On Sunday afternoon, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN dropped a mini-bomb on the NBA community with the announcement that the league would allow some teams to reopen their practice facilities on Friday, May 1st. The encouraging news came with a couple of strings, namely that only markets deemed safe by local governments would be allowed to reopen, and that interactions would be limited to individual sessions – no practices or group workouts will be allowed.
The Sacramento Kings, however, will not be on the short list of teams to get their guys back onto the court.
The Sacramento Kings will follