing my hands at all times*

          Yes, I was more referring to the original comment. I get the sentiment now – don’t be Biogen is definitely good advice to anyone considering cancelling a meeting now.

  140. anycat*

    i work for a company that does business in WA (specifically King County), Oregon, and all over California. I work out of the corporate office and we’ve been given the ability to work from home this week. I normally work from home two days a week, but all 5 will be interesting (i like being around my coworkers… just not if they are sick!)

    We have people that are on the ground and out in the community, so not our entire workforce is as lucky as I am (in fact, i’d say probably 10-20% of my company is in an office, the rest are not).

    there was supposedly someone in our office building who was being tested for it, but not sure what the outcome of that is. my larger hesitation is taking public transportation in and out of the city.

  141. JustKnope*

    All office-based workers of our pharma company are being asked to work from home for the foreseeable future, so that essential employees like Manufacturing and R&D don’t get sick. They are obviously mission-critical to making medicines. I’ve been really impressed with the clear communication and measured but proactive approach our leadership has taken, but it’s just really hard to get stuff done with everyone working from home.

    1. Anon for this one*

      Antibacterial soap isn’t more effective than regular soap against a virus. Honestly, I thought they’d stopped making it, since it was felt to do more harm than good.

    2. Ariana Grande's Ponytail*

      An N95 mask will not help you unless you have had it fitted appropriately. I have been fitted for one in the past because I was in an art class working with dangerous materials, and I can affirm that it is neither comfortable nor actionable to wear one even a majority of the time, unless it is absolutely necessary (i.e. you are a healthcare worker).

      Do not buy these, healthcare workers are in much greater need than the public.

      1. Robin*

        Yup. Do not impair the future health of health care workers and their families by getting masks you don’t need.

  143. CupcakeCounter*

    My company has done quite a bit. All of our offices in China are under a WFH policy until further notice, we have a manufacturing plant with many employees who live in Wuhan so the plant was shut down for a couple of weeks (with pay) and thoroughly cleaned, international travel has been denied, domestic travel is on a case by case basis and the company is discouraging air travel of all kinds and offering additional mileage incentives for car travel. All trade shows and conferences are currently on hold or cancelled.
    We already have a very generous WFH policy and the CEO is encouraging those with the ability to WFH and have any ailment or those with immunocompromised family members to WFH for the duration (and even noted in an all company email and announcement that managers who give their employees a hard time about it will be looking for new jobs). I also heard that there were some additional paid sick leave policies being worked up for those who can’t WFH like the people in the manufacturing plants but I don’t know the details.
    We also got pallet upon pallet of Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, and tissues delivered last week.

  144. Ferret*

    Posting a link in my next comment that has a lot of helpful information in it (although it’s from a US site – so some of it is less relevant to those of us elsewhere)

  145. Bopper*

    We are already set up for work from home when you want to so that isn’t an issue.
    We have health insurance and sick days.
    There is Purell in all the meeting rooms.
    We are not allowed to fly to China/Iran/Italy/South Korea/Washington State unless we self-quarantine upon return.
    Only business critical travel is allowed.
    When someone in one of our international offices tested positive for COVID-19 that office was closed.

  146. Buttons*

    Travel to any locations with reported cases has been suspended, if anyone has traveled or been in contact with anyone who has traveled they are asked to WFH and self-quarantine for 3 weeks. Travel restrictions are causing a bit of issue, but for the most part, we are flexible and have good technology in place to do video conferencing and 90% of our employees work from home at least 2x a week anyway.
    I am holding off booking some travel to Chile that has been tentatively scheduled for mid-April to see what the status of everything is. I am honestly not that concerned for myself. I work from home 95% of the time anyway, I wash my hands a lot, and I am healthy.

  147. Adlib*

    We have about 100 people in an open office layout. Just today in our all staff meeting we were told to basically: stay home when sick, cover your mouth when you cough, wash yours hands, clean your surfaces. They’re looking into have more robust abilities for people to work from home. I can pretty easily as I’m a systems person, but a lot of our staff don’t have that ability. I think it’s good that companies are looking into expanding this sort of thing even if the impetus isn’t a good one.

    In church yesterday, we didn’t shake hands as usual but just greeted people with waves. Later, I elbow-bumped the pastor. Even our CEO mentioned elbow-bumps!

    1. Buttons*

      Yup. We elbow bump or because I work for a Japanese company we bow. Shaking hands isn’t the norm in my company.

    2. Morningstar*

      Elbow bumps are also problematic because people are widely instructed to cough/sneeze into their elbows

  148. Cruciatus*

    I work at a well known university. If you have to go to one of the regions (like they sent you there) you must self-quarantine but they will pay you full pay. If you go somewhere against their recommendation you still must self-quarantine but you’ll have to use up vacation/sick time. I’m still not quite sure what happens if you get it just in the normal course of living your life–I’m hoping they’ll still give you full pay during self-quarantine. They may have addressed this but they dropped the info the Friday before spring break started and even though I don’t have this week off, I was already in a spring break (from faculty and students) state of mind.

    I think it’s gonna be interesting when all the students come back from spring break next week…have a feeling the coronavirus incidences will go waaaay up. Currently very low in the state. Students traveling to certain regions also have to self-quarantine but will they? Remains to be seen.

    1. blink14*

      I also work at a university, and our spring break was last week. Now there are thousands of students back on campus, traveling from every conceivable place … and yet, business as usual on our main campus. The panic and paranoia is slowly ratcheting up in every office …

    2. Misty*

      I’m on spring break this week. I think next week when I return is when the virus will hit my campus.

      Last week I was talking to another student who mentioned she was going on a cruise during this week. :/

  149. Art3mis*

    – They are asking anyone who was at either of two events lately to self quarantine for two weeks.
    – Anyone who has a laptop is asked to bring it home every day in case of the need to work from home.
    – Anyone who is sick is asked to stay home.
    – We’ve been asked to make sure our contact information is updated in our system and that our manager has our phone number in case of an urgent update.
    – We’ve been asked to inform our manager of any travel plans we have in the immediate future. Anyone who’s traveled to or plans to travel to a known area of exposure is asked to work from home.

    There’s quite a few people who don’t have laptops. In fact I just got one Friday. Most folks in customer service, claims, and the scanning department don’t, and of course these are the lowest paying positions. We do have PTO, but I don’t know how they will handle people who can’t WFH but need to be quarantined.

  150. Lurking Tom*

    We’re at least 90% remote workers, so day-to-day this isn’t a huge issue. Where it’s going to be tricky is that we have an all-hands meeting happening on the U.S. east coast in late May or early June, and people will be flying in for that from the U.S. west coast and at least a few from India, France & Germany. As of right now, that hasn’t been canceled. I live close enough to take a train to the meeting, which I feel is slightly better than an airport/plane crowd-wise. I suspect that if the curve of new cases keeps progressing like it has been that they’re going to cancel it – our company is really good about taking our well-being (physical and mental) into account in their plans.

    1. gmg22*

      Very similar scenario for my organization on all counts (though I am not a remote worker). We do have a handful of managers visiting our office this week who traveled internationally, though, so I guess they weighed risk-benefit and made the call (what I wonder is if part of that call was “We better do this now because we might not be able to for awhile after this”).

      So far we’re getting good at doing the “elbow bump” greeting and enjoying a lively debate about which is better for timing handwashing, Lady Macbeth’s “out, out, damned spot” soliloquy or the chorus to “Jolene.” (I am opting for the latter. Always put your trust in Saint Dolly.)

  151. Teacher K*

    I teach high school at a high achieving school in Los Angeles. Admin tells us to stay home if we think we are getting sick, parents rip us if we aren’t here…and then admin does nothing to stop the attack. It’s marvelous. There is a loose plan for online instruction if the schools close, but we certainly don’t have adequate infrastructure for it. I have no idea how this will potentially impact Advanced Placement scores, but the parents will likely blame the teachers. I’m not a big fan of the parents right now…. the kids are being fantastic, and are really involved in fact-checking, so it’s enjoyable to see them turning this into a legit learning experience.

  152. K-12 California*

    I work in K-12 so it is different than most companies. At this time we’ve had frequent communications from the district office regarding processes for reducing the risk of spreading this virus. We’ve hired additional janitorial crews to come in nightly to help disinfect with some fancy process the CDC has recommended, focusing on classroom desks, doorknobs, light switches, and other common items. We have additional day janitors whose sole responsibility is checking every restroom to make sure the soap stays filled. Now that there is a confirmed case of COVID-19 in our county, we are giving students a longer lunch period to accommodate the increased traffic to wash hands before the meal. (Still no hot water in our bathrooms, of course.)

    As a note for those in California, hand sanitizers and sanitizing wipes are classified as pesticides and are not allowed in schools. This includes specifically alcohol-based sanitizers. We had to undergo a special training course for pesticide application in order to purchase wipes for office use and were specifically told that they cannot be applied when students will use the space within a certain period of time and we cannot, under any circumstances, allow access to hand sanitizer by students. So when the district directed us to use hand sanitizer and let students have access, we had to fight back a bit. In response, the district basically said they will choose to protect students by following the CDC guidelines rather than follow a stupid law. They did NOT put that in writing. :) Their phrasing was a lot more legally grey with the same result.

    1. K-12 in MA*

      Yeah, not a ton happening on the East Coast yet in terms of K-12. A few schools in neighboring districts have had early dismissals in order to deep-clean school buildings, both times after a student or a parent was diagnosed with COVID-19, but so far my district is clear. We did cancel some student travel scheduled for April, which I know a lot of other districts have done. Other than that, I’m mostly impacted by kids trying to steal my jug of hand sanitizer.

      The longer lunch period is a solid idea…I wish we’d do that! 23 minutes is profoundly inadequate.

  153. Mim*

    My spouse works in a field that puts them at a high risk for being exposed to the virus if/when it comes to our city. I don’t know what the transmission rate is for healthy middle aged people who are simply exposed (possibly multiple times), but I am concerned. Not that they wouldn’t recover (they don’t have risk factors), but that a sick spouse would mean possible quarantine for me and our children if our city, the schools, and/or my employer catch up to having an actual policy on this. (And of course a sick spouse puts us at risk for getting sick and missing school/work directly because of that.) We are lucky that we can deal with the financial blow of me missing multiple weeks of work because of illness/voluntary quarantine. But I am real salty about my employer’s meager sick leave, and their lack of indication that they will be providing more PTO if/when the virus/voluntary quarantine hits our city. I have already used up most of this year’s allotment on general childhood illnesses, etc. Luckily my spouse’s employer has a much more generous sick leave policy, and they could be out several weeks w/o missing a penny in their paycheck.

  154. Quill*

    I’m in a relatively small pharma office.

    We’re mostly increasing the availability of Work from Home, and everything smells like hand sanitizer.

  155. Higher Ed Heddy*

    I work in higher ed and they are coming up with a plan to to put all of our classes online in the event of a closure. I think that’ interesting because we don’t currently have online classes- they just supplement via the LMS, and there is only one support person for the LMS. I don’t know what he’s going to do if suddenly everyone had to put everything online. He’s overworked as it is. The school (smaller, private) is huge on lean staffing, and it has bit them in the ass more than once.

  156. agnes*

    Prudently. Additional facility cleaning, hand sanitizer, social distancing, work from home options for those who can. We have promised people to expect updates no less than weekly and sooner if needed. I work in a place where this is important since it’s a public facing role and we have more than 100 employees who are interacting with the public. They need to know that the company is paying attention and making plans.

  157. eshrai*

    My office is just letting us know to wash your hands. My state and county has issued a state of emergency and my child’s school district closed for the week. Since my daughter’s daycare is on campus, she has no daycare for at least a week and I am staying home today. I think I have plans for the rest of the week.

  158. Tammy*

    We have a “COVID-19 Tiger Team” with executive leadership. Some actions we’ve taken:

    Increasing people’s ability to work from home, and mandating that people with laptops have to take them home every day.
    Pretty significant curtailment on business travel. Even existing travel needs to be re-approved, and all business air travel requires executive approval.
    No handshakes and hugs. This is hard for us because we’re a pretty huggy workplace compared to the average, but we’re doing it.
    Increased availability of hand sanitizer, and encouragement to use it. Also reminders about hand-washing.
    Stepping up on office and equipment cleaning and sanitizing.

    Though we have offices in multiple places/countries, none of our teams have been directly affected by COVID-19 yet. But our executive team has said they’re monitoring the situation closely and developing contingency plans just in case. I’m in a pseudo-project management role, and my leadership is encouraging me to think about contingency plans in case any of my critical project team members becomes sick.

  159. SarahTheEntwife*

    I work in a university library, and we’ve been getting regular updates from the administration on what the status is of the virus in our state and what travel, etc. restrictions they recommend. So far the risk is low enough that it hasn’t directly affected us other than everyone being *really enthusiastic* about hand washing, but I’m going to start taking my computer home at night with me in case I need to work from home. Health-wise I’m probably in the “not automatically high-risk but should probably take extra precautions”, and for once I actually have quite a lot of work that I can do from home so long as I have my work laptop.

    1. Metadata Janktress*

      I also work at one. We now have a non-essential travel ban in place. (Which I found out about within 12 hours of flying out to a conference. WHEE!) I’m also starting to take my work laptop home at night in case they also shut us down. We’re currently on spring break, so I’m not going to be surprised if they switch to remote instruction/shut down as students return from all sorts of places.

  160. Lizzy May*

    I wish my work was doing more. They’ve cancelled business travel and are telling people to be ready to work from home if possible. I cannot work from home and there’s been no communication about that at all. I’m assuming it’s because there are no good options. We were supposed to get hand sanitizer but thanks to a combination of bad office politics and shortages from our supplier, we have nothing.

    But I really worry about the bank tellers (I work for a non-customer facing part of an international bank.) They’re almost all part-time employees. We only get 5 sick days a year across the company. They’re constantly interacting with the public and touching money. These are people who need to come to work to get paid. And the vast majority of clients who come in to deal with tellers are seniors.

  161. Merci Dee*

    I posted about a few things out company was doing during lunch on Friday, but we got an email from Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) on Friday afternoon about additional measures that have been put into place.

    — Hand sanitizer stations have been installed next to all time clocks and all doors into/out of the building.
    — EHS ordered 10 no-touch thermometers to issue to the guards at the two gated entrances onto the grounds. Contract employees, visitors, vendors, and workers from affiliate companies will be asked a number of questions from a standard questionnaire about any symptoms they may be experiencing, along with having their temperatures read at the gate. Anyone exhibiting symptoms of the coronavirus will be denied entry to the facility.
    — Meetings at off-site locations have been seriously scaled back.
    — International travel has been cancelled.
    — Any employees/vendors/visitors returning from travel in Level 3 countries within the past 14 days are being denied entry to the facility.
    — The cleaning contractors have been doing an =excellent= job of stepping up with additional cleanings in the break rooms and restrooms. In our section of the office, they had been cleaning the restrooms about every two hours or so, and the break rooms 2 – 3 times a day. But now, they’re cleaning down the toilets and bathroom sinks/counters about every 45 minutes to an hour, and they’re cleaning the tables in the break rooms every hour. And they’re doing everything with their customary smiles and good humor. Bless every single one of them.

    We still don’t have any word about working-from-home arrangements, and I don’t expect anything to be implemented for that. As we’re a manufacturing facility, there’s no way the line workers could do anything from home. And we don’t have enough laptops for all the office staff to take them home for work. So if the virus really picked up here in my town to the point where the facility had to shut down, I’d have to lean on my vacation and personal days until those were exhausted.

    All my thoughts and prayers for those around the world dealing with this outbreak first-hand, and especially for those who have lost loved ones. We’re praying every night for mercy and healing for those struggling with the illness, for strength and endurance for those friends/family/medical professionals caring for the affected, for knowledge and boldness for the doctors and scientists who are tirelessly trying to find answers and prevent the spread of this illness, for compassion for the those in the Asian communities dealing with hate because of a situation over which they have no control, and grace and peace for the rest of us who can only watch and wait to see if it comes to our door steps, too. We love you all.

  162. DCGirl*

    My company is strongly discouraging travel to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, and South Korea. This would all be personal travel — we don’t have work in those places. They are also suggesting employees reconsider travel to Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Again, this would be personal travel. We are a government contractor — none of our clients are OCONUS. HR is asking that upon your return from one of the impacted regions, plan to work remotely or take PTO if your position does not allow remote work, for 14 days. Unfortunately, some of the agencies for which we do work don’t have great telework options for contractors.

    The DC area started to see its first cases this weekend. I’m actually kind of surprised it took this long for cases to pop up here given how diverse and international the workforce is. There are two cases in the county where I live (Fairfax, VA), one of which is a Marine at Fort Belvoir. Our next-door neighbor is a nurse at the base hospital, so we are concerned for her.

  163. Justme, the OG*

    I work with online education (online Masters programs) and we’ve been asked what we would need to work from home. I have a laptop with remote access to my desktop and most of our comp exams scheduled are online anyway.

  164. anneshirley*

    Small nonprofit worker. Last week our boss cleaned all the surfaces/doors/cabinets, excerpts for our desks, which he asked us to clean. He’s still regularly cleaning doorknobs, etc and we’re daily cleaning our desks. We’re located in the state that’s having the worst outbreak, Washington, so that’s a bit worrying, but we are about 2.5 + hours away from Seattle and those surrounding counties. We’ve also been asked to WFH if us or someone we live with is sick.

    As an event-oriented nonprofit, one of our biggest discussions is how to handle public events if an outbreak happened in our area. Could we still hold the lecture/discussions and just live stream them from our office, rather than having a public event? Things like that.

    1. Nonprofit Nancy*

      I’m also at a nonprofit and we have hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes everywhere! We have some big events coming up next week as well… they are fundraisers and volunteer recruitment events, so there’s not really an alternative other than rescheduling (if it comes to that). We are in San Antonio and are a little concerned considering one of our army bases has a number of quarantined people staying there.

    2. MAC*

      I’m also at a nonprofit in Washington state, although further from Seattle than anneshirley (GREAT user name!). We don’t have any *confirmed* cases in my community, and our agency doesn’t directly provide services, so we are mainly evaluating whether to cancel a large annual donor recognition event currently scheduled for April, and waiting to see if our national HQ cancels the annual conference that is scheduled for 2 weeks from now.

      Other nonprofits in our area are running the gamut – some fundraising events have been cancelled and some are continuing. For a community with no actual cases, we had a CRAZY run on TP and bottled water the weekend before this.

    3. Retail not Retail*

      We have our first big fundraiser in April but we rent out some buildings for private events. One of them is booked every foreseeable weekend.

      We’ve also got spring break day camps already and the districts that aren’t on break have field trips, along with church groups… on and on.

  165. Youth*

    My division is going on a Disneyland trip as a thank you for a great financial 2019.

    Some of my coworkers are jumpy about it. Last week, our VPs invited anyone who doesn’t want to travel to withdraw from the trip. (Instead, they’d get two days of PTO while we’re gone.)

    I’m still going. I plan to bring hand sanitizer with me as a precaution and wipe down my seating area on the plane ride. I don’t know how many of my coworkers, if any, have decided to opt out.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      My family and some friends are going on a trip to Disneyworld in a week and a half for my husband’s birthday, and yeah – I’m taking sanitizer and cleaning wipes, and otherwise none of us are in any of the risk categories, so just crossing my fingers for shorter lines.

      1. Filosofickle*

        On Twitter I saw someone say (semi-jokingly) that Disney attendance is a leading indicator of the apocalypse. Right now the ride lines are just as bad as always, but when the ride wait times drop by 20%, that will be the canary in the coal mine that tells us it’s time to dump what you have in the stock market.

  166. Zoe Karvounopsina*

    Based at a university in London, where my employers…asked us to update our next of kin. Three days later, they asked us to make sure we’d updated our next of kin details, and also told us that they’re looking into online solutions for students, but won’t close unless the Government insists.

    1. FormerFirstTimer*

      That’s… not a good response? People are already panicking, asking them to make sure they have up-to-date next of kins details is probably not going to help.

      1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

        It is a terrible response, and we are all a bit amazed that their choice was to double down on it afterwards.

      2. Diahann Carroll*

        Yeah….I would not be comforted by that communication, lol. “Please make sure to tell us who to call if you die.”

        1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

          My boss said “I don’t understand why everyone thinks we don’t have a plan!” so I explained that this is because of the next of kin thing.

  167. MissGirl*

    I have two jobs. One is at a ski resort and, with spring breaks coming, lessons and lodging are sold out. Usually they frown on anyone taking a sick day during this time but they’re being a little more lenient. Just don’t call out sick to come ski like some morons are doing. They check the sick list and the ski list daily.

    So far they aren’t allowing any refunds outside the normal booking window because the city isn’t listed as at risk. I’m curious to see if our numbers start dropping.

    Second job has a very strong work from home culture so that’s already in place. I do have clients in the Bay Area I was supposed to fly out to in a few weeks but the client has suspended travel. Other of my coworkers are still traveling to their clients but the company has said we can cancel if we don’t feel safe.

  168. Respectfully, Pumat Sol*

    I’m in the Seattle area. My office gave WFH guidance that’s voluntary, so of course my Director made it pretty clear she wants people in the office unless they’re actually sick. /Sigh. My team can already WFH however much we want, so nothing has really changed, other than a few team members are WFH for the next two weeks. The other half of my org is retail, and there’s no way they can WFH. They said they’d do individual case-by-case measures for people there, but I still worry. I wish they’d have instituted like 5 extra sick days or something.
    My husband’s work, which is a manufacturer hasn’t put anything out or said anything, and his company is in the same boat mine is, really. Half the org can WFH but the other half are welders and other physical jobs that can’t be done at home.

  169. I am not a llama*

    My company has postponed all international travel, and restricted domestic travel to just what is necessary.

  170. The HR Bee*

    We provided every employee with their own industrial size container of Clorox wipes and bottle of Purell for their office. We also reiterated that they should use their generous sick time if they feel unwell (12 days per year that can be banked/carried over up to 60 days – this is separate from their vacation which ranges 10 days to 25 days per year, rollover of 10 days allowed per year, plus an additional 3 floating holidays that can be used at anytime).

    We are a public event facility so we also ordered and installed a stupid amount of extra hand sanitizer stations in addition to increasing our cleaning schedule rounds each day. Most positions physically can’t be done from home (again event facility, events aren’t remote), but those that can – IT, HR, Accounting, etc…, have been encouraged to work from home if they’d like as well.

    1. The HR Bee*

      Forgot to add, we are in a state with only confirmed case and the individual is about 2 hours away from our workplace. I do also believe he/she has recovered and is doing well.

  171. Winifred*

    I’m director of operations at a large Boston-suburb church; we are planning to have staff work at home if necessary and are planning on trying to stream Sunday services somehow, as the state already has recommended people 60+ or who are health-compromised do not attend church (avoid large gatherings).

    I’m often the only staff person in the office but the other staff are here Sundays and picking up who knows what from hundreds of people. We do have a bit of a “coming to work when sick” culture but this is definitely a wake up call to not do that.

    In terms of closing the church building, we are following guidelines from the local school system and the state, which are more stringent.

    And of course, sanitizer everywhere, tissues and garbage cans, etc.

    1. Amy the Rev*

      Pastor at another large Boston-suburb church here! We’ve started streaming our worship services on Facebook live, adjusted coffee hour so that all the food is individually-wrapped/single serving, and served by designated folks wearing gloves, rather than buffet style. We’re following our towns guidance on large events, etc., and reminding folks not to come in if they or anyone in their family has even mild flu-like symptoms. We’re using bows, peace signs, and elbow bumps for passing of the peace, and suspending communion this month (and likely next month). Still trying to figure out how to do the offering (perhaps inviting folks to walk to the front and drop their offering in a basket on the communion table), but hoping to have it figured out by this Sunday!

      1. humans are weird*

        That’s how my church did offering this week, rather than passing a plate. I thought it was a good solution.

  172. FormerFirstTimer*

    We haven’t really talked about it as a whole too much, there aren’t any cases in our state as of yet. I personally have started saving all my ongoing projects to our cloud server just in case we need to work from home for an extended period of time.

    1. FormerFirstTimer*

      We do have an event at the end of May out of state that I think we’re all secretly hoping will get canceled. It would require all of us to land at the busiest airport in the world, which is making some of us slightly jumpy. I think our board may be discussing pulling out of the event as we wouldn’t lose much if any money at this point.

    2. Daisy-dog*

      I did the same. Last week, I finally took the time to do a much-needed clean of my desktop & downloads folders. Moved everything worth keeping to Sharepoint.

  173. Queenie*

    Last Friday we sat around drinking Corona’s and laughing at the strange behaviours of our fellow townspeople. There has been no record of the virus where we live or even close to us (not in the US) yet daily our supermarkets/costcos/grocery stores are sold out of Toilet paper and Chicken. WHY PEOPLE?!

  174. Cold-Calling Catastrophe*

    The CEO announced this morning that it’s a hoax, and is insisting on going through with a workshop in which we will be inviting clients from about 9 states. So inter-state travel and zero precautions. Also I am sick right now, but since I don’t have a fever, I must not be contagious. Also, we have no sick leave.

    2. Majnoona*

      Hold on to this one. Depending on how this progresses we may have a worst boss of the year contender.

  175. Communications Question*

    Advice needed:
    I’m in charge of internal communications at my company. We have about 120 employees globally. A co-worker reached out to my boss (COO) about some information that she found regarding COVID-19. This information was confident that vitamin C is the key to prevent contracting the virus. A quick search confirmed that there is no evidence supporting that information. My boss still wants me to include this in an email (which will be a reminder about sick leave & links to hand-washing info) as a sign of respect for that employee. I’m not sure how to phrase it given the lack of evidence and because I don’t want to appear to be the owner of that information. I was thinking, “There are still cases of cold & flu going around, so it’s a good idea to continue to follow those same preventative actions in this time. You can take vitamin C supplements as well as stay hydrated.” Thoughts?

    1. I'm A Little Teapot*

      I wouldn’t do even that. Maybe refer them to their primary care physician if they have any specific concerns regarding what they should do.

    2. Insert Clever Handle Here*

      If your boss is insisting (insert eye roll here), that language is good. Maybe add the “do not take any supplements without direction from your primary physician” statement as a CYA?

    3. Amy Sly*

      The good news with vitamin C is that since it’s water soluble, the worst most people will be able to do by taking it is making their urine more expensive. The bad news is that it does nothing to prevent common colds or regular flue either.

      1. Communications Question*

        Yeah, that’s what I came across when looking into it for coronavirus too. Even the “stay hydrated” bit isn’t helpful. It’s more of a way to just wrap it up with things considered common knowledge now matter how unhelpful.

  176. I'm A Little Teapot*

    Short answer: it’s not.

    Longer answer: There’s an article on the intranet which is basically copied and pasted from the CDC’s guidance. Nothing re travel restrictions or considerations. Many/most of my office could work from home. Management is overall anti-WFH in general, and so far that hasn’t changed. However, while there is some in my area, it’s not hitting the news like crazy. Most people are on public transit, and there’s thousands in the building. So at some point they’ll probably panic and do something, far too late to actually be effective.

    1. I'm A Little Teapot*

      Update if anyone’s curious. Yesterday, an email went out from the CEO they’re cancelling all nonessential travel, conferences, limiting large gatherings, etc. Directed to work from home if you don’t feel well. So my travel this week was cancelled yesterday.

      Also just heard that there is a case of confirmed corona virus in the next big building over, and my building is connected to it. Lots of common spaces. Nothing from management yet, but I don’t expect anything major yet.

  177. kittymommy*

    I work in government in FL and while we’re constantly in updates with the health department, emergency management, and the state, we’re not doing anything formal and honestly, we probably wouldn’t really be able to regardless. We had to shut down for a Cat 4 hurricane for one day and you would have thought that the entire staff was out partying with taxpayer money, people reacted so badly.

  178. TV Researcher*

    I was hoping this discussion would come up. I’m sort of immunocompromised in that I’m in treatment for cancer – but not chemo, so my WBC is fine. I’m in immunotherapy, so if you ask me, I should have a super immune system, but apparently that’s not how it works. I’m also in NYC, where we’re hearing about a growing number of cases daily (though still small). I can work from home, but it’s harder and I don’t work nearly as well from home.

    My plan was to go into the office until it’s dangerous, but today a number of people have come up to me suggesting that I work from home. I just don’t know.

    1. FormerFirstTimer*

      Honestly, your health is too important. I would work from home as much as possible right now, even if it’s just to avoid a regular cold or run of the mill flu. Stay safe.

    2. Coder von Frankenstein*

      There’s some indication that people can spread COVID-19 before they develop symptoms, so you’re gambling here – particularly since the U.S. is still way, way behind on testing people, which means we don’t actually know how widespread it is.

      If you don’t have reason to expect backlash from your boss (and possibly even if you do), my vote would be not to take that gamble. Working from home may be harder and less efficient, but it won’t kill you.

      1. TV Researcher*

        You make excellent points. I’m waiting to hear back from my oncologists’ office (while my boss and HR dept say working from home is fine – I’ve learned it’s better to get backup from the doctor’s office) for a final determination. But, I’ll likely start working from home tomorrow.

        Thanks all.

    3. blink14*

      Hey! I’m also in a similar boat – I have an immune disorder and I am on plasma immunotherapy infusions, and I also have asthma. Living in a major NE city. I had a conversation with my boss last week, in which I expressed that I will be cutting back from attending larger meetings and reducing my time traveling around campus (we’re at a university). I’m fully prepared to start working from home at any point (3-4 week supply of food, medication, and other necessities), and we agreed that I should start taking home a laptop every night. If/when I start to feel it’s too dangerous for me to come in, I will start working from home, unless the university directs those at higher risk to start working from home before then. This has already happened at a couple of satellite campuses on the west coast. Very fortunately, I drive to work already and can completely avoid public transit.

      Ultimately, you need to do what feels safest to you. If that’s to work from home, then you should do that. If you feel like it’s not to that point yet, hold off for a bit longer. I do believe, personally, that the virus has spread much further than the numbers indicate, given that so many people can asymptomatic.

  179. Insert Clever Handle Here*

    Large public utility on the East Coast; there’s 1 case in our state, but a few in the surrounding states:
    1. Anyone who has visited an impacted country/city works from home for 2 weeks. If WFH is impossible, pay and benefits continue during quarantine period; you do not have to use vacation or sick time during quarantine.
    2. All international business travel was cancelled weeks ago, domestic travel requiring an overnight stay is cancelled as of last week, and all other travel/in person meetings should be absolute need only. All travel is booked on company cards, so personal finances aren’t impacted by cancellations.
    3. So much hand sanitizer. So many reminders to practice good hygiene.
    4. We’re asking on-site contractors to certify that they are taking certain precautions.
    5. All departments are supposed to have their pandemic plan updated as of last Friday, to include how many people are necessary to perform functions that must continue (see: utility) and if there are enough people to perform those functions of the department is only staffed at 65%.

    My department has a pool going for when we’re going to be told to work from home. My bosses are flexible and understanding, so I don’t anticipate any difficulties for those of us with kids/family to care for.

  180. theelephantintheroom*

    More leniency regarding working from home (if you happen to be in a department that preferred you put in the face time just because, that has now been overruled so anyone uncomfortable coming in can stay home). For anyone whose job requires travel, we’ve been told to let our managers know if there are certain trips we’re uncomfortable making. The top priority seems to be keeping everyone healthy and happy.

  181. Grace*

    UK, two offices, one with 60-ish and mine with fewer than ten.

    Everyone with even mild cold/flu symptoms or who has travelled to certain regions, or who lives with someone who has travelled to certain regions, is being asked to self-isolate. Everyone is taking laptops home nightly in case they wake up ill or to an email mandating WFH. If people have poor WiFi, the company is in the process of arranging something (possibly covering a month or two’s WiFi bills?) and are discussing buying monitors for people to WFH if laptops are awkward for long periods.

    We already have an incredibly generous WFH policy and effectively unlimited time off for illness, so it’s more just reminding people to use it and requiring self-isolation for potential carriers.

  182. Librarian of Many Hats*

    Nothing at the moment. Just telling people to wash their hands thoroughly, wipe down their desks/workstations, and stay home if they are feeling at all sick. Y’know, the kind of things that SHOULD be common sense and that people SHOULD already be doing. I’m especially keeping an eye on the situation since librarians can’t exactly work from home.

    Right now there are thankfully no known cases of Coronavirus in my state but we’re all monitoring the situation closely. I went to the grocery store around dinner time yesterday and the frozen veggie section was completely wiped out. There was more TP on the shelves than I was expecting though.

  183. Academia world*

    I’m a graduate student at Stanford – which has moved to online-only classes for the last week of the term+finals.

    Faculty have been given a lot of leeway to decide what they want to do with the rest of their class (cancel finals; offer an online version; have students record+send in final presentations). The class I TA had a trade-show style final presentation with industry guests scheduled, that we’re moving to a massive Zoom conference.

    But aside from that, the university is open – managers were encouraged to make plans for work-from-home if needed though; and be as flexible as possible for anyone requesting it. Libraries/labs/gyms all still open. Almost events of 150+ people have been canceled, and many of 50-150 people (require registration/approval from Environmental Health and Safety). A lot, but definitely not all, of smaller events have been canceled too, under a voluntary “consider canceling if you can/if a lot of external guests would travel to attend/if it can be rescheduled” policy.

    Last week, people were coming to campus pretty visibly sick – both students and guests (which is pretty typical ime in a university in March/February – there’s just a lot of people and a lot of colds/flu/crud going around all winter) – will be interesting to see if there’s a big change in that.

    1. Filosofickle*

      Perhaps the only industry that will benefit from this is virtual conferencing. Zoom must be signing up new customers at a record rate.

  184. AstridInfinitum*

    I work at a museum and we have a family-focused, hands-on STEM event planned for Saturday. It’s in partnership with an outside organization and that org wants to cancel/postpone. My up-ladders do not want to do any such thing and hold this event for any and all who want to come. We’re in central Indiana where there are cases and closures starting to happen. We’ve got volunteers already pulling out and two different exhibitors have cancelled. I’m not sure which way it will go yet. On one hand, we could be seen as contributing to fear mongering. On the other, there’s the public perception of what could happen if we hold the event and someone is sick, etc. Do we use an overabundance of caution and cancel or be sensible and encourage hand washing/cough covering/whatever? I could be convinced it will go either way.

    For our own staff we’ve gotten an email saying to wash your hands, there are more hand sanitizer stations up and around, and the custodial staff is focusing on disinfecting type activities. We also have generous PTO and are encouraged to stay home if we feel ill. I don’t think most of us have access to the file system remotely, but that’s just the office half. There’s still the front line staff that run the place when we are open.

    1. Oof*

      I also work in a museum, and after our risk assessment, we decided to follow any official city or CDC guidelines for groups. We’ve all been asked to review what we need to do to work remotely, and have upped our soap/sanitizer game for staff and guests. We have a partner event coming up in April, which will be the first test of cancellation – for now, it is on, but that could change at any time. We are in TX, and there are just now a 6 cases in our large area, so I really don’t know how things will develop. My goal is to act sensibly, not ignoring facts and without fear.

  185. A Panda*

    I work at a small nonprofit near Washington, D.C., and we have done… absolutely nothing. The virus hasn’t been mentioned in the office, not even hand-washing recommendations.

    I have an autoimmune disorder so all my sick leave has been eaten up by dealing with symptoms of that, and the Big Boss taking unpaid time off puts me at risk of being fired: “If you’re not here, you’re useless.” So they’re not exactly encouraging people to stay at home if they’re sick, either.

  186. Engineering Mom*

    Manufacturing here. Ours is a mixed bag. At the corporate level, they’re saying no non-essential travel unless it’s approved by your VP and the VP of HR. However, our big offices are in the US and a lot of our VPs are from Mexico, so there’s still a significant amount of travel going on at the upper level. No word on working from home yet, my manager is pretty flexible though so it’s an option for me until told otherwise.

    At the manufacturing level though, I don’t think anything is happening. A full crew has to be on site 24/7/365 to operate machinery or else the plant will shut down. While the company as a whole has a generous sick policy, it’s almost impossible for the guys on the floor. You can’t just not show up to relieve the guy coming off a 12 hour night shift. These guys interact with engineers and site management, who interact with corporate… you see where this is going. Two cases were reported in our state over the weekend, not far from our largest manufacturing site, so it’s inevitable. Shutting down operations is a pretty low likelihood, this was going to be a tough year financially for our industry before the virus went widespread.

  187. Llama Wrangler*

    How are people’s workplaces doing contingency planning for upcoming events? We’re in NYC, and work in education, so we’ll likely not be closed until the DOE closes schools, but we have some big program-wide events coming up (all students, many staff, outside guests) and I’m wondering whether we need to make alternate plans.

    1. Stormy Weather*

      My office just canceled a big conference where people would be coming in from out of state. No word on when it will be rescheduled.

      1. Llama Wrangler*

        From other comments on this thread, it seems like events with 100+ participants and that involve travel are almost always being advised to be cancelled. Ours are generally smaller (50-100) and only involve local travel, so they seem on the cusp.

  188. A Social Worker*

    Community mental health here in a state with confirmed cases. My team is considered essential staff. No plan in place except reminding everyone to wash their hands. I am very concerned about how we will take care of our clients if an outbreak occurs amongst our staff. Work from home is obviously not a possibility as we do most of our work out in the community. Many of our clients are medically compromised and we are very worried about them.

  189. Holy Moley*

    Federal worker with no telework ability here. Im also immune compromised. Guidance right now is to wash your hands etc but I have to sit here and listen to my coworker cough (without covering her mouth). I’m almost out of hand sanitizer at my desk (coworker who is coughing claims she hates the feel of it) and there isn’t any in the office for me to use when I’m out. I’m considering rigging a lysol mister system around my desk as a perimeter lol. Thankfully I have clorox wipes so Im cleaning anything she touches when shes leaves my area.

    Not gonnna lie, I’ve been stressed about it. Wish I could just go hide for a few weeks but I dont want to burn all of my leave and then get sick.

    1. Madeleine Matilda*

      If you are quarantined, but not yet sick, then your agency can grant you weather and safety leave. You only need to use sick leave once you are sick. From OPM’s FAQ: Use of weather and safety leave would be subject to the normal conditions—for example, weather and safety leave may be granted only if an employee is not able to safely travel to or perform work at an approved location. Thus, an employee who is not a telework program participant would be granted weather/safety leave for quarantine periods under the direction of local or public health authorities.

  190. ZS*

    State agency employee, we received an email from our boss stating:

    1) if you are sick but able to work, work remotely.
    2) if you are sick and unable to work, use PTO.
    3) Every person in the building should have a remote work plan in place should the office decide to mandate telework.

    They’re updating us all again next Monday to talk about any more contingency plans.

  191. merope*

    At my brother-in-law’s employer (Canada, tech company), they have removed all the chairs from the kitchen to discourage congregating.

    2. Librarian of many hats*

      This reminds me of the company that installed slanted toilets so people wouldn’t get comfortable enough to take long bathroom breaks. Has your brother-in-law’s company never heard of “standing around the water cooler”?

  192. Akcipitrokulo*

    If you follow NHS advice and have to self-isolate and can’t work from home, or are showing symptoms of it having been in an affected area/in contact with someone who has been in an affected area then you’re going to get paid for any time off, outside any usual sickness procedures. We’ve set up sickness reporting to alert relevant people if anyone is off because of it. Advice been sent round, extra tissues and hand santisers are in all branches. High-ups visiting all branches to give annual update has been cancelled.

    1. Akcipitrokulo*

      If official advice is not to go to a country, and you do anyway, you have to self-isolate on return and use holiday allowance for that. If the official advice is given once you’re already there, you have to self-isolate on return, but it won’t use your allowance.

  193. Ruth (UK)*

    I work in a university where we have a lot of international staff and students; one of my colleagues came back from South Korea the other week.

    As of yet, we haven’t had any outbreaks at this university, or in my city that I’m aware of.

    We’ve been given information about hand washing etc and there are signs up saying if you have certain symptoms and have returned from certain countries in the last 14 days, you need to not come to work/uni, and self-isolate.

    Luckily, we have a good sickness policy and people should receive sick day from the first day in they self isolate. The university’s official stance at the moment is that you will receive pay from day 1 if you are advised to self isolate (eg. if you’ve travelled in a certain area or shown symptoms, or been advised by a doctor that you need to self isolate) but that deciding yourself that you want to self-isolate (eg. if you’re just afraid of getting sick) at the moment is not considered sick-leave and you need to come to work or apply for leave in the normal way.

    However, they are also broadening their work-from-home policies for the time being where possible.

  194. HannahS*

    Canadian medical student. The triage nurses are screening everyone who comes in to the ER. Not sure what they’re doing on the wards, or what measures are in place. The hospitals in my city are already at 130% capacity. As far as keeping learners safe, we’ve been told that students are not to be involved in the care of someone who screens positive for needing to be investigated.

  195. LindsayAerin*

    Large Canadian financial institution: one of the big 5
    -encouraging remote work whenever possible (I already was remote worker myself)
    -suspension of all nonessential travel
    -encouraging WebEx meetings and cancellation of large in person meetings and training
    -paid time off for anyone requiring to self-quarantine (or if they can work from home they just work from home while watching from symptoms)
    -we also have paid short term disability for anyone who has it to claim while they can’t work and our regular sick Day benefits are really Good anyway
    – regular email updates of all cases when potential COVID has been in a building or office with details of which building and floor
    -increased cleaning and sanitization in buildings with increased focus on common areas
    -regular updates from our chief medical officer that all employees can call into
    -update emails regularly

  196. NextTimeGadget*

    So we’re in Seattle – the apparent epi-center of the US epidemic, and our current status is officially that to our knowledge nobody at our company (~1,200 people) has contracted or been in direct contact with someone who’s contracted nCOVID-19. Our campus has all but shut down with direct request from our CEO to “strongly consider” working from home whenever possible until at least March 31st at this point. If we have ANY cold or flu symptoms, we’ve been told we must stay out of the building for 14 days after we last showed symptoms. We’re not doing any in-person interviews right now. Hiring is not slowing down at this point, we’re just holding many interviews over WebEx or phone depending on the manager and shipping new hires their equipment to get them started on time.

    1. NextTimeGadget*

      Oh, also we’ve officially banned any travel “not strictly required for continuity of business.”

  197. Anne Kaffeekanne*

    I’m at a publishing company in Europe and it’s… interesting. Our city only has a couple of cases and so far the biggest direct contact we’ve had is schools closing and coworkers’ kids having to stay home, in which case the coworkers can work from home to watch the kids. If one of the employees gets it, I think we’ll all have to stay home and hopefully work from home, if it can be set up. I will say that people are still coming in with cold symptoms…. and I don’t know how to feel about that.

    I know my company stocked up on sanitizer/soap before the first cases in our country, so we’re set for the foreseeable future and definitely everyone has been washing their hands more often (eg I usually don’t bother washing them when I come in from outside or touched the buttons in the lift etc, but now I do, and I know others do as well).

    However, we print in China – we have no idea if the fall titles will get here on time and/or at all. It’s definitely not going to be a good year, numbers wise.

    Also, the last few weeks have seen (almost) every big trade fair being cancelled (and I don’t have much hope for the new Bologna date – we’ve already pulled out), and waiting for these announcements has cost us some nerves. My company is big enough to absorb it, but smaller publishers will take a huge hit.

  198. Shhhh*

    My university is on spring break, so I don’t anticipate any huge changes to how we’re doing things until later in the week. They’ve told faculty to start planning for the possibility of needing to move all instruction online, though. Remote work is always a possibility for my position so if campus shuts down, I’ll be fine, though I am concerned about colleagues that have jobs requiring them to be physically present. It generally sounds like the university administration is taking the week to figure out our next move.

    I’m supposed to go to England in early April for a conference. The organizers sent an email saying that as of now, the conference will happen as planned, but that could change. There is, of course, the possibility that my employer could restrict travel or that the airline could cancel flights. So far, the university is only restricting travel to level 3 countries for faculty and staff.

  199. Ritxa*

    In Paris, we were asked to carry our laptops everynight home and check distant access 2 weeks ago in anticipation of an office ban – which was confirmed today. Travels, gatherings, farewell parties have all been cancelled. Electric tools that have taken ages to set up were set up as an emergency measure so we can stamp contracts from home. I was given a 2nd monitor to take home. The operations IT guy even held sessions to show non versed colleagues how to use…SKYPE.

  200. Mujj*

    Large nonprofit in NYC here. We’ve ended domestic and international travel to affected areas and my feeling is that broader travel restrictions are coming. We have a good sick leave policy in general, and it was reiterated that any sick person should stay home until completely better. Employees who travel to affected areas for personal reasons are asked to self-quarantine. They’ve also put up extra hand sanitizer stations. I’m personally hoping that a WFH option is coming soon, but the organization is resistant to WFH in general.

  201. Atlantis*

    I’m working/taking classes at a University, and so far the University has canceled all sponsored travel, and has asked all professors to plan out how to teach their classes online should it become necessary after spring break. I’m very concerned about the aftermath of spring break considering they force all students in the dorms to leave and go home.

    Fortunately at my level I could work from home for the most part on my research, but unless they cancel classes I still have to come in. I’m also currently on the way to the airport for an industry meeting that only this morning the organization hosting the meeting has stopped travel for their own employees but have not canceled the whole event(?!). Luckily it’s not into an area with a high number of cases but still.

    1. (Mr.) Cajun2core*

      All sponsored travel (domestic and international)? The university I work for has only cancelled international sponsored travel.

      1. Atlantis*

        Ah yes, just the international. I thought it was both but just rechecked my info on it.

  202. Slutty Toes*

    I work at a community college. There’s currently discussion of whether we can just move classes online, but there is (of course) training that must be completed. Every course has a shell on the LMS that most instructors use for assignments and some documents, but almost no one here has any training in how to effectively in a solely online space.

    1. LibbyG*

      I’m at a four-year public. We’re getting emails encouraging us to do some advance planning about moving all teaching online, just in case. I could do it, but I don’t know what the students would have access to.

  203. I'm just here for the cats*

    So I have an odd question. ‘ve seen articles where companies have said they have stopped all non-essential travel. I’m assuming that’s for work travel. Can a company ban you from traveling at all. Here is the situation I’m thinking of.

    You live in Wisconsin and have already had pre-approved vacation time and are going to drive to Iowa to visit family. There’s not going to be any big group events, staying at family’s house, and there are no cases of the coronavirus. No one has traveled to any areas that have coronavirus. Could your employer say you can’t travel? Or would they require that you self quarantine?

    1. Ruth (UK)*

      I doubt they’d be able to do that in the UK but in the US I’m not so sure. Often, employers can do what they like as long as a law doesn’t specifically ban them from doing so and I doubt there’s one that says employer’s can’t stop their employees from travelling in that way.

      However, I wonder if they did that, if some employees could perhaps argue against it on grounds of it being a proxy for discrimination (for example: you can’t discriminate based on national origin and restricting travel in this way would specifically affect people from other countries [from being able to travel to see their families] more than it would affect people who are from that country/region).

      1. Akcipitrokulo*

        UK here… if official advice is “do not travel to (place)” and you go anyway, company has said you can’t come back for 2 weeks after you return. If advice came before you left, you need to use holidays. If advice came once you were there, company will pay for extra days off. They also pointed in direction of how to get refunds if prepaid.

    2. Xarcady*

      They might be able to fire you if you don’t follow their rules.

      My sibling lives outside the US and flew back to the States on Friday. His employer emailed everyone while he was in the air about both business and personal travel—business travel stopped, personal travel “highly discouraged.” He is going to contact his supervisor on Monday to find out if he should return or what, since he was here for our aunt’s funeral and not a business trip. There are currently no reported cases of the corona virus in the country where he lives, but a lot of people are skeptical about that.

    3. Rusty Shackelford*

      They can’t stop you from traveling, but they can absolutely say that if you choose to do so, you can’t come to work.

    4. Madeleine Matilda*

      A friend of mine works for a major regional healthcare company. She has a personal trip this weekend and is hoping her company doesn’t cancel personal travel. Based on that, I’m guessing the answer is that companies can ban personal travel or can tell you not to come to work after personal travel until you have a clean bill of health.

    5. sofar*

      I was looking into this because my company has banned ALL business travel (no matter where) and is “strongly encouraging” employees to avoid unnecessary travel in general.

      I’m traveling in May for vacation. If my plane takes off, I’ll be on it. I’ll WFH and quarantine myself after if my employer insists, but I’m not cancelling my trip.

      I know not all workers are as lucky as I am to be able to work from home. FWIW, my friend works for a major food chain and just got back from Italy. And her boss was like, “I don’t care, you have to come in, unless you are falling over dead of Corona.” So … yeah.

    7. Teach*

      Iowa has had 8 confirmed cases pop up in the last 36 hours or so. THis is a good example of how it’s really hard to plan “safe” travel

  204. Introvert girl*

    Well, the coronavirus hit our office building yesterday (central Europe). Luckily not our office itself. The building has been sanitised and we’re allowed to work on home office. In the building/office itself there are disinfectants, posters about how and how long to wash your hands, global mails are being send replying to employee’s questions and catering companies were banned since today. Also, packages from China, international travel (to the countries with the virus) and live meetings are banned. I normally work from home a couple of days a week, but will now be working full time on HO.

  205. EasyCheesy*

    Small Midwest company here, all office staff and sales jobs. Everyone but me and one other person is a Fox News devotee so they’ve all been scoffing at the “paranoia” and referring to it as a hoax, etc.

    Half the staff is out today with “colds” that I hope are just colds. I’m keeping my door shut and trying not to touch anything (copier, door handles, postage meter, etc) unless I wipe it down first.

  207. JustHereToRead*

    University student here!
    I’m actually at the first major university in the U. S. to switch to entirely remote learning until the start of the next quarter. I work at a grocery store, where we are not permitted to wear masks and are expected to continue to come to work. The only thing that has changed is we can’t hand out samples anywhere in the store (bakery, deli, ect.).

    1. Retail not Retail*

      If I still did grocery work like I used to – customer service – every single item being returned would get damaged out. It was my discretion anyway. “It’s a can of peas she bought this morning!” “I can’t hear you over the sticker I’m slapping on the can.”

      Of course all the money I handled. And i touch my face way way way too much. Now I work with dyed mulch and I’ve ended the day with a mulchstache before.

      1. JustHereToRead*

        That’s basically how we are handling things! I live in Seattle so everyone is being extra cautious about these things.

        1. Retail not Retail*

          One time I was working a drug/gm stocking shift and got called to a register. I was just stocking bags of charcoal. They had loose vegetables and i’m like… great. Y’all are just great. I touched things as minimally as I could.

          The husband was like, “what you don’t like sweet potatoes?” so I just held up my filthy hands while his wife laughed at him.

  208. Yvonne*

    My company sent an email out asking anyone who had recently returned from one of the badly affected countries or had close contact with someone who did to let HR know. What happened from there I dont know, as far as I know, no one had. We have signs in the bathrooms about proper hand washing but those have been up for at least a year so it’s not a response to coronavirus. The email came back when it hadn’t really hit the US yet and since then I’ve seen nothing new. The first case in my city recently showed up so I’m wondering if they have a plan of some sort in place and just haven’t told us.

  209. Eba*

    We’re having a big meeting as a staff later this week to discuss contingency plans. The nature of my work involves mailing/FedExing documents, and I’m not sure how that would work from home. There’s some stuff I could do from home, but I have a kid, and if her daycare is closed, that’s a big issue.

  210. Sunflower*

    Not one bit has changed except they are allowing non-paid sick time off if you’re out of PTO.

    Only supervisors and managers are allowed to come and go as they wish or work from home.

  211. RussianInTexas*

    The office gave everyone a can of Lysol spray, and a case of nitrile gloves (we manufacture them), in case you need to touch things like gas station handles.
    That’s about it.

    1. RussianInTexas*

      Also, we have an active large-ish cluster in the area, all from a same trip to Egypt.
      But so far no work from home anywhere.

  212. DanniellaBee*

    I work in downtown Seattle and the last two weeks have been work from home as they are trying to reduce our risk by skipping public transportation etc. I have really appreciated this and leadership has told us they are taking it week by week in order to monitor the situation closely.

  213. Madeleine Matilda*

    I work for the US Fed gov’t. Lots of guidance coming from my agency and from the Office of Personnel Management. OPM has a good FAQ on its web site. For any one who is required to quarantine, if they are not telework eligible, they can receive “weather and safety leave” (also called admin or excused absence leave) for the duration of the quarantine. If they actually become sick and then they use their sick leave. Luckily even those with a low balance of sick leave would be OK as they would have access to agency leave banks or leave donation.

  214. Stephanie*

    My company restriction business travel by air to an exception only basis–you have to get executive-level approval. Traveling by car is still ok.

  215. FCJ*

    I work at a small higher-ed institution in southern California, and around here the attitude seems very much “don’t panic, but be cautious.” I don’t think there have been any confirmed cases in my immediate area or on my campus. We have a lot of international students, some from countries that have been hit harder, so there’s been some discussion about travel, but as far as I know the school hasn’t issued any official statement about that. It’s not likely that most students would travel internationally in the middle of the semester, anyway.

    We’re being encouraged to work from home if we’re showing any symptoms. Overall the campus is already fairly relaxed about working from home, so that’s not really a change as much as encouragement. I haven’t heard anything about extra sick leave if someone has to quarantine and can’t work from home, but to my knowledge nobody has needed it yet. At the moment, face-to-face classes are still happening. There are signs in the bathrooms about proper hand-washing, and the Student Life department came around recently and gave all the staff and public-facing desks bottles of hand sanitizer. Maintenance also set up hand sanitizer stations in public areas like the library and the main classroom building.

    Out of my actual workplace but still relevant, most people on my campus belong to at least one of two national scholarly societies, and the regional meetings for those are coming up in the next month or two. It looks like the larger of the two has been cancelled, but not the one coming up this weekend. The huge national meeting (and functionally international, even though it’s always in the US, because EVERYBODY comes) isn’t until November, so I guess we’ll see.

  216. H.C.*

    Work for Californian local gov’t agency here; received guidance on preventive measures (frequent handwashing, social distancing, etc.) & they’ve temporarily suspended limitations on remote work & requiring doctor’s notes for extended (3+ days) sick leaves, to reduce burden on local health facilities w unnecessary visits.

    Currently no adjustments to public events we’re hosting (community fairs, professional conferences, etc.) but have been asked to review/update our continuity of business plans in preparation of situational changes.

  217. Hallowflame*

    As soon as cases started popping up in my metro area, my employer sent out an email instructing employees to discuss remote work with their supervisors if self-quarantine became necessary. Most employees are set up for occasional remote work anyway, so there hasn’t been much of a change so far. The custodial staff did put out a bunch of Clorox wipes for people to use , though.

  218. literal desk fan*

    Thankfully, my company is taking this seriously. They began communicating with us about it at the end of Jan and sent out a message saying any travel in/out of China was temporarily banned and anyone who recently visited China needed to undergo a quarantine. (My company has locations in China and other parts of Asia.) They also began health monitoring in the APAC region (not sure what that entailed, but hopefully they did so reasonably and weren’t invasive) and got people to work from home.

    They sent an update towards the end of Feb saying no one in the APAC region has tested positive for COVID-19 and provided a list of actions they’ve taken to help limit the spread and provide support.

    Since last week, we’ve gotten multiple additional updates. International travel is restricted to essential travel and has to be signed off on by executives. Participation in trade shows and conferences has been restricted and any exceptions have to be signed off on by executives. Domestic travel isn’t currently being restricted, but any huge meetings have been canceled / delayed. We must stay home if we’re sick in any way (thankfully, my company has a very lenient sick time policy for employees, even though there are still a bunch of jerks who come in when they’re sick, but I’m not sure what they’re doing about contractors). They’re helping people who are most susceptible to infection arrange for remote working or other arrangements. They’re encouraging people to use virtual meetings and practice good hygiene (on the internal company site, they’ve also linked to a WHO video showing how to properly wash your hands). They told us to update our personal info in the company system in case they have to contact us, and told everyone to take our laptops home every day and make sure they can log in remotely in case we all have to work from home on short notice. We already have a remote working policy where we’re allowed 2 days from home, and I know many people are already doing that, so we have a lot of the telework infrastructure already. (Based on experience where they closed the office for bad weather one time, though, the remote network will be extremely slow if we all have to be on it at once! I hope they’re working on that!)

    I really wish they’d restrict domestic travel as well, but I’m glad they’ve done what they’ve done so far.

    1. literal desk fan*

      To clarify, I work in the corporate HQ of a Fortune 500 company. It’s a lot easier for us to work remotely. I’m not sure what the manufacturing locations are doing, but probably they’re limited to “social distancing” and staying home when sick, unless they don’t have to be on-site.

  220. LDN Layabout*

    Data person for a healthcare regulator in the UK. We’re getting daily scheduled updates, with additional ’emergency’ announcements if necessary.

    Senior leadership is totally focused on our own activities/supporting the NHS and PHE, along with colleagues with operations experience being seconded out to them. Regulatory activity continues but will be amended as and when the situation changes.

    A lot of work is being put in to make sure we can react quickly when needed and our workload may be overridden at a higher level (e.g. I got asked by a director to drop whatever I was doing to do X this morning) more than usual.

    On an employee level, all face to face training has been cancelled, people are being told not to travel for meetings and employees who are vulnerable are allowed to work remotely.

    Honestly, I feel a lot better about the response knowing how much work public bodies are putting into this right now.

  221. annonny*

    We don’t have clear plans or a coherent planning process. I’m at a university (not faculty) and while I could work remotely if I need to, I have colleagues who really can’t.

    Because the organization I work in apparently doesn’t have a real planning process, there are a lot of rumors, including rumors coming from administrators, and some of them seem pretty half-baked. This is a large commuter campus and spring break is next week. Faculty have been told to start preparing to finish out the semester’s courses online.

  222. Bay Area Tech Job*

    Tech company in the Bay Area – all travel to clients now requires high-level approval and is presumed cancelled, and everyone is required to work from home (obviously much easier for tech companies) for two weeks and they’ll reassess then. The stated reason is to help slow the spread to help protect more vulnerable populations, even though most people at the company are low risk (yay for caring about the community!) Like Microsoft, they’re still going to pay the cleaning and food staff who depend on that income.

    To me, it seems like the kind of thing that isn’t very meaningful on its own, but when lots of companies band together to do it, could have a real impact locally. Personally, I’m delighted to not have to take public transit for two weeks, but a little nervous about what it’ll be like to transition a whole company to remote.

  223. Ariana Grande's Ponytail*

    I work in academic research (focusing on health-related measures) and I am shocked at how little concern there seems to be in my office. My city just had the first case of community transmission and nobody seems to be batting an eye. It wasn’t even mentioned at meetings last week, we are still running study visits with the public and have received absolutely no directives from our bosses. Just emails from the university at large cancelling big gatherings and noting travel restrictions. I am considering bringing it up sooner rather than at the meeting I was planning to ask questions at next week because I am now a bit uncomfortable with taking public transit to work.

  224. periwinkle*

    A Tale of Two Companies:

    Company 1: My employer is a Fortune 100 manufacturing company with facilities in multiple regions including a very large employee population in the Seattle area (including me). For most of the company, people are encouraged to consider working from home. For us, we are not mandated to do so but yeah, if you can, do. We had all-team meetings scheduled to be held last week and this week,, with people set to fly here to participate – all replaced with virtual meetings. I work in the workplace development space, and all in-person training sessions are either severely curtailed (group training replaces by 1:1 instruction where possible) or cancelled. We have an internal website for all COVID-19 info including resources, guidance, policies, and links. We have a quarantine policy! It’s complicated by our industry because we have a lot of people doing hands-on work, but I haven’t kept track of what precautions they’ve got in place. I’d say we are overreacting a bit, mainly because they seem to be looking at this as a long term situation where we’ll be in containment mode for years. On the other hand, they are taking it seriously and making accommodations for employees when compared to…

    Company 2: My husband works for another Fortune 100 company, which is a retailer with a decent-sized corporate HQ in the Seattle area (where he works). The CEO is steadfastly opposed to remote work under any circumstances. Oddly enough, they have a huge retention problem with their IT staff in this high-tech region… The CEO recently sent a company wide email about current internal measures they’re taking, but took pains to reiterate in detail (2nd or 3rd paragraph of the message) that WFH is not an option. After all, the retail workers can’t do their jobs from home to reduce exposure so why should anyone at HQ have that option? Yes, that was the justification as explained in the email.

  225. MiMiFrog*

    Financial firm in London here. My company has been anti-work from home despite loosing good employees for years now. All the sudden, we each had a work from home day for testing and they are even giving out out of use screens and other equipment to make it easier. Travel has been suspended and all meetings that can be held via call or vc are being altered.

    I saw a man coming out of the supermarket with at least 100 rolls of toilet paper. I hope that he’s buying it for all of his elderly relatives and not hoarding. We’ve not be able to find even a travel sized hand sanitize to give to my MIL.

    While the seriousness of the situation is recognized, I think there’s a bit of excitement because we may finally be able to prove that working from isn’t the devil.

    2. Tina Belcher's Less Cool Sister*

      I think one permanent outcome of this here in the Seattle area will be the recognition that teleworking is usually just as productive as driving into the office. We have some of the worst congestion in the country and local governments are constantly arguing about what to do about it (bigger freeways! More transit! Less parking!), but suddenly this week it’s been SUPER easy to get in and out of the city. I guess that’s one silver lining to a global pandemic, perhaps it will finally drag some employers into the 21st century?

      1. Filosofickle*

        This is my hope, too. From disabilities to traffic, environmental impact, cost, and productivity, there are so many good reasons to support remote work and virtual events. Maybe this will finally move the needle. (The other silver lining may be recognizing the fragility of global supply chains and over-reliance on products from China.)

        In my work, sometimes virtual isn’t good enough. But > 90% of the time it is, especially with video.

  226. ag47*

    In Seattle. I work for a small law firm. Our office is also set up so that pretty much everyone has their own office and we have very few people coming in/out. So we are not remote YET but a lot of people have been working remotely more often. After consultation with my office, I actually did go full-time remote last week, as the King County Public Health Department is recommending that pregnant women stay home as much as possible. (I expect if anyone else felt the need to go remote, the firm would be fine with that). My office has emphasized that anyone who is feeling sick at all should stay home. We have a pretty generous sick leave policy.

    The paralegals and attorneys could do 90% of their jobs remotely (except for in-person court appearances, depositions, etc.). Our legal assistants could do some remote work and I expect that if we do go remote, we’ll have IT set them up with a remote desktop and continue to pay them normally.

    Generally, there’s been a lot of disruption to the practice of law right now. The Western District of WA (federal court) continued all cases through the end of March. A lot of depositions and in-person mediations are also being postponed. State court is still up and running, but I’d expect it will also end up cutting back on most functions if the outbreak gets worse.

    1. emmelemm*

      Yeah, my partner works at a small law firm in Tacoma and was mentioning that federal court was basically shutting down and wondering when/if state court will do the same.

      1. ag47*

        Yeah, it’s quite unfortunate since we already have a HUGE backlog of cases in federal court (for context, the WDWA currently has 2 active judges instead of the 7 we’re supposed to have). The worst effects are for the criminal cases where the defendant is in jail awaiting trial–the delays are going to be excluded from the “Speedy Trial Clock” (the time in which the government has to bring a criminal defendant to trial under the 6th Amendment). If state court shuts down, it will be much worse since there’s a much higher number of people in state custody as opposed to federal custody.

        I know jury duty is objectively a terrible idea in the face of an epidemic, but I’m hoping they can figure out ways to manage cases remotely to at least try and mitigate the effects on criminal defendants.

        1. emmelemm*

          Ooof, I hadn’t even considered jury duty. My partner thought for now, criminal cases were proceeding, but civil cases were being held over, basically.

            1. ag47*

              The WDWA closure covers civil and criminal cases. There are some things that I’m sure are happening (like arraignments) but criminal trials have been put over, which is going to have a lot of effects down the road on scheduling.

        2. Chris*

          I had jury duty last week. No confirmed cases in my area, but I was giving side eye to everyone with so much as the sniffles.

  227. KR*

    We have been advised to avoid unnecessary travel and stay home if we’re sick. I purchased 1 container of sanitizing wipes to replace the one I keep in my bathroom that’s running out. 1 refill of toilet paper and paper towels, again just to replace what I had that was running out. I’m trying not to panic buy or feed into the frenzy, though it occurred to me I should make sure I’m good on dog food. I have a couple months worth of spares of the dogs medication he needs to survive and that’s what’s important. I live on a military base and considering the “suck it up and go into work” attitude in the military, I’m anticipating it will spread quickly if it gets here. Husband and I aren’t in an at-risk group and I’m fully set up to work from home, so if we get it we get it.

    1. TiffIf*

      I usually have sanitizing wipes on hand (one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom) but I ran out of my usual supply RIGHT before this all started and so now can’t replenish.

  228. revueller*

    I work for a mid-sized startup in Washington, DC and we’re rehearsing a full-company WFH day this week. Everyone’s job can absolutely be done remotely, we’ve always had unlimited sick leave/PTO, and management has set out lots of comprehensive policies, from how long to wash your hands to what to do if you or a visitor have a high risk of contracting the disease.

    But:
    – We have at least 4 people traveling internationally this week and next, including one in Japan.
    – Our cleaning service only wipes down surfaces once a week, so it’s up to individuals to clean their own spaces.
    – Our office dishwasher gets unplugged and stops working daily so who knows how many dishes are actually clean in our office.
    – The entire company works in the same office, and we already have cramped quarters.
    – People, for unfathomable reasons, are still coming in sick!

    In personal news, I found out that my father doesn’t wash his hands when he uses public restrooms. My mother, who lives with him, is still recovering from chemo. They’re in an area where coronavirus just hit. *screaming*

  229. LotsOfSanitizer*

    Work from home is not an option at my company AND we all badge in through the same numbers pad. There is hand sanitizer in all common areas plus a standing sanitizer dispenser right beside the numbers pad, a pack of disinfectant wipes in common areas, and carrying around paper towels to open doors is becoming a common sight.

  230. Anon Because of Level of Detail*

    My large local nonprofit (in the Twin Cities in MN; we’ve had a couple of cases but no community spread so far) is doing some contingency planning, but it is quite limited. Here is what is in place now, focused on employees:

    – Tested our emergency communications system (which contacts identified business continuity leads in each department, to get information out about office closures, etc.)
    – Clarified that our extended paid medical leave program (which is designed for longer-term or more rare issues, like recovery from surgery, as opposed to a cold or flu) can be used if an employee is required to quarantine or care for a family member in quarantine. Also, relaxed the FMLA paperwork requirements for use of this leave so folks don’t have to go to the doctor during an outbreak or quarantine.
    – Got board approval to pay all staff for at least two weeks if the organization must shut down operations fully.
    – Encouraged managers to explore opportunities for employees to work from home.
    – Sent out an all-staff communication about these things, with a generic reminder to wash hands/etc.
    – Identified the sources of information that we will use to drive further actions and the identified the people responsible for monitoring those sources.

    Things that haven’t happened, that seem important:

    Program Guidance
    – Developed guidelines about how to decide when or whether to close a program/cancel a large gathering/etc.
    – Developed contingency plans for program funding if a program needs to cancel or postpone (what will our funders do if we can’t offer a program that they paid for? what will we do about programs that are primarily funded through tuition? what will happen if we can’t hold our annual gala in May? etc.)

    Travel, Quarantine, and Sickness
    – Set clear expectations to staff that they should not come in sick and provide guidance to managers about what to do if a staff member comes in and is visibly sick.
    – Restrict business travel and/or require employees to notify the organization of personal travel.
    – Set guidelines for self-quarantine (following travel, etc.), other than if an employee tests positive.
    – Made clear that the organization understands that these actions will affect individual and department goals, and that leadership has staff’s back on it. (So: if someone comes in sick and gets sent home, and as a result the meeting they were supposed to lead has to be rescheduled or doesn’t go well — it’s not going to show up in their performance review/etc.)

    1. Anon Because of Level of Detail*

      Whoops, thought of a few more things I wish we were doing:

      – Make plans for how to support part-time and hourly workers if programs are cut and/or the office is quarantined
      – Identify what will happen for employees who have to quarantine and have used up their extended paid medical leave (it’s up to 6 weeks a year, but I’m aware of at least one employee who was ill at the beginning of the year and has less than a week left).

  231. Bethlam*

    Western PA here. Nothing from my employer. Also, we’re having an all-company sales meeting today and tomorrow. 20 outside sales people are here from all over the country. I’m a part-time temp so, luckily, I’m not involved and I don’t really know the outside people, so I haven’t been in close proximity to any of them. I heard one joke about not shaking hands, yet all of the women in the office didn’t seem to have any compunction about hugging all the outside salespeople (all men) who they haven’t seen in a while.

    I ate lunch at my desk with the excuse that someone needs to watch the phone.

    I’m not paranoid, but believe in an ounce of prevention.

  232. PSB*

    I work in IT for a large academic medical center in a city with, I believe, three confirmed cases in our city. We’re making extensive preparations for dealing with it from a clinical perspective – setting up triage areas outside the hospitals, preparing negative pressure rooms, etc. But for support staff, especially those who could do their jobs remotely? Nada. Not a single word from our department leadership so far about preparations or contingency plans. Nothing about expanding work from home or going to full time work from home for people whose jobs allow it. No curtailing travel between our off-campus building and the hospitals. It’s a little discouraging.

  233. Bow Ties Are Cool*

    Ours is being pretty practical, so far–the fact that we have a large presence in the Bay Area is probably inspiring that. Managers have been urged to be open to people working from home as they see fit, and in areas where the virus is known to be spreading, managers pretty much have to let anyone who can work from home do so, whether they (managers) like it or not. There was a case in a person in one of our offices, and that office was temporarily closed for intensive cleaning (which…not really necessary, since the virus only lives a few hours outside the body, so closing it for a day would have been enough, but it makes people feel better I guess). Funds have been made available for people who don’t have laptops to get them, if they want to work from home. Admins have been instructed to make sure offices have a good supply of disinfectant wipes for people to clean their desks with, and funds have been allocated for that, too. We’ll see how it goes, but so far so good.

  234. everlong*

    We are a department that provides services to a hospital network.

    On a team call, someone said it wasn’t a big deal because it only targeted the elderly.

    I do not think this person understands what a hospital is.

  235. Xarcady*

    I have two jobs. At the office 9-5 job, they started encouraging everyone who can to work from home last week, when the first case popped up in our state. We have employees from 3 different states, with commutes of up to two hours. It is basically our usual snow-day policy, but for an extended time. The building receptionist and IT do have to report to the office. The rest of us are doing a lot of video conferencing.

    And because I live 5 minutes away, I’ve had to go in once or twice to get something mailed. I am currently helping out 3 departments if they need something that has to be done in the building and can’t be done at home. A building designed for 500 people is very creepy with only about 75 people wandering around—especially since most of the lights are on motion sensors, so you walk down these dimly lit hallways with lights springing on as you get near.

    My second job is retail at a major US department store chain. Corporate employees are been encouraged to stay home if they feel the least bit sick, and to explore working from home if they can. Given the antiquated technology the company has, this isn’t possible for most. Some debate is going on about using PTO if someone gets quarantined.

    Store level associates are being encouraged to bring in hand sanitizer and use it as often as they like. And after about nine months of asking, we have been provided with a container of liquid hand soap in the employee break room.

    No paid sick leave for the sales associates, I don’t know about managers. My guess is that if someone is required to self-quarantine, they just will lose two weeks pay, or more if they get sick. Calling out for two weeks straight will put employees at risk of being fired for attendance issues. It’s up to your individual manager if they want to counsel you or fire you. I’m hopeful Corporate will issue some guidance on this so that people aren’t losing their jobs left and right, but for now, the standard is that if you miss 6% of your shifts over a 3 month period, you can be fired. Obviously not a huge deal for me, but there are a lot of people worried about this, or if their kids’ schools close, how they can afford daycare on a retail salary.

  236. Intermittent Introvert*

    Just began volunteering for a very large, international religious organization. They are actively closing facilities where there are outbreaks (because volunteers who run them tend to be older and/or have health issues). They’ve discontinued large meetings in affected areas and asked international leaders to not travel. We’ve received ongoing instructions for prevention strategies including hand washing, using tissues, etc. Overall comprehensive and changing as needed.

  237. Anabel*

    Offices in the highest hit regions (China, Italy, Seattle) have sent everyone home unless they’re necessary to maintain the work from home infrastructure. Hourly employees have been told that they will be paid like it is a normal month, even if their hours are significantly cut. International business travel has been banned. Domestic travel is up to each person. No one can be forced by their management to travel right now.

    Folks that travel to impacted regions for personal reasons are banned from the office for 14 days after their return. Where possible bans are enforced by security via turning off people’s badges.

    Everyone else is on guard. Sanitation of common surfaces (doorknobs, elevator buttons) has increased to multiple times a day. Communal snacks (M&M bowl etc) have been removed due to concerns about contamination of serving utensils and replaced with prepackaged individual servings. All guests have been banned from campus.

    The biggest impact on my day to day is that we don’t necessarily know what will happen tomorrow or next week. Domestic travel in the US is currently allowed but will it be allowed at the end of the month? Who knows. Hard to plan trainings, conferences, even virtual events if you don’t know who will be allowed to show up.

    The biggest advantage is that the few full time remote folks on my team are now joined by lots of others which has probably helped them do their work more effectively. And I’m working more hours since I don’t have a commute anymore.

    1. Anabel*

      Oh, I should have added. I’m in Seattle and have been work from home since late Feb. I got a cold (a legit cold, not COVID). My partner’s company sent them all home last week. Yay work from home with cats.

  238. Austinonymous*

    Small office, no public contact. No official word from management but we already have a strong culture of not coming in when we feel bad. Several coworkers are attending a conference this week in a fairly major travel destination. Not sure what the plan is for them on their return (or if we have a plan at all). I have personal travel planned next week to a place with no confirmed cases yet and am still intending to make the trip, but I’ll be washing and disinfecting things the whole time.

    We’re holding an event early next month – at least, we are as of now. SXSW’s cancelation has us pretty shaken, though, and I don’t know how many of our planned attendees will cancel between now and then.

  239. tink*

    Basically “We don’t have any confirmed cases in the area yet, so wash your hands with warm water and soap and stay home if you aren’t feeling well. Please continue with best practices for flu season. We’re monitoring the situation and will let you know if things change.”

    1. ...*

      Same here. I wish they would just call work from home for my team. Our work can be done from home, its not ideal, but its fine. If anything it would just help my anxiety.

  240. Tina Belcher's Less Cool Sister*

    I’m a fundraiser for a university in a county adjacent to King County (home to Kirkland/Seattle/virtually all the US deaths and a majority of the cases). This role usually requires a lot of travel and face to face interactions.

    As of today we’ve done the following:
    – classes have gone online (though campus services remain open)
    – extra sanitizer everywhere, signs on all the doors asking people to stay home if sick
    – administration has created policies to advance sick time to people who don’t have any. Fortunately we have very generous sick policies even for part time workers. I’ve heard talk that should there be a full campus closure, they’ll follow emergency closure policy which means full pay for anyone who was scheduled to work.
    – all business air travel is essentially cancelled. Travel by car is still up to individual staff decision. There is going to be an increase in virtual/phone meetings rather than in-person (mostly because people in the Seattle area aren’t keen to sit down with a stranger right now)
    – People with health conditions are encouraged to work from home as much as they want, and everyone is encouraged to prepare as if they won’t be coming back to the office at the end of each day. There could be a campus closure any time.

    I’m currently pregnant so it’s a little extra stressful, but I am glad my workplace is taking it so seriously.

    1. Little Beans*

      Is your office considering pregnancy a health condition that puts you at risk?? I’m 6 months pregnant and not sure how I should be factoring that into my decision making.

  241. KCW*

    I work in an office in the Puget Sound region. My team has the ability to work remotely almost 100 percent with people coming into the office only in limited specific circumstances and only if they don’t have risk factors identified by the health department (and we would figure out coverage for anyone just dealing with major anxiety around this event regardless of their personal risk factors). Our senior leadership has been very supportive of this. Our director has been sending daily emails with info on how our operations are going and any changing expectations for work, and to touch bases on any news about how COVID-19 is affecting the region. Nevertheless, people are understandably anxious and wanting to feel like they have things they can do to help – will be scouring these comments for ideas on how to help support our people emotionally. (In addition to moving as many people as possible to working remotely, our building has been increasing cleaning of lobbies, frequently touched surfaces, etc., and put out hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial wipes in all the conference rooms.)

  242. Jason*

    I live and work in Seattle at a tech company. Although not one of the huge name-brand ones, we have 600 employees. We’re almost all working from home this week, and I expect to work from home next week as well. Everyone that I know in the industry is doing so, but I have no doubt there are many people where working from home is either not allowed or difficult to do due to lack of sufficient IT support for remote work.
    One thing I found discouraging was that our CEO’s email was much more focused on admonishing us to make sure we didn’t fall down on the job and realized that “our customers rely on us” regardless of disease outbreaks. This implicit attitude speaks to that lingering belief people have that working from home means loafing around at home or something. Until recently I worked at one of the major name-brand companies here in Seattle and know that the internal email to work from home was much more focused on the health and safety of its workers and didn’t feel the need to chide people into doing their jobs.
    As an aside, Seattle is very much on “a ghost town.” Although there is a noticeable downturn in people out and about, I see people every day at the library, the grocery store, and coffeeshops going about their business. Whether further spread or recommendations (or curfews, as has been discussed) will change that I don’t know, but as of right now I don’t detect any panic, and there is toilet paper on the shelves of my local Safeway.

    1. Super Anon For This One*

      Everyone that I know in the industry is doing so, but I have no doubt there are many people where working from home is either not allowed or difficult to do due to lack of sufficient IT support for remote work.

      This is where we are falling. I don’t have enough staff IT-wise to suddenly train 200+ people on the tech they’d need to work from home, or the money to expand my VPN capabilities or buy the tech they’d need to use the VPN in the first place.

      And that’s just the tech side…what about the HR part of this, especially as it relates to hourly employees? And the managers that have never managed remote employees….they’re just suddenly going to know how to do that? What about phone calls – if we suddenly expect personal cell phones to be used for business, are we reimbursing those costs? Because if so, there’s a policy form they’d need to sign…

      What this is exposing is a severe lack of forethought on most companies’ part as it relates to disasters of any sort. You cannot slapdash together a work-from-home force quickly with no money or dedicated resources, and there are just so many scenarios where a workforce might need to do so from home – epidemic, ice storm, power outages, etc.

      And if I get asked one more time if I have any “spare laptops” laying around I’m going to scream. NO. Remember? You give me no extra money, so there are no extra toys.

  243. Not Normal*

    I work for a large US national financial institution and our leadership is taking it very seriously. We have instituted 2 week quarantines at home (we all have remote ability) if you come back from traveling from one of the CDC Level 1-3 countries. We have the freedom to stay home if you feel unwell even if it is allergies, just to make sure we all feel comfortable and to not cause panic. All nonessential domestic business travel is now highly discouraged and international travel is now forbidden. We also have 20 days of PTO so we all feel safe to stay home if we need to. I understand this is not the norm for many US companies. I can safely say that it makes a HUGE difference to me as an employee to have management that cares about its employees and see that protecting us is actually protecting themselves.

  244. ARC*

    I work at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and they closed the center – mandatory telework.

  245. ArtK*

    Big corporation and we have what looks like a good response. We’re getting regular e-mails from corporate about the policies and status as things change.

    Basic: Travel restrictions; increased WFH; increased use of conference calling. General advice to “wash your hands!”

    They also have a set of policies if employees are in an area with a community outbreak. These include even more stringent travel restrictions to-and-from. If it’s bad enough, they will institute mandatory WFH.

    I should say that a big chunk of our company is involved directly in healthcare so some of my colleagues are in a position where if they don’t work, the outbreak can get worse.

  246. Coverage Associate*

    SF non techie. The recommendations have been different for SF v the suburbs. My residence county called for social distancing before SF. SF doubles in population on a typical work day, so it’s tricky.

    Anyway, a coworker who had a layover in South Korea is home with pay for 2 weeks. International business travel is cancelled. Still lots of domestic air travel. Management sent out a survey Friday clearly trying to see if we could switch to tempo 100% remote. The nature of our work still requires hard copies sometimes, so I don’t see how it could work.

  247. Nerdy Library Clerk*

    Oh, not my workplace, but when I went to Costco this weekend, they had staff disinfecting the carts as they were brought back in from the parking lot. Probably more effective than hoping everyone uses the wipes.

  248. Alienor*

    I live in California and we have a declared state of emergency, but all the current cases I know of are up north, ~400 miles from here. We did have one of the first confirmed cases in the U.S., a person who had just come back from China, so I expect it’s probably in this part of the state too, just no one’s been ill enough to be tested. As far as work, a couple of events have been canceled and there’s a ban on travel to the most affected countries, but otherwise it’s business as usual except for the addition of Clorox wipes to the break rooms. We had hand sanitizer dispensers at all the entrances and exits even before this happened, so nothing’s changed there.

    1. Alienor*

      Things seem pretty calm outside of work as well, btw. You can’t buy hand sanitizer or face masks, but we have toilet paper on the shelves–a lot less than usual, but it hasn’t run out completely yet–and people are still going to restaurants, stores, etc. The one thing I can’t get that’s really annoying me are those Wet Ones hand wipes; I always keep a can of them in my car, and I’m running low and can’t replace them.

  249. De Minimis*

    Health clinic in one of the areas where there have been cases [and one death in a neighboring county.] We’re just being vigilant with mask use and infection control procedures, and rescheduling patients if they are here for non-medical services if they show signs of respiratory illness. We have the capability to order tests for the virus if needed, but I don’t think it’s happened yet.

    We most likely won’t see anything until/unless it becomes more widespread through casual contact. Our patient base is generally the community that tends to be under-served medically, though I think if we do get to where it reaches us it will be very difficult to handle.

    We’ve also seen major shortages from our suppliers due to panic buying.

  250. Forgot my name again*

    I work in a small city that’s has several confirmed cases and 100+ in quarantine. Our main business is organizing international conferences. :(

    On the plus side, we have lots of time to work on other projects now.

  251. savannnah*

    Major hopsital network in Oregon. We just got all international, domestic and in-state work travel cancelled as of today for the foreseeable future and those who are not clinically critical, so admin staff that supports academia and some research staff, are working from home. We are getting daily updates on pt population and number of confirmed cases and suspected cases. At this point we are ready for next steps and its just day to day and keeping a close eye on Washington state conditions.

  252. Mother of Cats*

    I manage volunteer events for a nonprofit that works with the unemployed. A few large companies have either cancelled their events with us or asked that it be remote (i.e., mock interviews via phone or video conference). It involves more legwork for sure, but I’d rather have remote volunteer opportunities given what’s going on.

  253. Seeker of truth and light and grilled cheese*

    IT in Seattle, WA: We are now 100% remote until further notice. I was so relieved when the company outlined the change, and stated STAY HOME.

    Personally, I am isolating myself as much as I can even beyond work, due to having “underlying health issues”. But let’s be real here about me: introvert, no money for luxuries, single, cats, tired of dealing with people-y people in my commute, Pacific Northwest rainy weather … yeah, isolation is easy for me.

    1. Filosofickle*

      I’m a homebody who’s WFH for 18 years. Often I forget to go outside for days (or more) at a time. I’ve trained my whole life for this!

  254. Random Thought*

    My company (F500, global footprint) has employee resources available on our internal site for employees based on location. Employees in certain jurisdictions (i.e. Hong Kong) are WFH and have been for a few weeks now. All travel has to be approved at very senior levels (I work in legal, and the General Counsel has to personally approve all travel, although there are 4-5+ levels of reporting between him and the front line employees), and international travel is prohibited. Our facilities folks have also implemented extra cleaning/sanitization in all of our facilities globally. We’ve been told to take our laptops home every day so we can WFH on short notice, and managers were required to provide their reports with their contact info so we can reach them outside of business hours if we need to. We’ve been getting close to daily emails and they’re (in my opinion) more substantively helpful than most company-wide emails. So in general I’ve been pretty happy with the response.

  255. Emily*

    I work at a manufacturing plant in the office area. I got myself set up to work from home if needed (on my own initiative.) Our company has put up hand washing signs and is encouraging people to stay home if they are sick. However, upsettingly there will be no leniency on attendance points, so the line workers who cannot work from home will all effectively be punished for staying home. Somehow I doubt this will work very well.

    1. Retail not Retail*

      “Don’t come in if you’re sick but you won’t get paid and this will hurt your record.”

      “Please handle these goods that will travel throughout the world.”

      I’m guessing no union?

      1. Emily*

        nope. we’re a smaller company too, and get a lot of our staffing through temp-to-hire with local agencies.

      2. Gazebo Slayer*

        Yeah, in effect this will end up “if you get sick with coronavirus or anything else major, you are fired. Unless you do a really good job of pretending you aren’t sick, and infect a bunch of other people.”

  256. Senor Montoya*

    And also: travel to and from CDC designated Level 2 and Level 3 areas suspended. Study abroad to those places suspended. My Chinese students have had to decide if they can go home this summer — they may be able to get *to* China, but they may not be able to *return* in the fall.

  257. Emily*

    Work for a large multi-national manufacturer. We are under travel restrictions for all employees, no ground or air travel without high level corporate approval. Visitors have to fill out a questionnaire and most if not all meetings and visits have been canceled.

  258. Beaded Librarian*

    I work in a public library. A confirmed patient was at a big event in my city a week ago so the library is closed to the public for the next week to help slow the potential spread to vulnerable populations. However staff is still coming in to catch up on work and do projects we have been wanting to get done for a long time. Staff has been encouraged to use vacation time of they want to and have it to burn.

  259. alas*

    Fortune 500 company. We have a ban on travel (which will definitely make my job more difficult) and have been told to stay home if sick, wash hands, etc. The travel ban has also meant that a company wide conference was cancelled. We also got an email reassuring us that while the stock market has taken a hit (including our stock price), there are still positive indicators in other areas for our business.

    What I don’t understand is why, as part of an office reorganization, they are apparently getting RID of the hand sanitizer stations around the office. Now is a great time to have them in as many locations as possible!

  260. Llellayena*

    Not a word. All the talk is from the parents around the office dealing with what the schools are doing. Of course, my project is the only one in the office that could involve air travel, so we’re making some project specific decisions to teleconference as much as possible. And I have a personal plan in case of quarantine where I take my work desktop computer home, my laptop is very much not strong enough to work on for long. (Have not run that plan past anyone yet though…)

    1. JustMyImagination*

      Just something to keep in mind- but you may not be given much notice of a quarantine and may not be able to go into the office to get your computer. Maybe find someone willing to drop it on your doorstep as a backup plan.

      1. Llellayena*

        Eh, less about me being under quarantine than a general area quarantine/movement restriction. If I’M under quarantine, I’ll either come get everything masked and gloved after hours or get someone to drop it off on my doorstep. That shouldn’t be an issue for me.

  261. Jay*

    My small company has a policy that you’re supposed to work from home if you’re sneezing, sniffling, coughing. We also have unlimited sick time. People don’t always comply, I think out of habit, but we’ll work to enforce it for now. We also decided that once confirmed cases hit our metro area (hasn’t yet) we’ll just all work from home indefinitely. I think that might cause some challenges with training or maybe just our sanity – but it seems like the right thing to do.

    1. MC*

      I’m glad your company has unlimited sick time and is actively trying to do something about it. I wish you well! :)

  262. Jessen*

    I’m a subcontractor for a government public health department. So far all non-essential travel has been cancelled – with essential being restricted to those things necessary for public health (so the people who need to travel in order to respond to coronavirus, the regular flu, etc.). Everyone was recently instructed to ensure they are able to connect remotely to the network if it is at all possible to do their job remote. So far, as we’re near DC and there are not many cases here yet, they aren’t sending people home. They have been providing hand sanitizer and wipes as well as signs in the bathroom on how to wash your hands.

  263. Abby*

    My office is in the US but our company offices all over the world, including China and Italy. We’ve had Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer appear all over the office. And emails about being prepared to work at home if your office closes, self isolating if you’re sick, etc

  264. MC*

    In the part of the US where I am, there have been no cases reported.

    It’s not exactly an office, but at the Dollar Tree where I work, a customer told me we had ran out of hand sanitizer. I told my boss, who immediately grabbed some of the remaining hand cleaning supplies for the staff to use for cleaning (there wasn’t much). Other than cleaning more often, not much has changed for the store, but I do get to see people buying more cleaning supplies and people trying to send stuff to their affected loved ones.

    1. Retail not Retail*

      Hey I’d say what “not an office” workplaces are doing are pretty darn important!

      These are jobs with no sick time in places everyone goes. Oh the nice office is disinfected and clean, guess I’ll grab some food on the way home!

  265. Abigael*

    I work for a group travel agency and half of our $100,000+ contracts have cancelled. It is a stressful time, and I just started this job 6 months ago. :(

  266. Free and not-so-easy*

    I’m a freelancer who normally does a lot of travel. Next week I’m supposed to go to DC for a conference, which as of now is still on. But I’m getting worried about booking flights, etc. — the expenses are on me, I won’t get reimbursed if the events get cancelled.

    1. Existentialista*

      It sounds like some airlines are offering cancellation or changes without fees, so you might be okay.

  267. lilsheba*

    So I’m a lowly call center slave, in an open floor plan, and while they have said “if you don’t feel well stay home” I don’t trust it to apply to us. We have a punitive attendance policy in place, and I’m afraid if we call out sick we will still get stuck with the occurrences that are normally in place. In which case what’s the point? You still have to work sick.

  268. JustMyImagination*

    My company has cancelled all nonessential business travel, all social gatherings and all company-wide emails. They have also asked individuals to turn all possible meetings into t-cons instead of face-to-face. The salad bar and soup stations in the caf are no longer self-serve. We’ve also been advised to take our laptops, chargers and any necessary documents home each night in case we can’t return to the office.

    1. Alienor*

      I’ve reluctantly given up the salad bar in my building’s food court for the duration–I’d rather trust that the one guy making sandwiches isn’t sick than the 500 people who handled the salad-serving utensils before I went through. Not at the point of packing all my food myself, but I’ve been considering the idea.

  269. Z*

    Nothing so far. We’re a small law firm in a state with only a handful of confirmed cases and none in the state next door. Myself and one other assistant have sent the CDC’s interim business guide to our bosses. None of us assistants have the capability to work from home. Not that we could anyway — some things need to be mailed hard copy. We’re mostly hoping for extra sick days for whomever catches it.

  270. Princess Leia's Left Hand Bun*

    My ex-but-still-good-friends partner got a liver transplant last month, and we’re now planning for them to go home. The trick is, I’m now due back at my usual office after three and a bit weeks of working mostly “from home” or at a sister office location near the hospital.

    I’m not looking forward to being full time with a mix of doom mongers and deliberately oblivious coworkers. I’m really not looking forward to the “where have you been – somewhere nice? ” greetings as well but I really don’t trust myself to be diplomatic.

  271. wingmaster*

    I’m in part of the US where many, many cases have been reported.

    The county I am in had announced last week encouraging companies to work from home, and a lot of have done so already. My company formally announced that employees are encouraged to WFH, if possible, until 3/20. Thus, any work travel is suspended until 3/20. I’m in a role that is very hands-on with product, so it would be difficult for my team and I to be fully remote. We have set up a schedule where we will do shift rotations. I’ll be coming in the office twice a week for the next two weeks. We have a cleaning crew coming in nightly to disinfect our offices.

    Our suppliers that we work with are all overseas, with most of them in China. February was tough since their Chinese New Year closure got extended due to the Coronavirus, and both my teams and the suppliers can’t get much work done without communicating with each other. I’d like to say that my suppliers are maybe 85-90% back at working capacity now, but now that my team isn’t at full capacity, things are still moving slow, but we are still aiming to meet our business needs.

  272. StephThePM*

    I work for a national retailer with a lot of distribution and retail stores all over the US, in addition to our corp office on the East Coast. We have discontinued “non-essential” business travel, and restricted people from traveling to China for personal or business reasons. People are not forced to travel if they are uncomfortable (even if “essential”). I work from home FT (huge WFH culture already) but everyone was encouraged to work with their managers to see if they also could work from home. No mention of PTO use thus far but everyone has been encouraged to stay home if they are sick and follow CDC rules.

  273. Bear Shark*

    Midwest US company. Our local area had its first positive case announced recently:
    Signs are up in the bathrooms and break rooms with handwashing reminders/instructions and C19 symptom lists.
    All company travel outside of North America has to be vetted by corporate.
    All personal travel outside of North America is requested to notify corporate.
    Anyone on company or personal travel through any country on the CDC watchlists is required to self-quarantine and WFH for 14 days.

    Local school district:
    Sanitizing everything but mostly just reminding everyone to wash their hands.
    Encouraging everyone to review the CDC travel recommendations before spring break travel. School sponsored travel is not cancelled. No word on what they’ll do if families travel to CDC watchlist areas.

    Upcoming hobby convention:
    Statement that they will be following CDC recommendations and state and local guidelines which advise to continue with public events as scheduled.

  274. KarenK*

    Hospital in a (so far) non-affected area. Obviously, only so many of us can WFH. Luckily, I am one of those who can, as I am in medical education and not patient care.

    The administration just banned all international travel, and domestic travel to large conferences and trade shows. At least five of the people I’m responsible for have to cancel their upcoming travel plans, and one of the conferences they planned to attend has been cancelled. Our next fight will be about “making them whole” if they can’t get full refunds on airfare, hotel, and registration.

    If we’re sick, we have to stay home and take PTO (we have one bucket). If we’re out, we can go into the hole for up to 24 hours.
    Usual CDC advice re: handwashing, sanitizing, etc. Although, there’s really only so much we can do. We are a pubic facility, and people are in and out of here all the time. We’re still waiting for the first confirmed case here in Maine, but it’s just a matter of time.

  275. Jules the 3rd*

    My employer is a Fortune 100 international tech co:
    – Cancelled several meetings, from a large convention to local presentations
    – Cancelled international travel; exceptions reviewed at VP level
    – Asked people to limit domestic travel
    – Told people to WFH if any symptoms

    My area’s had a couple of confirmed cases for about 10 days now. I started coughing Tuesday, wfh the rest of the week, and my husband and I have had the full fever / cough / aches thing. We tested negative for the flu. I’m wfh next week just in case.

  276. Rockin Takin*

    I work for a large global pharma and life science company. They sent out a company wide policy with questions and answers, and have a 24 hour hotline if anyone has questions or concerns. They’ve canceled almost all international and regional travel and are asking any workers with symptoms to self quarantine and work from home. For people who can’t work from home it says talk to your direct manager, so idk if it means manufacturing folks will be forced to take unpaid leave if sick.

    Overall I think they are doing ok with their response.

  277. Behth*

    The company I work for has locations all around the world, including Germany and China as well as our stateside HQ. The town in Germany where those employees live is greatly affected and some schools are closed, and we’re wondering if we’re going to have to shut down too. I don’t think we’ve actually had to close anything in Asia at this point.

    One of our international offices is practicing going full telework with different units being sent home each day, with the plan to send everyone home for one day next week and see how it goes. I’m on the customer support side of the business, so I’ll be able to work remotely no problem, but many of those international locations are shipping warehouses. And we’re in the medical industry, so in some cases interrupted service is a life-or-death situation…

  278. Curmudgeon in California*

    This weekend my employer “graciously” amended its work from home policy to allow university staff to work from home more than two days a week, subject to management approval. 95% of university staff work can be done remotely. We still have to do HR paperwork for the privilege.

    I had already decided to WFH full time by the time the announcement came out. I am in a high risk group, as is everyone else in my household, and some are at more risk than I am. I may be paranoid, but I work in an open plan, and I don’t want my coworkers with kids to cause the virus to visit my house. (Even though kids don’t tend to have severe symptoms, they are often the greatest spread vectors for any infectious disease.)

    At least I live in a fairly reality based metropolitan area, where people don’t try to pass off the virus as a “Democrat Hoax”. I shudder to think of what will happen when this spreads to red-state cities and towns. No one should be put at risk for their life based on politics, IMO, but that may be what happens.

    Over the weekend, I bought a pulse oximeter, to measure blood oxygenation, since several in my household are at risk for lung problems anyway.

    In my area, we can’t find hand sanitizer for love nor money. Ironically, I bought a case of the small travel sized bottles off of eBay for an upcoming event. It’s most of what we have in house now.

  279. Rexasaurus Tea*

    I’m in tech at a company with about 2000 people in the Seattle area. About 500 of us work in the Kirkland office, which is less than 5 miles from the nursing home where the outbreak began.

    As of last Thursday, we have been requested to work from home for the month of March. We are going to be reimbursed (within reason) for equipment and services needed in order to effectively do our jobs via teleworking. Our offices are still open, with limited services, and our hourly employees will still be paid. Work-related events have been canceled and travel has been suspended. We are making alternate arrangements for interviews that had been scheduled on-site.

    My husband and I work at the same company so now we have to negotiate who gets the home office for meetings and who has to be out in the dining room. Luckily the schools are still in session so we don’t have kids running around in the background. I don’t enjoy WFH in general so this is going to be a long month.

  280. WorkingGirl*

    One coworker is currently in Paris and apparently there’s talks of quarantining him- requiring him to work remotely for a while once he returns. We all regularly work remotely anyway so it wouldn’t be an issue. If anyone in the office actually got sick I suspect we’d all just work from home till it went away.

    My boss still doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom, though…

  281. So I says to Mabel*

    I work at a large international company, at a site/plant with both production and administration. I am a white collar, and I live in a small country where the authorities are doing everything they can to reduce the number of people getting infected, for instance tracing and quarantining of people who have been in contact with infected people.
    On Friday, the division I am part of announcing a new “protocol” which ‘kindly asks’ white collars to work from home if possible for the foreseeable future. “If possible” basically leaves it up to the individual where they can or not. Management are mainly worried about white collars infecting blue collars, but the latter will also have changed work routines (smaller groups) at some point – so production can keep going. (the canteen is shared)

    I am not a big fan of working from home; I miss my office desk setup with two screens instead of just the laptop, I miss my colleagues, and since I live alone, I worry about having days where I do not talk to anyone. I feel that I am less productive when I am at home.
    There can be a some technical issues with WFH. Many of the programs we use require a VPN when we are not on office network, and this VPN does not work well with Office programs, especially Skype who will kick people on VPNs out of meetings or just make them lose the sound. The VPN is also not set up to have everyone use it daily.
    What I really hate, though, is that the timeframe is unknown.

    I went into the office today. There were a other few people there and on one hand I want to think that that fact alone will reduce the risk of people getting infected. On the other hand, no one wants to be the person who gets infected without knowing it and then brings it into the company.
    I do not really worry about getting ill myself but I know that the precautions are taken to protect people with a weak immune system.

  282. Anon in Seattle*

    I have a remote job, as there is no company office here. My company has made a policy against nonessential travel. Interviews will be conducted remotely. The US offices have not gone to full work from home, but many people already are. Offices in Asia are work from home.

    In Seattle, almost all tech and government workers who can do so are working from home. I did see there are some exceptions above, but King County guidance is to allow people to work from home. Emerald City Comic Con was cancelled, so I’m not going to have my expected guests. Although there’s been no formal ban, we’ve been urged not to have community gatherings over 10 people.

    To be honest, I am really hating all of these restrictions, even though I get the geometric progression and the “flatten the curve” reasons why they are important. I keep thinking that all of the conferences and plays and concerts that I so love are going to be a thing of the past soon.

  283. Pobody’s Nerfect*

    No one at my job has even mentioned it, it’s getting weird. You’d think contingency plans should be discussed now. You’d think to get ahead and be proactive instead of reactive, they’d have everyone working from home now instead of waiting until someone in the workplace/area tests positive. Oh and I have a gross coworker who just walked by my office and then into break room while coughing for a good ten seconds, the whole time right into his hand. And then he went to the vending machines. That’s just great.

  284. C-nonymous*

    We’re an in-house production/e-commerce site with about 100 employees. We just got a notice that since we want to make sure our shipping and manufacture can continue with minimal disruption, all non-shipping/non-manufacture employees must work from home starting this week. Very excited to work for a company that’s taking this seriously given a spike in cases in our area (and also selfishly glad I’m not on either team that has to come in).

  285. Law Firm Employee*

    We’re trying to stock up on stuff. Have had trouble finding hand sanitizer or anything associated with it. My boss is firmly against working from home (they think people are less productive/unproductive and so there’s a specific ban against it, even though we are able to do 95% of our jobs from there). So far they haven’t relaxed that at all. Which is partly why I dragged myself in today despite having a cold coming on. I know if I had stayed home it would’ve a) put me way behind in work b) pissed off my boss and c) cost me a sick day.

  286. JustaTech*

    Medium-sized biotech in the Seattle area:
    We pulled our two staff out of the China office back in January (and they self-quarantined for two weeks, weren’t sick). We’ve canceled all travel (though just early last week I had a coworker ask me if I was still going to a site visit in Italy; heck no).
    Out other two sites are also clean-suite manufacturing plants, so they’re super clean and low-contact already, so they’re business as usual. For the non-manufacturing staff the official notice is, stay home if sick, wash your hands, check with your manager about working from home.

    Weirdly we’re out of hand sanitizer (we don’t normally carry it at this location), and the stuff I’m supposed to use to make some (since we’ve already got alcohol in the labs) hasn’t come in from Amazon yet. It’s not a huge issue because my floor is all lab folks so we’re already really good about hand washing.

    I’m going to keep coming in to the office until I’m told not to, mostly because there aren’t many people here, my WFH set up leaves a lot to be desired, and my husband works for a big tech company so he has to WFH for the rest of the month, and that’s too much togetherness.

  287. emmelemm*

    I’m in Washington, specifically living in Seattle but working in Kirkland. Hooray! I do have an office with just me and the boss and almost all of my work is done with clients remotely, so I’m fine.

    I just wanted to mention, since these are issues that have been talked about on AAM, that the governor of WA sent out an email this weekend which said the following:

    If you are a health care worker or first responder, and you are placed in quarantine (even without showing symptoms), you will receive for worker’s compensation during that time (meaning you get 2/3 your salary).

    Also, he’s said if you have reason to believe you’ve been exposed to COVID-19, but have no health insurance, you will receive the test for free, and if you do have insurance, having the test will have no copays or costs. (I’m not sure logistically how this plays out, since it seems there are shortage of testing kits anyway.)

    So it’s not everything, but at least it’s something.

  288. NW Mossy*

    My company (employee benefits provider in the Pacific NW) is responding pretty vigorously, given the proximity of confirmed cases to our home office. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

    * The emergency response team put together a toolkit for employees and managers that lays out what to do in different scenarios – if you’re exposed, if you get sick, if a family member is sick, if schools/daycares close, and so on. High-level, we’re being super-flexible about working from home wherever possible, which is the case for most staff.
    * We’re stress-testing this week to ensure that our IT systems can handle the increased load of people working from home in case large-scale movement restrictions are imposed in our area.
    * Severely restricting international business travel and limiting domestic travel.
    * Promoting the use of virtual meetings in lieu of face-to-face wherever possible and good hygiene practices as recommended by the CDC.

  289. Kat J*

    My office has addressed expectations really well for corporate staff… but we are a construction and facilities maintenance company. Apparently some of the depots have been given extra hand sanitiser. There hasn’t been any guidance for how to manage illnesses for frontline staff – who obviously cannot work from home or self-isolate and continue to earn wages. It’s disappointing, but I just hope the virus doesn’t spread rapidly in my country.

  290. Tic Tac arooni*

    Federal court librarian here. We had prevention tips sent from D.C.; they included instructions to not harass Asians, as well as very specific hand washing instructions. We may have mandatory teleworking and my department can’t. Think people like janitors or security guards; you can’t do this job at home. Luckily my boss’s boss used to do this job, they’re having us get our home computers telework ready, they say we can watch professional videos, improve our Excel skills etc. if we have to work from home. This way our dept. won’t have to use leave while the others do their jobs. Of course, if we close we can’t watch professional videos forever. Not sure what will happen. I’m glad the question isn’t “what is your mother doing to prepare for the virus?” my mother is talking about this non stop, stock piling t.p. and soup and not sleeping due to worry.

  291. Silicon Valley Girl*

    Big tech company on the west coast — at first, they restricted travel & requested quarantines for anyone who had traveled to high-risk areas. Now they’ve told everyone who can to work from home, & being tech, we already do a ton of video conferencing. Lots of sensible information by email & intranet, hand sanitizer & such in offices for those who do need to be in them.

    It’s not a huge change for my day-to-day work, honestly, since I already have video conferences w/ppl all over the country that I can do from home or the office. This just removes an unpleasant commute!

  292. Amy Farrah Fowler*

    I already work from home (as do most of our FT staff), so a lot of things are easy.
    Right now what we’re discussing is how this will impact our customers and business. I work for a tutoring company that does in-home tutoring for our clients.

    We’ve started discussing what things we can put into place to make sure if people don’t feel comfortable going to homes or don’t feel comfortable having someone come in, how we can make it work through online means. We have some plans ready, nothing being implemented yet, but trying to make sure we’re ready for various contingencies.

  293. jeweled tortoise*

    I’m a touring musician. My job is traveling and playing in large spaces with lots of people. My colleagues and I are terrified, since we are freelancers and cancelled concerts mean danger to our livelihoods. Some people are considering live-streaming concerts, some are cancelled altogether, and some are going on as planned. We have no control over the situation, which changes from place to place. I’ve long wished for more protection and better national networks for freelancers, but never imagined that it would be necessary for a situation such as this. I’m on the east coast and am on edge, but the west coast folks are getting it bad.

    1. not that kind of Doctor*

      Have you read A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker? It’s about exactly this. (And the critical importance of live music to humanity.)

  294. Nicki Name*

    Tech company here. Our Seattle office has been working remotely since last week along with everyone else. The rest of us are being urged to take our laptops home every day, which we generally do anyway, since the company is very flexible about working from home. My office expects we’ll be told to go all-remote for a while at some point.

    All business travel was cancelled a couple weeks ago, and people who make personal international trips are being asked to work remotely for two weeks afterward.

    As of today, there are hand sanitizer dispensers at all the building entrances, with signs asking everyone who comes in to use them.

  295. Anon Substitute Teacher*

    I currently work as a substitute teacher (previously full-time classroom teacher). I haven’t gotten any kind of email yet from the school district about their preparations. Perhaps full-time employees have but I haven’t had a chance to ask anyone yet. So far, I didn’t see any major changes at the school I work in most frequently. However, I work mostly with the preschool programs and the classrooms have different procedures from the elementary aged programs that are on the same campus.

    It’s always been standard procedure every day to wash hands at the following times in the preschool classrooms: upon arrival, before eating, after eating, before playing in water/sand/playdoh, after playing in water/sand/playdoh, after toileting, and returning from the playground. Kids are also supposed to wash hands after blowing noses, sneezing, touching nose or mouth, etc but this is a bit harder to enforce because they touch their faces all day long.

  297. not that kind of Doctor*

    Small vertically-integrated manufacturing company, hot spot-adjacent (Seattle is not far away).

    Leadership is “monitoring the situation.” CDC posters have been put up in kitchens and bathrooms. Hand sanitizer stations are (supposedly) being set up (haven’t seen them yet). Office workers are invited to work from home as needed. Anyone with symptoms is asked to stay home.
    (We have no work from home policy. If there’s a silver lining to this, maybe it’s that we get one.)

    Factory and store staff – that is, the lowest paid staff – obviously can’t work from home. Nothing has been suggested for people who have used up their PTO.

    1. not that kind of Doctor*

      Also, suspended attendance points for factory employees, added daily doorknob/stair rail cleaning, provided official info links (CDC, state) to employees, reduced meetings. The aim is to keep people informed while avoiding panic and unnecessary risk.

  298. Notasecurityguard*

    I work for the schools in a city that’s not officially been hit yet (but dollars to donuts it’s in the community and it’s officially in our suburbs) and they’ve told us if we get symptoms to go see a doctor and use our sick leave for the 14 day self-quarantine. Which would be fine if they weren’t asking us to use paid sick leave and they didn’t only give us 10 paid sick days per year (September to June) and a lot of the employees can’t really afford to miss a paycheck.

    I KNOW they’re not going to close the schools in time and we’re gonna have a major outbreak at some point

  299. Alex*

    I work for a university, and all international travel has been cancelled, and if you were traveling domestically, you have the option of cancelling. Pretty much all events are cancelled.

    While I understand that they can’t blanket tell everyone to go home, I would really like to see it at least encouraged when possible. I for one can easily work from home and I wish they would just let me, but it is against “policy” to work from home unscheduled. And I guess they think it is unfair to people who can’t work from home to let everyone who can just go home.

    I have almost nothing to do today and what I do have is just as doable from home as it is from my cube. Send me home already! Why risk it? There are a lot of people in my area who have been diagnosed.

  300. SciDiver*

    I’m writing this from home because I’m on required self-isolation for the next week! I had the (mis)fortune to have planned a vacation in Italy two weeks ago. We went, there were 3 cases when we landed and over 1,000 and a CDC level 3 warning on the day we left :( Trip had been planned for 6+ months and the situation exploded on our 2nd day in the country. 9 days since we left and my partner and I both feel fine.

    There was a lot of confusion and delay in rolling out the policy; all the updates my org provided until late last week were only for travelers to mainland China, and when they did make changes they were buried at the end of an FAQ list they linked to in an email. I’d been back at work for a week before they extended the policy to Italy, S. Korea, and Japan, and I emailed HR to notify them that I’d been traveling after finding out they now wanted me to report my travel. Since then, I’ve been on self-isolation until 14 days after I left Italy.

    The bad news is that this week was supposed to be one of (if not the) busiest weeks of my year and I can’t do that work remotely. The good news is my org provides unlimited personal sick leave and will be setting up a separate fund for coronavirus sick leave. It’s been frustrating not being able to work on my really time-sensitive project (that only my manager has the training to do), but I understand how necessary it is even as a precaution. I’m also lucky to work someplace that has the resources to pay for sick leave and not have it come out of my PTO or have to take it unpaid since remote work isn’t really possible for me.

  301. lmary*

    I work in Boston where there has been a recent outbreak related to a biotech conference. Unfortunately, my office is located in an extremely busy part of town, near where the outbreak occurred, and we all need to take crowded trains to work.

    Last week we got the “work from home if you feel more comfortable” message from my boss. This morning we got the “we strongly recommend that you work from home” message. I am extremely lucky in that we all have jobs that can be done just as easily at home, and we already work across multiple offices and are used to video conferencing.

  302. Wannabe Artist*

    I work at a tech company as an onsite vendor in an area with a high number of cases. The main tech company has given directive to all full time employees who can should work remotely. It seems like they’re taking the situation very seriously.

    On the other hand our contracting company says it’s business as usual and to come into the office. No messaging around washing hands or where hand sanitizer might be or even symptoms to look out for that would warrant calling in sick. The full time employees we work with in other buildings are surprised to learn that we have been told to continue to come in.

    It’s weird to be getting such differing stances when it feels like we should be included in whatever decision the main company makes (like we do with most other things).

  303. OntarioLibraryWorker*

    I work at a public library in Ontario, Canada. We’ve always provided hand sanitizer for staff and the public but now we’ve put out more pumps. We also have disinfecting wipes at every public computer station and signs encouraging patrons to wipe down equipment after using it. We received an email with info about coronavirus, proper handwashing, asking us to stay home when sick, etc. Remote work is simply not possible so I’m not sure what would happen if the virus came to our area.

  304. Call Me Tired*

    Hahahaha, I work in a study abroad office at a university that is considering wide-scale program cancellation. Needless to say, we talk about COVID-19 ad nauseam and might have to go to remote work if the university gets hit. We’re literally sitting around on our hands right now waiting for a decision to be made by the higher ups.

  305. Rachel*

    Luckily my company has always been pretty generous about work from home time and my job is pretty easy to do from home so if I do feel sick I will just stay home. We have also canceled all unnecessary work travel. We are supposed to work from home for at least 14 days if we do travel to a restricted destination or are in contact with people who did.

  306. Ann Perkins*

    Our corporate office isn’t letting people in who have travelled to one of the hot zones within the last two weeks. WFH is available for people who need it. There’s not a lot of cases in their area though.

    Our local office… nothing. Our city has only had one confirmed case so far though. I’m conflicted right now as my direct report is about to leave for a week-long vacation in London and I’m not sure whether I should have him WFH for two weeks after he gets back. We’re a small office with not a lot of cross-training and some things can’t be done at home, so I would have to rearrange my schedule to accommodate that on top of the vacation. And with flu going through my 1-year-old’s daycare room, I’m just going to have to see how the next few weeks play out. I don’t generally WFH but my office manager fortunately doesn’t care if I go ahead and don’t take a PTO day on days I have a kid who’s mostly sleeping at home anyway. My spouse is out of town too so I really hope everyone stays healthy.

    1. Foxgloves*

      I live in London and it’s not really affecting daily life here. I’d suggest you go with a “if you develop any symptoms at all while you’re there or within 14 days of coming back, it’s 14 days WFH”, but otherwise you’re probably fine to have them in the office.

  307. WineNot*

    I’m in the Northeast – MA/RI line (US) and while we haven’t had a major outbreak yet, it’s all anyone is talking about. I know management has been meeting to discuss contingency plans (work from home mainly – something they rarely ever allow), as well as keeping outsiders out of our office and halting company travel.

    I’m pretty concerned about a potential outbreak here mainly because I live with my mom, who is 56 and healthy but immunosuppressed due to past health issues. I just want to hole up with her until this is all over! No one has talked to me specifically about getting work software installed on my personal laptop, or what the actual plan is…so it’s a little stressful.

    The one thing I’m noticing that has started to really bother me is whenever anyone sneezes, coughs, coughs because they’re choking on water, or announces that they’re cold, or does literally any other thing that COULD mean someone is sick, a couple people in the office will always respond with “hope you’re not getting sick”, or “hope you don’t have coronavirus!”. I can’t stand these people.

  308. cheeky*

    I work for a large utility. There was a panic last week when some supervisor or manager in one office heard that an employee has a friend of a friend who may have come into contact with a COVID-19 patient- they told the building to evacuate, which was not sanctioned by the company. We have to keep the utility running, and very few jobs out of the whole can be done remotely. I’m a technical worker, but am hourly, so I can’t work from home (hourly workers have to be paid for any time worked over their normal workday here, so if you check your email in the evening, you’d have to be paid for it, which the company doesn’t want to do). No in-person meetings for groups larger than 20. All international travel is halted, all non-essential domestic travel is halted. We have handwashing stations, sanitizer, Clorox wipes, etc. in all workplaces.

    1. Gatomon*

      In a similar boat company-wise. If everyone is working from home, you’re going to need your local telco up and running! I’m able to work 100% remote with no big issues as long as my internet works, but I’m not sure how operations will cope, especially field techs who normally are out visiting customer sites, customer service reps who probably don’t have company-issued laptops to use, etc. Supply chain is also a worry, since practically everything comes from China. We’ve already been warned of delays by most of our vendors, but it’s still early enough in the year that no projects are impacted yet. I also expect that if our area gets hit, we’ll get a lot of calls from our small business customers who aren’t set up at all for WFH looking for our help.

  309. mli25*

    In general, we are flexible with working from home, so people do it fairly regularly (I tend to work from home 2 days a week). Implemented policy: All “non-essential” work travel is cancelled. Today a portion of the company is working from home to pressure test the VPN system. They are seeing what a larger scale work from home would do to our systems.

  310. This Old House*

    I work relatively near the epicenter of the NYS outbreak, but (apparently) not close enough that we’ve actually done anything about it. Lots of “stay home if you’re sick,” but no approval to work from home.

  311. Wendy Darling*

    I live in the Seattle area right in the middle of the biggest US outbreak so that’s fun.

    My partner’s company has asked everyone who can feasibly do their job from home to work from home and is paying hourly employees normally, even those who aren’t working and vendors (like the cafeteria staff they currently don’t need because 95% of their workforce is at home all month). Their response is, IMO, ideal.

    My company closed our office in my area and is considering closing offices in other regions as necessary. The CEO sent out an email about how “ensuring continuity for our customers is our highest priority” and urging us to put commitment to our customers first in everything we do. Only after that did he say ANYTHING about employee health. I am left with the opinion that his primary concern is our stock price. Anyone who has any symptoms or has traveled to Asia or Italy is expected to self-quarantine for 2 weeks, and most work travel has been suspended. That said, remote work is very common at my company so we already have all the necessary infrastructure in place and the shift to remote work has been pretty seamless. So I guess there’s that.

    My personal routine has been completely upended by the work changes and voluntary social distancing and the time change so I don’t know if I’m coming or going at this point. I’ve taken up jigsaw puzzles. My dog is thrilled to have all his humans at home with him basically all the time.

  312. Heat's Kitchen*

    We’re already 50% remote. The company has canceled a regular conference in April, and has put a hold on any other team on sites for the near future. They’ve also said that if we were in a critical area (Seattle), we’d close the office and have everyone work from home.

  313. Campfire Raccoon*

    My service guys can work pretty much alone, and never have to come within 10 feet of an actual person if they don’t want to — but unfortunately the MAIN thing they service is the call boxes outside of apartments and gated communities. Since every germ-infested human in that community is touching the keypads 2+ times a day, I gave the guys gloves, cleaning supplies, and disinfecting wipes to keep in their service trucks. The shop guy will be disinfecting the trucks at the end of each day.

    The fabrication crews are a little different as they have to work in pairs+, but here’s hoping they’re not making out on the job or whatnot.

    But really- The office can direct them remotely, and I don’t have to interact face-to-face with customers. Everything can be done over phone or email for the time being. (I’ve even started moving towards doing estimates over face time/texted pictures.) It’s not a permanent solution, but it’ll work for now.

    1. Retail not Retail*

      I don’t have to be near the public and they never touch our tools but I realized hey, the top of the fence I’m touching to launch myself over… i’m not the only one who’s touched that.

      1. Campfire Raccoon*

        Hopefully no one’s been licking the top of that fence.

        BUT YOU NEVER KNOW.

  314. Gratiana*

    I’m a tenured academic who also runs a medium-size (ca. 300 people) conference scheduled for NEXT WEEK, which we just decided to pull the plug on. Too many of our attendees were sending regrets or asking to Skype/Zoom, but the final straw for me was when I spent all Saturday morning scouring local stores, failing to find hand sanitizer to offer people who did choose to attend. I definitely didn’t want to be the person responsible for creating our very own international petri-dish environment if anything were to go wrong. But three things stood out to me:
    1) Most of the people who were cancelling were tenured senior academics. But a number of grad students and junior faculty have contacted me since to thank me for taking the choice out of their hands. I know that the burden of unrefunded travel costs will fall unfairly on them, but if I can help by giving them an official piece of paper to wave at hotels and airlines, it was the right choice to make.
    2) Our conference was being held on campus, so we are lucky not to be bearing the costs of broken venue and catering contracts. Two national conferences in my field in the next couple of weeks are still forging ahead; while I think that’s a bad idea, I suspect it’s at least partly because they cannot afford to break those contracts.
    3) Finally, a moral & legal quandary: our conference has money in our no-strings reserve fund, with which we can reimburse keynote speakers if they cannot cancel their flights without penalty. But if we had no such reserve fund, we suspect our public institution would very likely refuse to pay the reimbursement since they hadn’t come and done what we were paying them to do. Is that not legally problematic, since we were the ones who cancelled?

    1. pancakes*

      Having the fund eliminates the quandary, no? It would be in the interest of the institution and the speakers to have this sort of thing agreed upon in writing in advance, as to voluntary cancelations and force majeure cancellations.

  315. Desdenova*

    I work in a US office of a global tech/data company that most people have never heard of (we’re primarily B2B). The company has been closing offices in countries and regions with major outbreaks (China, South Korea, Italy, Singapore, Seattle) and where there are confirmed cases of possible exposure (like, a confirmed case in the same office building even though it was a different company. They’ve also issued a “work from home until further notice” for all employees with pre-existing medical issues and other high-risk individuals, regardless of location, and instituted a global travel ban. All work-related travel currently requires C-level approval.

    The past few years, the company has been pushing teleconferencing as a cost-saving measure (vs. in-person travel), so our existing telework infrastructure and culture is quite good, making this an easy call on the company’s part.

  316. I don't work there.......really.....*

    Someone last week mentioned unemployment insurance.

    It’ll vary from state to state. But if your employer tells you to not come into work you’re no longer employed through no fault of your own, which is the metric in most states. If your state has an online system file as soon as you know and file online. This type of thing is a layoff, it’s temporary (hopefully), but it’s not something they did because of you or your actions (which would be a discharge). If you quit because your employer makes you go into the office that’s going to be a different matter and harder to get paid for (unless something like a disaster is declared).

    Check the website for your state, likely most of them will be putting something online in the next week or so because it’s started to have an impact already. But you’re so much better off filing right away if you are told you can’t come in, there’s generally an initial week where people are not able to get benefits.

    Again, varies from state to state. But states know it’s coming and it’s going to look a lot like a recession if it lasts for more than a couple weeks. If your state handles recession (or winter) well then you’ll be ok. If not…seriously, don’t wait to file if you get laid off.

    1. I'm just here for the cats*

      Check with your state first. I know my state if there is the expectation that you will return then you cannot claim unemployment. For example, You work in education. Because you are a support staff (kitchen worker) you don’t work June – August. You cannot claim unemployment for that time because you have not lost your job, you are expected to come back in September.

      1. AJK*

        In my state I know people who work outdoors who claim unemployment every year for most of the winter in our cold climate, but I’m not sure how that works as far as layoffs and planned returns goes.

        I had to take a job-hunting class when I filed for unemployment. I was in the class with several guys who just told the instructor “I work construction” and he said they could leave. I only found out later it’s because the class is an automatic requirement, so every time they file they get sent to the same class – every single year.

      2. I don't work there.......really.....*

        Yes, I meant to mention covered vs not covered employment.

        Education is different for instance than seasonal work in construction. Education is a monster that different states handle differently. Most (but not all) states say that your between terms (aka summer) is not a time you can collect. Education is different than other jobs where you return to work.

        But if you are in construction or some other job where you are laid off and expect to return to work (again, depends on the state, but a good number this works in) you would absolutely be able to collect benefits during the shutdown time.

        I’d really recommend people apply and let the unemployment folks sort out if you are not eligible rather than opting yourself out. It’ll also help because if there are large numbers of normally not covered folks and that gets reported it will be more likely to sway hearts and minds of those in charge of deciding to change things.

        Some employment is covered (your employer pays unemployment tax for you) and some isn’t (like contractors, some jobs, it depends on your state, but if you own the business you may not be covered, sometimes farmers aren’t covered, some professions aren’t, etc). So if your employment is not covered normally it would take an act of government to have those folks be able to collect and then that would be dependent on where the act of government came from. (The feds can do stuff like extensions for benefits, but states can too.)

        Again, UI is state by state, but I’m trying to hit really broad strokes here for folks.

        1. old curmudgeon*

          And you’re doing an excellent job with the overview – thanks for adding your insights!

          A related concern that I have is that UI agencies need staff to handle claims, and if a sudden influx of quarantine-related claims comes in, I suspect there could be delays in processing claims due to insufficient staff.

          At least in our state, there is a lengthy and cumbersome hiring process for any kind of state employment, and even after a person is hired, there is still training/orientation before they can start work. So I would hope that state UI agencies are ramping up staffing now (actually, they should have started about a month ago) to be ready to handle a sharp increase in claim volume.

          1. I don't work there.......really.....*

            The staffing thing is interesting because like any other government agency there are a lot of rules. Hiring is slow. Funding is slower. So states who can’t afford to hire until after a recession kicks in are going to have a much harder time. (States get paid for doing work, so they don’t get an increase in federal funding until after the increase in the work, which makes it hard for states who are cash poor.)

            If your state’s/government’s unemployment office allows for work from home it’s going to be a bit easier because then they can just have folks keep working but work from home. This varies wildly from state to state. There are not a lot of states that are fully equipped to both handle a serious uptick in claims AND have a workforce that can work from home at the drop of a hat. The loss of staff is going to be a hard piece here. Folks who want to stay home from work will include some folks who work for unemployment offices, and you end up in a weird situation.

            States that manage other kinds of varying employment (winter!) will likely do better, and as we are just sort of slowly sliding out of winter that’s even better for those states, who will have a decrease in normal traffic, countering the increase from this.

            Smart states will already have significant disaster planning strategies and be turning those on at this point. But most of those kinds of things will be redirecting internal resources, not hiring, or the hiring will be a part but a much slower part. Redirecting resources can be done, depending on how big the state is, how many additional resources, and what the state understands to be a priority. And how the unemployment programs are laid out, some states are more combined than others, more combined means easier to shift resources, more spread out means more siloing, means harder to shift someone from one task to another. Call centers will be the hardest hit first thing for most states, hence apply online and as soon as you know.

            So be in a place with winter, a good handle on funding, a centralized program, and staff who already work from home. (I don’t know that that state exists…)

  317. Mahkara*

    Everyone who can WFH at my company has been ordered to do so, and we’ve been told to limit Webex meetings where we can to spare the VPN.

    Several buildings have been locked down, so only certain people can enter them. (Mine is not one of them as I’m not a critical employee, but those with critical employees can now only be entered by them.)

    We’ve been told that the company will cover all costs associated with the coronavirus (at least from a sickness perspective – I don’t think they’re reimbursing travel.)

    I’m in the Seattle area (I live in Kirkland…ugh…) and work at a power company, so they’re taking things very seriously. (No one wants to not be able to keep the power on during an emergency as all the line workers are sick.)

  318. I'm just here for the cats*

    Can someone explain to me the thing with the Toliet paper? Are people stockpiling so they don’t have to go out when/if coronavirus hits their area or if they are quarantined? Or do people think they will be sick to the stomach with the Coronavirus?

    1. OwlEditor*

      Something along the lines of being prepared for being stuck at home. It’s common panic buying. I like to think people honestly believe it’s for the inevitable COVID zombies.

    2. Kyrielle*

      I bought a fairly large thing of TP – because when I restock I always buy a fairly large thing of TP, and we were down to almost no rolls. I don’t want to run out in the middle of a quarantine of some sort. I *really* don’t want to run out if everyone has already bought the darned stuff up.

      I wonder how much of the panic buying is people like me, stupidly trying to get it bought before it’s gone. :P

    3. Campfire Raccoon*

      I’m really up crap creek with the TP thing, because my teenager is right in the “shittin mitten” stage, where he uses a whole role of TP wrapped around his hand for each wipe.

      I unclog the toilets twice daily. At least.

      Costco was completely out, and I can’t buy any for our NORMAL over-use of TP. I told him I was rationing his TP, and if he over-uses again, he’s getting a stick. The poop stick. He’ll have stories like my grandparents did in the great depression.

  319. Minimal Pear*

    They sent out an email and put up posters, but that’s basically it. A lot of our staff live paycheck-to-paycheck and I doubt that most of them have two weeks of PTO saved up–so far, nothing from the higher-ups about what to do if you don’t have enough sick time. And my workplace is similar in nature to the elder care center in Seattle that’s had such a bad outbreak. We’re medical-adjacent and most employees can’t work from home, and a lot of our clients are medically vulnerable. I’m in admin, and theoretically could work from home, but the infrastructure isn’t there. We aren’t in a hot spot, but there’s one case the next county over and we’re close-ish to some places that have community spread.
    Additionally, I’m here through a temp agency and I have garbage sick time. I’m trying to save it up for foot surgery, too, so I’m not able to stay home unless I’m basically dying. And I’m medically vulnerable, AND I take public transportation. (Typing this on the bus, actually.)
    But hey on the plus side, we just got a giant pallet of Clorox wipes shipped in today! We were all laughing helplessly at how many containers there were because they’re seriously going to take up ALL our storage space.

    1. Minimal Pear*

      And also, to be clear, this is all from the company I work at. The temp agency that technically employs me has sent out ZERO info and they’re the ones I’d need to hear from about sick leave stuff.

  320. OwlEditor*

    Most of our staff are remote, but they did cancel our department’s annual summit next week. The Communications Team is gutted and I am too. Not to mention the money lost. We can all WFH as needed, but we only have two confirmed cases and the entire state is freaking out (and I’m in Utah!). TP and distilled water are gone from most stores because some idiot spread the rumor that you needed to have bottled water. One gallon for every person in the house for 14 days. I haven’t checked for soap, since I have a huge refill bottle.
    Personally I think it’s ridiculous overreacting. People act like the zombie apocalypse is coming. For those of us with anxiety, it’s not helpful or useful. I had to do so much research to get past the hyperbole to the actual facts. I don’t watch the news.
    At least I’m finding lots of fun songs to sing while I wash my hands.

    1. Kyrielle*

      That water supply is exactly right for emergency planning where services (like running water) might be out. So they’re all set for an earthquake…. *sighs* Same thing here. At least here we _are_ at some small risk of an earthquake, so if one happens in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak, they’ll have their water ready.

    2. Pebbles Bishop*

      Do you work with me?! My Utah company just cancelled their annual summit.

      And also, yeah, people are acting like it’s the end of the world. It is not. The Smiths I regularly go to was cleaned out of the sale sections of TP and paper towels, but there was still a lot left, so maybe the panic just hasn’t fully hit my neighborhood yet?

  321. Kyrielle*

    Up until yesterday, limiting all international travel to critically necessary and domestic travel to very important, all meetings to be remote if possible.

    As of yesterday, all employees able to do so are to work from home for now. All non-essential facilities (on-site cafe, for example) are closed.

    I don’t know if there were enhanced cleaning protocols in the office or if there will be.

  322. Works in IT*

    There are some things I dislike about my boss, such as the fact that he’s had me on contract to hire for years and doesn’t seem to realize I’m getting tired of it.

    But, he just pushed through a request to give my coworker and myself remote access last week, a process which other departments are now copying him on. He may have other failings, but he was first when it came to making sure we will be able to do everything from home that we could do here.

  323. Retail not Retail*

    Any public-facing people get an FAQ sheet?

    Ours has a question that has some caveat loaded language – our bats are safe and never come into contact with wild bats. True. However, this applies to our bats. We’re in a park and we have local wildlife all the time stealing food, making messes, and blocking the road. I found a live baby bat once.

  324. em_eye*

    Compared to some of the comments here…definitely not enough. We have several in-person events planned at college campuses in the next few weeks and the plan is to only cancel if the school makes us. I’m scheduled to fly to one, and then immediately fly to another (changing planes both times). I wish I could drive instead, but my plane tickets have been booked for months and I know changing that many tickets is a lot to ask of my employer, plus they’d then have to reimburse a lot of miles on top of it.

    My fear of personally getting sick/dying is at level, like, 0. My fear of getting exposed and having to be quarantined right before a family wedding, catching a cold on the plane and spending weeks freaking out that it could be something else, or getting exposed and being some kind of patient zero to a bunch of other people is considerably higher. My town is completely sold out of Purell and disinfectant wipes. I have hydrogen peroxide and some sketchy looking “all-natural” baby wipes.

    1. Lizzo*

      FYI, most (if not all) airlines are allowing flight changes and cancellations right now with no penalties. You’ll only be able to get credit with the airline for future travel (i.e. not a refund), but if you’ll have future business travel you can use it for, cancel those flights, have your employer reimburse you (if needed), and then make a plan to drive. Tell them that this is a small thing they can do that will help you feel more comfortable and help you focus on doing your job when you get to your destination.

  325. Tiffany Youngblood*

    I work as a stagehand/lighting tech for concerts/conferences/etc and y’all, it’s so bad right now. I had a 7-week long European summer tour cancel because it was a lot of festival dates that weren’t happening anymore, just today had the rest of my week cancel, and have several large events lined up over the next couple months that we are really concerned about. I’m based out of Dallas and when I’m stateside, I live out of my van, so thankfully my expenses are minimal and my ‘this is the bare minimum amount of work I need to survive’ level is pretty low.

    We’re all either freelancers or part-time employees…there is no sick pay, no working from home. If there’s not an event, we don’t get paid. Period.

    So yea, this is all very bad.

    1. But There is a Me in Team*

      Sorry to hear that Tiffany. Wishing you and all the other folks in the same boat the best.

    2. jeweled tortoise*

      I’m a touring musician. I’m with you, sending major empathy and hope we get out of this mess soon.

  326. WorkInProgress*

    I work for a university. Our department already is pretty good about work from home/remote work. (I am exclusively remote work but had planned to travel to campus in May… which may be cancelled now). We’re pretty much set up to operate in a quarantined scenario (save our courses/programs which may switch to virtual vs in person if need be).

    But the university as a whole has squashed ALL university related international travel (conferences, research, classes, etc) until May 15. And domestic travel is at discretion of individual (but ideally only if really needed).

    They are also highly discouraging any personal int’l or domestic travel until May 15. But if you do travel abroad they want you to self quarantine for 14 days upon return before coming back to work. And they also want you to specify on this anon document where you have travelled out of state in case an outbreak happens they have an idea of how impacted the community might be.

    In terms of onsite courses/programs our dept offers, still playing by ear. We’ve had a lot of drop in numbers. Some faculty can no longer travel to campus (so trying to figure out if we can give the program virtually). And we’re still wrapping our head around what happens if we later find out a participant had Covid19 while on campus.

    Otherwise, more deep cleaning/sanitizing of shared spaces. No more buffets. Restating importance of washing hands, how to sneeze, not shaking hands/hugging… things that should be common sense do adults, but you’d be surprised how gross people are.

    Meanwhile just feel horrible for folks that don’t have “luxury” of telework or sick time to afford a 14day quarantine :(

  327. Quinalla*

    No confirmed cases in my state yet (Ohio), but I’m sure we’ll have one soon enough.

    There is an announcement coming out today apparently that will ask people to work from home (we all can for most to all of our work) if we are sick or if someone in our house is sick.

    There are folks who travel in the United States and anyone in high risk groups (or anyone not comfortable for other reasons) can request to not travel which will be approved. No travel ban at the moment. Some of us also have to visit construction sites and go to big gatherings, again will probably be generally addressed to not go if you aren’t comfortable, but no ban.

    We do have signs up reminding people to wash hands or use hand sanitizer, sneeze/cough etiquette, etc. and signs about how to stay safer when traveling too.

    So pretty good response I think, cautious but not overly so. I probably need to nudge my boss to get some wipes and lysol and more tissues for the office (if we can find them, a lot of places are out like everywhere), but honestly I think mostly folks will just work from home as required so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

  328. wittyrepartee*

    At my work, staff got activated for coronavirus response. However, they can’t find things for us to do today for some reason. It’s both stressful and boring.

  329. new kid*

    My org just now announced that they’re closing all physical offices starting tomorrow for the next two weeks (but really indefinitely) and we all have to work from home. I wish they had made it voluntary rather than mandatory because it’s definitely going to make my job more difficult, but it is what it is. We’ll see how long ‘2 weeks’ really ends up being I guess.

  330. ManagerInNameOnly*

    Construction-adjacent industry in the Houston area.
    Small company, owners are doing nothing at all. No company-wide email, no signs in the bathrooms, no bottles of sanitizer in the public areas, no instructions to stay away if sick. I’m an RN, so I’m answering employee questions. Trying to relay the message of ‘be vigilant and careful but don’t panic’.
    Giant bottle of hand sanitizer front and center on my desk, daily wipe downs. I asked the owner what the plans are, they responded with ‘what’s the big deal? people are panicking over nothing! It’s no different from the yearly flu!’
    I figure that once schools in our area start closing and there are fistfights in the local grocery store over TP, they will be more serious. I’m ready with a plan when they decide to act. Only our owners and sales staff can WFH, and we only get 5 sick days.
    I brought a box of surgical masks, so that our field techs can go to work at places where customers may say ‘no mask, no admittance’. I made it clear that these are not for keeping our guys from exposure, they are so we can work/bill/get paid.
    It’s a case of waiting until the building is on fire before they act. Which is ironic, since we are in the fire safety business.

    1. ManagerInNameOnly*

      One other thing, owners and managers are all going to a big industry conference this month. I hope it gets cancelled.

      1. virago*

        The owners responded with “People are panicking over nothing! It’s no different from the yearly flu!”

        Which still kills thousands of people in the US every year, even though there’s a vaccine for it.

        Meanwhile, there is no vaccine yet for COVID-19.

        People like the owners of the company where you work remind me never to underestimate the human capacity for accurately assessing risk.

  331. Techie*

    We’re a remote-friendly company already.

    New policies:

    Suspend non-essential travel. There are very few–if any–instances of business travel that we would classify as essential under the CDC guidelines.

    Don’t go into an office when:

    You’ve visited a country listed by the CDC as certain levels of risk
    You believe you’ve been exposed to someone of a higher risk category
    For whatever reason, you are uncomfortable.

    If you’re sick, definitely stay home. If you’re at higher than normal risk for COVID-19, plan on working from home for 14 days after you get better. Otherwise, come in after 48 hours of no fever if you have no risk categories. Go to the doctor if you think you need to. We won’t be requiring doctor notes.

  332. Ms. Green Jeans*

    Our guidance is to refer to the state health agency for guidance, and my entity is “closely monitoring” the situation. They posted some paper signs about effective handwashing on the bathroom doors, too.

    I think that’s all we’ll get for awhile.

  333. Rhymetime*

    The SF Department of Public Health has shut down official gatherings of more than 50 people for the next couple weeks for all of the properties that they own. This means cancelled symphony performances, etc.

    My nonprofit was planning to host an event for 150 donors and staff on Wednesday evening in San Francisco. Given the policy for other city facilities, we decided this morning to postpone it until the fall. So we’re reaching out to everyone and letting them know. Fortunately it wasn’t an actual fundraiser and we won’t lose money on it because the venue has agreed to let us rebook the space.

    I feel much worse for organizations like the symphony that were hosting musicians from across the world and can’t just reschedule. I’m sure this is costing them a lot.

  334. AnonMurphy*

    IT Infrastructure department, cybersecurity team. My role focuses on identity and access management, risk assessment, vulnerability assessment, etc.

    We have several locations across the country, and while telework is allowed, we have been purchasing equipment and licenses in order to rapidly enable employees to work from home should it become necessary.

    As someone in the cybersecurity/governance space, it’s actually kind of cool – it’s not that you WANT to have to use business continuity plans because it means something bad is going down, but it is a bit of validation of all the hard work that goes into developing these kinds of plans, running tabletop exercises, etc.

    1. AnonMurphy*

      Oh, and my boss just said we may lose conferences if the different organizers decide to cancel. I was hoping to get my first Black Hat trip, but probably no dice on that this year.

  335. But There is a Me in Team*

    I’m sure all the public health folks are way too busy to be reading this, but if you or yours work in that capacity here’s a thanks from me. Lots of long hours, and not without risk.

  336. My Time Has Come*

    Hello all! I work at a university, as an Instructional Technologist and Designer. After a DECADE of no one having the slightest clue what I do, finally, people are starting to get it.

    We built a resource site, are hosting lots of workshops and have redirected huge chunks of our resources towards that goal

  337. probable vector, victor*

    My SO is a gig economy food delivery worker. He’s packed a pump bottle of hand sanitizer in the outer pocket of his food delivery bag and uses it frequently. This is the only protection he will have other than my personal savings account. God help us if one of us gets sick.

    1. virago*

      Your comment says a lot about the public health system and the social safety net in the US — none of it good. I will cross my fingers that both you and your SO remain healthy.

      1. virago*

        Let me rephrase that, since we’re on a workplace Q&A blog:

        Your comment says a lot about the public health system, social safety net, and worker protections in the US — none of it good. I will cross my fingers that you and your SO remain healthy.

        1. probable vector, victor*

          Situations like this really show what a lie the whole “gig economy=self-employment/small business” statement is :( They are talking about tax cuts and government-paid PTO for hourly employees, when most of the gig economy people are like hourly employees, except they are worse off. They are not small business owners with even small assets or credit to tap into, not freelancers with a network who can drum up their own business or seek out a mix of clients and contracts to keep them going. It’s just a crappy job where you can be paid less than minimum wage and have no access to worker’s comp for on the job injuries. And, as we just discovered, you can’t even write off obamacare as a business cost using any of the free tax programs…have to buy the $$$ version, it just seems like adding insult to injury

        2. probable vector, victor*

          thank you for your kind comment btw. no confirmed cases in our city yet and friends say downtown is a ghost town so hopefully it just remains a non issue.

  338. Gaming Teapot*

    I work in a project-based, high-turnover, no remote work possible because we need equipment that has to remain onsite, hotdesking, open office plan environment.

    For anyone who hasn’t run away screeching yet… we’ve definitely seen a sharp increase of sanitizer and soap provided in the bathrooms (we would usually run out about halfway through the week, but for the last two weeks we have not had any supply shortages). Facilities management posted instructions on how to properly wash your hands in all bathrooms. All non-essential travel has been cut. HR has encouraged everyone who recently travelled to an outbreak area or who shows all symptoms to quarantine themselves at home and talk to their GP.

    Honestly, there are a few people in our office who are really stressed out about the virus (mostly those of my co-workers with small children at home). The rest of us, I think, have quietly accepted the fact that sooner or later someone from our office is going to catch it and thanks to our office set-up, the rest of us will probably have it within a week.

  339. Usagi*

    We’re very big on discussing it: since we’re in Hawaii, a very large portion of our team knows people in affected areas of Asia. Problem is, it’s mostly “people” talking about it, vs. the company itself. There have been a few official e-mails that went out, but they’re very non-committal: how to wash your hands, “we’re following what the CDC is saying,” stuff like that.

    Now, personally, I understand why it’s like this. We only just had our second case reported (though we only just started testing too, which is a completely separate issue), and our state government hasn’t really said anything. Zero information from them equals zero information from our company.

    That said, people are getting worried. Besides the hype that’s coming from our friends and family abroad, the fact that we now have people actually officially sick here, means it’s “real.” My coworkers want to know our plan. Are we going to work from home? Not all of us have jobs that would allow us. Will we be forced to take time off? Will we be paid for this time off? How will the company react if schools shut down here; will we be allowed to bring our kids to work?

    It also didn’t help that one of the company-wide e-mails had some very misleading information about masks vs. respirators, and if we’re allowed to wear them at work.

    On one hand, I know that the media is overplaying things a little (or a lottle!), but I also don’t want to be stuck in a situation where the number of cases here progresses so quickly that I don’t even know what’s going on.

  340. Krabby*

    We’ve cancelled all non-essential travel. We allow people to work from home for two weeks if they have just traveled to an affected area, were in contact with someone from an affected area, or are showing symptoms/are ill. We ordered a ton of laptops so we can let more people work from home if things get worse. Covid-19 is a recurring agenda item on our leadership team’s bi-weekly meetings and they send out an email update after each one to our entire staff.
    Our main issue right now is people panicking. They have tried to wfh without approval (a big no-no because of our industry, though it is possible with an okay from our security team). Some of our staff are getting into confrontations with each other over sickness symptoms that have nothing to do with covid-19 (it’s the start of allergy season here and someone came into my office crying because her teammate was being “selfish” and not staying home even though his only symptom is itchy eyes). People are getting aggressive and angry when we don’t approve wfh for people who have been traveling but not to affected areas. One woman just got back home from a country with no confirmed cases. Her work is difficult to do from home so we told her to come in, but her team threw an absolute shit fit. We finally allowed it because we didn’t want to cause the employee any issues with her coworkers.

  341. MiddleGenerationMillennial*

    HA. HAHAHAHA. HR sent us a mansplainer on using PTO for Spring Break, and then advised we could work from home with HR approval.

    Only salaried positions have the option to work from home. I’m hourly.

  342. Anon in California*

    My office is in Santa Clara County, one of the top hotspots in the US. All employees were hastily instructed to work from home starting last week Wednesday, with no end date. We are a very remote friendly culture already, with chat and video conferencing, so its just a shift in working location. But pretty scary for people, I think.

    1. Anon in California*

      Also – we have pulled out of several big conferences, and have eliminated all non-essential employee travel for the next couple months. Huge financial implications for the shows, because we had already paid for a lot of the production of booths.

  343. SusanIvanova*

    My company is rather notoriously not fond of working from home. So it was very surprising that we were told to do so if at all possible. We are now discovering that a system that handled 5% WFH isn’t ready for 90%.

  344. sayrasomething*

    I’m on maternity leave at the moment, but from what I hear from people in the office the directive is to work from home if you’re sick. My company had started issuing laptops to all employees last year (it used to be only certain business units, and you had to use your own computer to connect to the VPN if you wanted to work from home and didn’t have a laptop.) They’re also asking that we reconsider business and personal travel if possible.

    I’m kind of glad I’m not in the office right now. My state only has a few cases – each one isolated so far – but there’s one person in my office that’s not very good about covering her mouth when she’s hacking up a lung….

  345. SeluciaMD*

    We sent out our policy last week and one of the directives – particularly for those who aren’t normally doing remote work – was to start a list of online trainings, readings, projects that normally get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list, etc. and begin to compile things you can work on from home. Those of us that supervise teams are working on developing those lists with our team members so we know they have things they can do remotely. We also just acknowledged among ourselves (org leadership) that if everyone has to work from home or if people in certain roles need to work from home that they will likely be doing less than 40 hours of work per week and we’re just owning that. It is what it is and it’s fine because we’d rather people stay home and pay them their salaries regardless of their output than to create a situation where they feel like they have to come in when they shouldn’t and risk contagion.

    We’ve also put a generous sick leave policy in place so no one comes in just because their leave bank is low. And my boss – our Exec Director – for the first time in a decade stayed home while she was sick! She got sick last week and stayed home Monday and Tuesday which she has literally NEVER DONE in 12 years. She was really deliberate about it because she knows that she is generally the worst offender of working when sick and needed to model the right behavior. It made a big impression on the whole staff, particularly since it coincided with sending out the policy. She really was sick so the timing was just coincidental, but it really helped underscore how serious we are about having people stay home if they are sick and that it went all the way to the top of the food chain. I swear this made more of an impression than anything we put in writing.

    When we put out our policy last week it made me really proud to work for my boss – who I adore and have worked with for over a decade – because she was like, let’s be smart, let’s be proactive, and let’s make sure we’re making it really easy for people to take care of themselves and make smart health decisions. Let’s be part of the solution here rather than the problem. I’m worried about friends and family members who I know won’t get this kind of support until their employers are legally required to offer it.

    1. LQ*

      I really like the point about your ED taking days off as a deliberate part of the actions your place is taking. Showing that you mean take time is critical.

    1. Dinopigeon*

      Lol, there are NO kleenex anywhere in my “green” office. The faucets and soap dispensers are all touchless, but really crappy design, so they don’t work half the time.

  347. LaPetite*

    DC nonprofit organization, works with school age children. As of today, cancelling all in-person events and programming. Office on total telework policy for next week at least. Sick days you take this month don’t count towards your total allowance.

  348. BlondeSpiders*

    I work in health insurance, just north of Seattle. We are outside of the affected county, but myself and several hundreds of others on our campus (of roughly 3300) live in that county. On Thursday night we got word that we are all to work from home for the next 2 weeks. As a recruiting-type person, I am scrambling to change all our onsite interviews to virtual interviews, and am anticipating many hiccups. I am concerned about our non-employee staff like cafe workers, janitorial and security staff, and how they will fare for the next 2 weeks.

    I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I’m not terribly concerned for my safety, as I seem to have the constitution of an ox and rarely get sick. But my biggest fear is that I could unknowingly carry it around and then pass it on to my elderly mother or immuno-compromised individuals.

  349. old curmudgeon*

    I work for a state government agency in a region usually referred to as “fly-over country.” In other words, this state is not currently a hotbed of covid-19.

    Nevertheless, leadership at all levels of the state is taking a very serious approach to planning and preparing, including emails from the governor’s office to every state employee. While nobody is panicking, every agency is reviewing their Continuation of Operations Plan, otherwise known as a COOP because government loves acronyms, to ensure that it will address all possible contingencies.

    Within my work unit, which does most of its work on computers with very little paper-handling, our Bureau Director has already made sure that everyone is equipped to work remotely in the event that state staff are directed not to report to our usual workplaces. We are a typical government unit, i.e. not terribly well funded, and the funding we do receive comes with plenty of restrictions on how it can be used, so we have basic desktop computers rather than laptops, and there certainly isn’t any way to come up with laptops for several dozen employees on short notice. So our Bureau Director has instead made sure that each person in our unit has a secure fob to use to access the state network remotely from home computers, and we’ve all had training in how to use them and what the expectations are for remote-location work.

    This approach is in marked contrast to that taken by other employers, like the one that employs my Elder Kid. EK works for a software company that has clients worldwide. Despite the fact that the company has a number of staff who routinely work remote, there are no plans for (or even discussion about) having all staff work from home in the event of an outbreak in the region. On the contrary, they are happily trucking along just as always, sending staff to client sites for extended visits with no precautions. EK is being sent to Quebec this week, in fact, with a planned trip to one of the Carolinas a couple of weeks later.

  350. Lizzo*

    I work for an association; small staff of ~20. We have been in the process of transitioning to a 100% distributed workforce for the past two years (the transition will be complete in a year from now), so we are already in a good place with tools for effective remote work.

    We already had a “if you’re sick, don’t work” culture in place, but this has been reiterated. The transmission risk is much lower since we’re not all in the same place. Hourly employees who would not normally have 100% remote privileges have been given those privileges, and asked to use their best judgment.

    We had to postpone one of our upcoming major conferences to summer dates, mostly because companies of our conference attendees (and sponsors) are enacting strict no-travel policies.

    IMO, the economic impact of this virus is going to be far worse than the health impact.

  351. roisin54*

    I work for a large public library in a state with a couple dozen confirmed cases (mostly in my part of the state) but no deaths so far. Management has sent out multiple emails with links to resources for us to share with the public, emailed out the common sense advice (wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, etc..), put up posters in all the bathrooms (staff and public) outlining proper hand-washing technique, and one of my co-workers wrote a blog post about resources. We’ve had one event cancelled so far, but I suspect that was at the speaker’s request and not ours.

    My job, like most jobs here, can’t be done remotely since much of it involves interacting with the public. We get a generous amount of paid sick leave and I rarely ever use it so I have a ton of it saved up. Obviously I hope I don’t get it but if I do, I won’t have to worry about my job.

  352. dog in a bag*

    Seattle here, from one of the main tech companies. We had initially been leaving the WFH position up to individual teams, and then that changed once we got confirmation one of our employees had C19. Suddenly, entire campus is told to WFH, work with managers to make WFH possible if it wasn’t usually, the whole shebang. Last Thursday I went in to grab some notes for the rest of the month, saw a few people in office, and not 2 hours later had an org-wide email from our VP telling everyone to go home now.

    My team in particular is concerned with long term effects on our work. We can do it remotely, but it’s 100x harder having to ping/call/email for all the little questions we have, which is nothing to say about the whiteboarding and diagramming we need to do as a group as part of our regular work.

  353. pypl*

    I work for PayPal in the US but on a global team and am usually remote; I have an office I can get to in 70-90 min if I want to work from there, plus other offices I travel to when needed. We’ve made the bay area offices WFH through at least end of month with more details to come then, and people in other offices are asked to basically follow what their region of the country or world is doing. My own dept has about 200 people all over the world (hubs are London, NYC, Singapore, and Bangalore, but with people in so many other smaller offices or remote all around the world) – our senior leadership sent an email today that was basically like, every one of you can do your job at home and please use your own judgment if you want to do that or need to do that. If you aren’t currently remote and want to go remote, just make sure your manager and facility are aware, and follow all of the best practices for avoiding the virus, and no more travel until further notice. Very reasonable and fair. Work can go on from anywhere for us. (That may not be the case for call center and facility workers, and contractors, so I hope we are taking good care of them. I would assume so, it’s in line with our company culture to do so, but I missed the last 30 min of our All Hands the other day for another meeting so I can’t confirm.)

  354. Can't Sit Still*

    International travel has been banned, and travel within the US is essential only, requiring executive approval. We are allowed to WFH or come into the office, whichever we feel most comfortable doing, they have hired extra janitorial staff to sanitize work surfaces, and they have made meetings virtual or rescheduled or cancelled, depending on the meeting. One small conference has been rescheduled and a couple of large face to face meetings where people fly in from all over the country have been cancelled. I have a lot of what was going to be face to face training this month, but corporate has banned all travel to the SF Bay Area, so the trainers are presenting remotely.

    However, a co-worker who knows I’m immunucompromised let me know there’s a rumor that an employee has been exposed. It’s still a rumor, but I imagine they’ll have everyone WFH if it’s true. I’m already working from home this week, because I figured this would be the week where everything hit the fan, and then we can reassess at the end of the week. My boss has several high risk family members at home, so she’s going to WFH for a while, too.

    I don’t know what the plan is for employees who can’t WFH at all, which is a small enough number that hopefully, they’ll just pay them. The company is in a financial position to do that, and that’s what they’ve done with other disasters.

  355. Lies, damn lies and...*

    If you’re sick, stay home (pto/wfh, we all have laptops and ability to work remotely), if you travel internationally you may need to quarantine. No word yet on domestic travel and no restrictions yet. Guess next week’s work trip is on!

  356. Grammy*

    I work in the billing office customer service for a specialty pediatric hospital in the middle of the US. We are still working in the office but plans are being made to move to remote if needed. That will slow us down so much, going from 2 screens at a desktop to a laptop, if we can do that. I have no desire to work from home, and no interest in using my own laptop and cell phone for work purposes. For now we are to self assess every morning before reporting to work: fever, sob, cough? If we are not healthy to check in with Employee Health. We were screened by our bosses over the weekend – have we had contact with anyone who has been out of the US, how is our health, etc. That was an anxiety provoking call on Saturday morning. The hospital is limiting patient/family entrance to one entrance, and families will be screened in their cars before they enter the parking garages or clinic areas. I am all for the precautions, our herd immunity will protect the patients who have weakened immune systems. In the billing and admin offices we’re not in the hospital proper, we rarely have patient/family contact and we’re being more stringent about it. The restrooms now have some stronger cleansers for our use, and I’m using double the amount of hand lotion that I was before. I’m in that demographic where I’m likely to be higher risk, yes a boomer. The ancient Chinese curse comes to mind — may you live in interesting times.

  357. Temporarily Anonymous*

    Canadian provincial government worker in the justice system here. I’m public facing and we are considered an essential service so shutdown NEVER happens (Blizzard? Your only legit excuse is if you come from out of town. IED? Hey it didn’t damage the building much and don’t worry that the bomber is still out there. Flood and the whole building is sprayed with gross chemicals? If it bothers you *that much*, you can use SL and go home). Due to the nature of our work and security issues, working from home will never be possible.

    So far we haven’t had any cases in our province. We just got a mass email with the usual obvious recommendations (wash your hands, don’t cough at people, use sick leave if sick, etc) this week. The email claims that *they* are updating their preparedness plan but doesn’t say anything about what that will address or if we’d close down anything if we have an outbreak locally. It definitely doesn’t mention what anyone would do if they don’t still have 2 weeks of VL or sick leave to use for quarantine at the very end of the fiscal year. We get about 2 weeks of sick leave per year but mine is almost gone for regular chronic illness reasons and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

  358. Vatch*

    I’m retail, seasonal (think custom designed teapots for brides). So far, all corporate is doing are things that effect the corporate/year round employees. Nothing, not even extra wipes, for the retail employees who are interacting with the public all day.

    There are very strict school attendance policies in our state. 3 days absence gets you a letter threatening to put you in jail because your child hasn’t been in school. Total allowed absences without a doctor’s note is 5, at which point you have to have a note or get threatened with the police again. (My son has a chronic condition that keeps him home enough to get us in trouble alot.) Lots of lip service about staying home if you have symptoms, but no support at all for the reality of it.

    To top everything off, my husband has congestive heart failure and is high risk. His employer has a major conference planned for next week and they are insisting he go, in spite of everything. Tomorrow he’s going to tell them he refuses, and we’ll see what happens. This is going to use up 95% of his political capital though and he isn’t sure he’ll be able to recover from it.

  360. Amazon Associate*

    I work in an Amazon FC as a warehouse worker in Euclid, OH. As of yesterday; Amazon will not assess penalties if we call out ill, or if one has an ill family/household member. ABM is the cleaning company there and they will increase services. I don’t think all the Lysol in the world will be sufficient to protect our employees. I see lots of abuse with the tine off policy. Just today it seems many just left. We are already on mandatory overtime. Three people in the county (Cuyahoga) have the virus. The Governor just declared a state of emergency. One can practice great hygiene, but this virus is airborne. Hoping for the best and preparing for the worse.

  361. Mimmy*

    I work in a state agency in New Jersey. We directly serve adult clients (who reside at our facility during the week), so working from home is not an option for any of us.

    Our governor just declared a state of emergency this evening. Our number of cases is still small but we’re near New York, which is a hot spot, so it is concerning.

    As for my job, there hasn’t been much discussion at all; most communications I’ve seen have been related to general prevention and how all the different entities are working together.

    Some of our students are probably higher risk due to diabetes and other health conditions, so that concerns me. It would suck if we had to close, though, because I don’t think we’re permitted to do any work from home. I’m not even sure we have remote access to anything besides email. Also, a few of us–myself included–are part-timers so we don’t get PTO. We do get some earned leave time, but I don’t think the amount I have is enough to cover me if we had to close for an extended period.

    As I type this out, I’m wishing more and more that we had a solid plan in place for both our students and the staff. Now with this state of emergency, maybe something will take shape. Better to be prepared.

  363. Ryan Howard’s White Suit*

    I work remotely, so no worries about my stuff. My kids have laptops for school and I assume they’d still get their work if their school closed. What had not occurred to me was the possibility of my family having to be quarantined without closures. My husband is an Episcopal priest and I assumed he’d be exposed at some point, but now I find myself drawing up a list of things we’d need for two weeks if we’re all feeling ok but can’t leave the house.

    1. Mythea*

      Do you think the social net of people willing to get you things and drop them outside is something your area can count on?

  364. Nerfmobile*

    I work for an international software company, and probably 95% of us can do our work effectively from home. We’ve gone from “Follow the directions in your country” (we have hundred of people in China, Singapore, Japan…), to “Your health is important, so consider travel carefully and work from home if you choose”, to (just this week) “You are strongly requested but not required to work from home for the next two weeks and only business-critical travel (approved by a VP) is allowed”.

    And before this week we had extra hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes in the office, switched from reusable plates, cups, and silverware to paper/plastic, and added extra cleanings for meeting rooms and common spaces.

  365. Anonymous Nonprofit*

    I work for a medium state-wide nonprofit in a state that has had a few cases but isn’t hugely affected. I’m really proud of the response of my employer. We had a webinar from our executive director midweek last week. He told us that EVERYONE who didn’t have prior meetings in the organization was to work from home last Friday and try to log on remotely. This was designed to troubleshoot problems with remote login.

    Executive Director overrode local directors who wanted to make the lowest paid receptionists come in because they had no work to do from home because executive director wanted everyone possible to try to log in from home to see what impact that had on our systems. The nonprofit even discussed lower paid and rural employees that might not have easy access to remote login ability or even to afford computers and had to do it by their mobile phones. They wanted to see how it went for everyone.

    I had a meeting away from the office that didn’t allow me to work from home and got hounded (in a good way) today to see if I could log in remotely just to let them know when I got home tonight.

    Employer said they wouldn’t be looking over everyone’s shoulders to make sure they did their full work hours because they knew not everyone had 7.5 hours of work to do from home on Friday with a day’s notice, but thought it was worth it to test our systems.

  366. GalleryMouse*

    I’m a little late to the comments on this one (it has been a crazy day) and will read through them but just wanted to say how disappointed I was at my company’s unwillingness to be flexible with the work schedule to allow some (or those that are scared and worried) to work from home – even after finding out that there is a confirmed case of an employee on another floor (who works for another company) being tested positive. That company has vacated their employees and they are all now working remotely as their offices are being cleaned.

    Hate to say it but nothing like a crisis to make one’s true colors shine through. I hope other’s are having a much better response from their employers.

  367. Working in J-Land*

    I work in Tokyo. My company started by adjusting our core hours to encourage people to travel during off-peak times, and encouraging people to work from home. More people are working from home, but the majority are still coming in every day. I’ll be getting a company phone and thus the ability to work from home in the next week or so.
    A lot of our clients (big pharma) have staff working from home, and all client meetings are now done over phone/skype.
    Daily life: The trains have been slightly less packed. The bakeries have been individually pre-wrapping pastries or putting up sneeze guards. Toilet paper and masks are gone, and most people are wearing masks outside. Hand sanitizer as a product wasn’t very popular here, but apparently that’s sold out too. Reselling masks may get you jail time soon (the government may enforce a section of an emergency Act).

  368. Maggie*

    I’m in Australia, currently we’re not concerned about anyone who hasn’t had direct contact with a confirmed case or been to a hotspot – but honestly that could change within the week, the way everything is going.

    My workplace has fairly good work from home policies because we’re a disability advocacy org that makes an effort to hire disabled staff, although our technology situation is not really optimal for implementing those policies smoothly. At the moment, we’ve got sanitiser at reception and two people have switched to working from home because they had contact with someone down a contact chain from a suspected case, on the basis that it’s better to be excessively cautious at this stage. The building has also contracted a cleaning firm to go over the lifts and bathrooms in the middle of the workday. I’m honestly more concerned about public transport, but I don’t want to switch to work from home preemptively to avoid the commute because I have a toddler and no kind of home office.

  369. Maladyvaccine*

    I work in an office in London and we are following official guidelines as they evolve (no overreacting) but also preparing for a situation where we might need to work from home.

    A colleague with a partner who is currently seriously immune compromised due to cancer treatment has started permanently working from home at the moment and we are treating each individual request as it is raised and with compassion.

    We all work from home regularly anyway so are set up to do so for the most part.

    The department of the company based in China have been working at home under quarantine for a while now and we are folowing their lead in best practice with things like putting video on for calls.

    I’m a fairly moderate person so appreciate my company for being thoughtful, prepared and understanding staff concerns but not encouraging panic.

  370. a passerby*

    Absolutely nothing.

    Enabling remote work was seen as too much of a hassle, and bathroom signs and disinfectant dismissed as ineffective. The prevailing sentiment is that people will catch it eventually, and that it’ll pass like the flu and not come back. People are being told that most people with corona will probably be able to come in, and to only stay home in exceptionally severe cases.

    1. EA*

      Well that’s concerning… Sorry you’re going through that. Where are you geographically? I’m in one of the few states with no cases but even we are putting plans in place…

  371. The Other Dawn*

    I’m out on medical leave at the moment so I couldn’t participate, but my company had a pandemic exercise yesterday. Other than that, I haven’t seen anything beyond sending us update emails about the virus, which include the standard recommendations to make sure we wash our hands, use wipes to wipe down our desks, etc. They’re handling quarantines on a case-by-case basis. At the moment we have only one person we’re requiring to be quarantined, and that’s someone in my department. She’s traveling abroad and will be required to work from home for two weeks when she gets back next week, even though she doesn’t have a WFH type of job, nor the setup at home for it. But IT will make it work for her.

  372. Kate H*

    We’re not.

    Considering the new employee handbook took three years to draft and still wasn’t comprehensive enough, I don’t have much hope of policy being written behind closed doors. My boss brought it up to grandboss because he wanted to know if working from home would be an option if it comes to our area. My entire department stares at a computer all day so there’s no reason why we can’t work from home–except that upper management doesn’t want us to. Ever. Grandboss told boss that it might be an option for him because he has a company laptop but the rest of us probably wouldn’t be allowed.

    We have five paid sick days at least and I’d like to believe that if we have doctor documentation that we have a global pandemic disease we wouldn’t be required to cut into our vacation time to quarantine but we really have no idea what will happen.

  373. Catalyst*

    So, we just found out today that starting next week each of our departments will be split in half and we will be working from home one on one off for the foreseeable future. Their theory is that this way, there is no chance that one department will get wiped out with illness at once.

    Not sure how I feel about it to be honest.

  374. WantonSeedStitch*

    I work at a university in the US, and the university is suspending all travel abroad and all non-essential domestic travel (including travel for conferences). They’re discouraging personal travel abroad, and if you travel to a higher-risk country, you have to self-quarantine off-campus for two weeks. They’re encouraging people to register any travel in a confidential travel registry for tracking purposes. All events of 150+ people must be canceled, rescheduled, or virtualized. They’re taking any classes over that size online and out of the classroom. They’re asking folks doing smaller events to take into account things like the likely age of the participants (if there would be a lot of them over 60, maybe don’t have it), the size of the space (don’t pack people like sardines), and the possible risk to staff working on the event. I actually really like the fact that they pointed out people working for outside vendors may not have much in the way of sick time or health benefits, so we should be conscientious and avoid putting those people at risk. Everyone’s being told to stay home if they don’t feel well, and there’s a general understanding that if you feel you’re at significant risk (e.g., if you’re immunocompromised and we get reports of a case on campus), you should work from home. The university is relaxing policies about working from home for this. Everyone in my department will be taught how to set up WebEx meetings so we can ensure people can participate in meetings remotely, and EVERY meeting must have this as an option. I feel like most of this is pretty sensible stuff, not too paranoid but taking it seriously.

  375. Autophage*

    I work as a consultant for a firm of a bit over 300, focusing primarily on software development and process improvement. Most of our accounts have work-from-home agreements in place, and most of our accounts are in the DC area. We are being told to always take everything we need (computers, access cards, etc) home in case we feel sick the next day.

    An email also just went out about self-quarantine procedures: if we have any reasonable possibility of having come in contact with the virus, we are to notify our supervisors and stay at home (working, if we feel well enough to) for 14 days.

    It’s worth noting that the company also has a good sick leave policy – people can, and do, take time when they’re sick.

  376. HRPerson*

    We are in a medium-sized city in the Midwest and have had no cases in our city yet. Approx 420 employees. We have a pandemic plan which we are following. We are encouraging handwashing additional cleaning and proper respiratory etiquette. If someone is sick they must stay home. Managers are required to send home anyone who is sick. We have put disinfectant and Clorox wipes by all sinks and in all conference rooms. We have a “food based” culture and have requested (not mandated) teams don’t share food for the time being. We are canceling all business travel. Since next week is Spring Break, we may require some who travel to work from home for 14 days after they return. I’m traveling to San Francisco and since they have confirmed cases (13) I will probably be asked to work from home. We are also preparing technology for many in our main office to work from home. We have several hundred hourly staff in multiple locations and we are discussing reduced staff, lenient sick policies (letting people go negative) and we will drop the doctor’s note requirement if we have community spread here. Starting today we are limiting visitors/vendors and requesting meeting be virtual if possible. This seems like a lot, but we’re pretty sure there will be community spread here and we will be prepared!

  377. Erin*

    I’m a tech employee in Seattle. We are all working from home until April (at least) and all travel has been suspended.

    The positive side of this? I’m more productive with getting things done. Also, meetings seem to have tapered quite a bit bc video conferencing is just….meh.

    In the few days leading up to the announcement that everyone transition to full time WFH, the janitorial staff was working like crazy – disinfecting railings and touch screens for elevators. I started a tally of hand sanitizer bottles with a few co-workers, but, we lost count (poor data integrity on our part!). It was truly an incredible force of folks who were trying to stop the spread of this virus. I have never seen anything like it.

    I’m not sure if we will get back to the office in April at this point, so, I re-organized my home office space. The virus seems to be spreading more rapidly, and that is just plain scary.

  378. Mike S*

    I work for a research hospital.
    All travel has been cancelled. If you were going to go to a conference, and can’t get reimbursed, we’ll do it.
    Large meetings have been cancelled. Medium sized meetings now have to take place in the large meeting rooms, so everyone can spread out. Small meetings are more or less unchanged. If you can work from home, go for it.

  379. Rez123*

    Employees returning from risk areas can come to work if no symptoms. If anyone has any symproms (cough, fever, sore throat etc.) they should stay home and use their sick days, contact occupational doctor and manager. Occupational doctor will then consult epidemiologist. This will change according to developments.

    We work in a hospital so treatment protools are very extensive and specific. This is Still playing by ear since we are just getting our first cases.

  380. Just peachy*

    I work in SF. So far only my pregnant coworker gets to WFH for at least the next 2 weeks. But she only lives 5 min away and half of us have at least a 45 min commute on public transit.

  381. Amethystmoon*

    Ours has sent several memos telling us to wash our hands for 20 seconds. Also, any work travel out of the country is prohibited unless signed off by some uber head honcho, and any vacation travel by employees to affected countries must be signed off by the same uber head honcho. We also received a memo last week telling us that we can take FMLA leave for this, whether it is caring for a family member or ourselves. So maybe that will cut down on some people coming in sick, but this company has retaliated against people taking FMLA leave in the past (using other excuses, of course).

  382. emptymountainecho*

    My company is very anti-telework although the office I work in is literally in downtown DC. I asked my boss about our policy and was told “Unless there is a quarantine put on the city you should report in to work.” So unless things get really bad, I need to risk infection every day by riding the metro, etc. Bleh.

    1. Stormy Weather*

      NPR did a story yesterday and one corporate suit commented, “I don’t feel people are as productive at home.”

      He can eff the heck off. Once distractions are controlled or mitigated, you’re in an environment where you control the heat, ambient music, and you have better snacks and beverages because you stocked the kitchen.

      I’m sorry your boss is an idiot.

      1. emptymountainecho*

        thank you :) I’ll just wash my hands constantly because apparently that’s the key to it all.

  383. agnes*

    WE have a number of employees without much sick leave. I would like for my organization to pay attention to this issue and let people know what the plan is if we get to that point. I have employees in my office crying worrying about not getting paid if the situation worsens here. When I ask about it, the answer I get is “We aren’t there yet.” And I keep saying “your employees ARE there. They are worrying themselves sick and that isn’t good for anyone. Why can’t you at least make a decision about what will happen “IF” things worsen?” It falls on deaf ears.

    1. Xarcady*

      And as long as they don’t say anything, people will come to work because they need the money. The employees who are most concerned are the ones with the least sick time, or even no sick time, and probably the lowest pay. Which means even a week off puts them in a difficult spot financially.

      When the choice is break self-quarantine or not be able to pay the rent, buy food, or put gas in the car, there’s a lot of people are going to choose paying the rent.

      I have a part time job at a major US chain department store. Other than managers telling us we can bring in our own hand sanitizer and use it as often as we like, there has been absolutely no word about what to do if we get sick or think we have been exposed. Corporate level employees have been given the okay to work from home, but there is no info for the employees who would suffer the most from long stretches of no work. Not a word from management, not a hint on the employee website, which appears to be more concerned with making sure we clock in correctly (this month’s employee tip).

      1. agnes*

        You are exactly right. My department has our lowest paid employees, and they can’t work from home–their work requires them to be onsite. it would mean a whole hell of a lot to them if the management team would at least acknowledge their concern and tell them SOMETHING. To even say, we will let you go into negative sick time or we will give you a few days.

        1. mercedenne*

          As I am originally from Orlando, I had one of my hometown friends inform me that Darden restaurants are only giving employees one hour sick leave per thirty hours worked. That’s eight weeks of work for a single day off–IN HOSPITALITY. It’s utterly infuriating.

  384. mercedenne*

    Higher ed grad student reporting in. Our state has had multiple cases and multiple universities (private) close down. I am traveling home for spring break next week.

    I have been telling all of my students to please wash their hands–like, for real, full amount of time, please, our receptionist is old and we have people with compromised immune systems in the office–and I think we might be switching to a “quarantine for two weeks after spring break and online classes yaaaaaay” protocol? As I am a grad student, I don’t get to find out until it’s announced.

    If I am home for three weeks straight, I’m going to get a lot of work done on my thesis. I’ll skype with my students. My job search will continue as normal–but I think that we won’t be doing campus interviews anytime soon, so I’ll get cozy with Skype and Zoom. I’m not too worried about getting sick. I’m just flabbergasted by how many people don’t wash their hands.

  385. anoninCA*

    Higher ed employee in CA here – I had a cold last week and was off work for three days because we have to wait 24 hours after symptoms go away before coming back in.

    The official campus plan is “we have been monitoring it closely and we have it under control”. That’s all the info we have. Several state unis have shut down and also several UCs, but mostly in highly affected areas. Conferences have been canceled. We are still planning public events as normal. Our county declared a public health emergency even though we have no confirmed cases, which of course is causing a panic with our parent population.

    My SO works in the law enforcement/court system and says all inmates are wearing masks 24-7 and it’s spooky AF. Other than that, he’s heard nothing from his chief as to what their plan is.

    1. anoninCA*

      P.S. I work in the university advancement department, and am legitimately freaked out because we have NOT eliminated work travel at all. And many of my coworkers spend 80% or more of their time traveling to the Bay Area, Sacramento, LA, and other out of state metropolitan areas where we have alumni.

    2. mercedenne*

      Earlier this semester half my office (disability services and TRIO) was out for a week with the flu because of the 24 hours symptom free rule. It was utter chaos. Hopefully we don’t have to do the “let’s self-quarantine” dance.

      I also can’t believe your institutional advancement hasn’t eliminated work travel, especially given the locations!

    3. nm*

      My university has cancelled all travel and is preparing to move all classes online. Not confimred that we’re actually going to do that, but just making sure we’re prepared. Actually the system we use for our regular online classes is integrated into the university-wide course websites and is surprisingly user-friendly so I don’t expect this to be a difficult transition…fingers crossed!

  386. UXR123*

    I work in user experience research, and I’ve never been prouder to work for the agency I do. We’re based in SF (with offices in NYC and India) and our leadership team last week made the call to not only shut down our offices, but to convert to remote or cancel all in-person research, until the situation changes. In the words of our CEO, “We have a moral obligation to define our role in minimizing transmission of the virus.” She’s prioritizing not just the health and safety of us (employees) and our clients, but our participants and our broader community. She’s put together a pledge for other UX researchers here – https://medium.com/answerlab-user-experience-ux-insights/researchers-please-join-our-pledge-to-go-remote-8b8ace77bbbc. If anyone’s in the field, I hope you consider signing, and for anyone outside the field, hopefully it can serve as an example!

  387. Bob Dob*

    I work in a private company in the US and a bunch of changes were just announced to the employees, many of the them to implement “Social Distancing” strategy. All work travel cancelled. Large internal meetings cancelled. No food/catering deliveries. No non-essential visitors. Arrangements to work from home part of the week are being initiated for some personnel. Disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer distributed to employees. Hand washing requirements. Take your laptop home daily in case there is an unexpected office closure. And more of that nature.

  388. Makare*

    Late to the party, but this is too insane not to share.

    I live in a large city in Germany, where the situation is not too bad at this point, but companies are making their preparations. My office is around 100 people, all doing work that really could easily be done remotely–especially in my team–however the company has refused to consider allowing home office for years (that’s a whole different story). Of course, now coronavirus has them scrambling to figure out how to implement a work from home plan.

    So here’s their brilliant plan: They have installed a secure VPN on our work computers so we can connect remotely to the server to access files, etc from outside the office. Sounds good. Except we all work on desktop PCs with dual monitors. In the event that we have to work from home, we will all have to TAKE OUR DESKTOPS & MONITORS HOME WITH US and remote in that way. Did I mention this is in a European city with excellent public transit, i.e., nobody has cars? So we get to lug a computer tower, monitor(s), and cords down the street and into the subway/bus? Oh and also, there’s no way to test whether this VPN program works ahead of time without actually taking the computer out of the office and trying it out.

    Today they’ve announced that at some point in the near future, someone will take the company car and drive our computers to our apartments, where we will test the functionality for ONE DAY, and then they will pick them all back up and we’ll go back to the office as normal afterwards, until the company decides to implement work from home officially. Also there’s only one company car, so they’re going to have to organize the drop-off and pick-up by neighborhood.

    And before you ask, IT knows about the existence of Remote Desktop Connection–I straight-up asked them if they couldn’t just give administrator permission on our computers so we could remote in from our personal computers, and they said it wasn’t secure. I guess somehow removing some 80-100 desktops from company property and lugging them up and down apartment building stairs all over the city is less risky. I honestly feel like I’m in some kind of farce.

    1. EA*

      Oh. My. Goodness. Someone is not thinking this through and I suddenly feel even more thankful for my work issued laptop!! Good luck to you!

    2. GalleryMouse*

      Oh wow! I get that some businesses cant do flex home work but jeez! I’m sorry, I hope this works out and at least set’s them up for more flexibility in the future.

      1. HJMCNJ*

        Desktops???
        In any case, I work for a private, conservative company in a state where cases are building. There is no plan. Like your company they have always frowned on telecommuting. The workforce is mostly young (not me) perhaps they don’t trust them – not sure. In any case they have sent out some bland emails about watching for signs of illness. Like you ALL of our jobs can be done remotely and probably better, because the Internet connectivity in the office sucks and it is an open office and noisy. The real kicker – our revenues will be adversely affected because of all the conferences being canceled plus our own events that will be canceled. Yet so far, no word on social distancing, so the longer they decide to be stubborn and remain in 1955 the more they hurt their own long term prospects by encouraging the spread of illness. Good stuff.

        1. Makare*

          We have a theory that maybe they’re making this as inconvenient as possible so that when we ask for home office again in the future as a regular perk, they can point to this ‘experiment’ and say, “No, it’s much too difficult/inconvenient/time-consuming to set up!” I definitely think there’s a strong case of distrust of the employees going on here–which is so unreasonable, given that our team at least works entirely on small projects with hard deadlines each day, it would be so easy to see if someone wasn’t getting their work done!

  389. RestResetRule*

    Campus in the midwest with no active cases of the virus in the state, but leadership on campus has created a task force to monitor the situation. Suspended study abroad programs in countries that have been severely affected, and they are encouraging students/faculty/staff not to travel to those areas. Completely restricted if it is university funded travel. They are considering canceling future large university events.

    Still, grocery stores here are being cleaned out of hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies.

  390. Anonnington*

    NYC here. I mostly work from home. However, I’m scheduled to do a live appearance later this week. I’m waiting to see if they’ll cancel it. People in my industry are mostly falling into the, “It’s all hype,” camp, and making jokes about it. So I’m expecting it won’t be cancelled. That concerns me because a lot of my neighbors are older smokers. I don’t want to catch it and infect them somehow.

    So! I’m making plans to reduce my risk. I’m going to rent a car or use a ride share (not ideal, but better than the subway). And just avoid contact with people and wash my hands a lot. I guess that’s more than a lot of NYC offices are doing right now. But I take this thing seriously and I want to do my part to reduce the harm it could cause here.

    1. ArtsNerd*

      This is the kind of thing I’m struggling with! A good half of my building is elderly folks, and I don’t want to put them at higher risk, but I’ve got obligations that can’t be postponed or canceled. Is wiping down communal surfaces enough? It’s such a hard call.

  391. DustyJ*

    First case has just been identified in my province. My very-large employer just released a very generic statement, burbling about how the welfare of their employees is a priority, (LOL, really?), that people should wash their hands, and people with symptoms should take sick leave.

    Nothing specific. Nothing about employees who are going to slam head-first into disciplinary hearings if they take too much sick leave. No working from home, no office closures, and no emergency plans. I think they’re going to stick their heads in the sand as long as possible.

  392. Sarra*

    I work in downtown Seattle.

    My office (admittedly, only ~25 people, but Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are some of my office’s biggest clients) is entirely work-from-home at this point. Our global CEO (we have offices in Seattle, LA, Chicago, NYC, London, Sydney, Melbourne, and Dubai) has set this Friday as a global WFH trial day, with the intention of having all employees worldwide work from home for the duration if everything works out for everyone. I don’t mind too much – I took my laptop dock and monitors home, so I’m set up beautifully from my desk, and a lot of our client meetings use Teams or Webex already. The one downside is that a lot of our work involves travel – I recently flew to Phoenix and LA, and one of my colleagues is currently in Lansing, and was recently in Denver and NYC. She’s working with her clients on making more of her work remote, but it’s challenging given the nature of what we do (market research and consulting – a LOT of in-person focus groups).

    My child’s school district is still open, and doesn’t plan to go to distance learning because of equity issues – not all families have access to high speed internet (and as at every school, there are some families who are unhoused or living in shelters – how would they connect??) and the children/families who rely on free/reduced breakfast/lunch at the school would suffer greatly. There’s a very well off district in the area that is all distance learning at this point, because they were able to provide children with laptops and mobile hot spot devices if they didn’t have them, and they’re handing out grocery gift cards to families in need (a very small portion of their families!). This is definitely not an option for the rest of the state. :(

    1. JustaTech*

      I’m in Seattle too. Only the lab folks are coming into the office, so there are basically two empty floors. Now that schools are closing folks have joked (joked!) that we should turn the lunch room into a daycare/school and put all the (healthy) kids there so their parents can keep working.
      I’m sure this would never happen, but at this point a lot of folks are in need of a laugh because the thought of having to come up with a plan for their kids for the next month is pretty overwhelming.

  393. Misty*

    Just found out an hour ago that my college canceled all classes next week. The week after everything goes to online classes. Should be interesting, I’ve never taken an online class before.

    1. JustaTech*

      Good luck!
      I did a grad program that was 90% online, and it was a good program, but it was also a program that was always planned to be online, and part time, so all the classes were planned with the idea that we’d do lectures and most assignments in our own time (not everyone trying to watch the prof live-stream).

      The only real advice I can offer is to be sure to find whatever chat groups your classmates are in to make sure you’re getting the discussion/group study parts of your class. It’s probably going to be pretty bumpy for the first couple of days but hopefully everyone will figure it out.

      Oh, and if you live with other folks, make sure it’s super clear to them when you’re in class/doing homework, so they aren’t interrupting you to do the dishes or something.

  394. Lucy P*

    My coworker’s daughter attends a pre-school locally. The husband of one of the preschool’s teachers had contact with one of the coronavirus victims over the previous weekend. The teacher didn’t know until Monday evening, after spending the day with her class. The teacher in now in a preventative quarantine, while the school is still open.

    Coworker toyed with telling the boss but is afraid the boss will blame them if any workers go sick (regardless of how they caught it). Apparently boss had already blamed coworker in a roundabout way for passing the flu onto other people in the office earlier this year. (On a side note, boss also believes that they themselves had coronavirus in early January and got over it on their own.)

    Another coworker is running around asking everyone if they will get paid if they have to be quarantined. I just keep saying that there is no plan in place(until yesterday our state only had 1 case) . I think the honest answer is no. The funds are not there at the moment. We get up to 2 weeks PTO per year to use as necessary. No separate sick leave . This employee often borrows advanced leave and currently has none available. Sadly, most employees are either “in the hole” in terms of leave or don’t have more than a few days leave available.

  395. givry16*

    my office has done a lot of things right; instituted daily cleanings and wipe-downs of surfaces, but most importantly TELEWORKING. there’s a lot of travel in my industry and people who came back from level 2 countries were told to work from home for 2 weeks. this is very easy for us and while normally the office doesnt telework all the time, senior people do it almost weekly. at staff meetings people were encouraged to work from home if they felt called to, and were explicitly told it would have no standing on their job performance. as of yesterday the office shut down and switched to almost mandatory teleworking.

  396. LV426*

    So 2 weeks ago our company announced the Covid-19 virus is an issue. Work at home if you are sick, we will provide hand sanitizer on site stay healthy.
    The same day they announced our official work from home policy was over and everyone had to report to the office and they were even opening offices in cities that didn’t have an office to force people to come to work.
    Monday they called people in my local office and told them all to go home as they are closing the office and they will be setting up a drop ship location for techs to pick up equipment from.
    Tuesday they sent out a notice saying stay home if you feel unwell, wash your hands, practice safe measures.
    Wednesday after our governor banned gatherings over 250 people and asked that businesses have their employees work from home until further notice our company cancelled air travel around the states and overseas. I also found out that they are systematically ordering equipment and software so all employees can now all work from home.
    Today they announced that our work from home policy has been reinstated and we should all work from home until further notice except for our field techs.

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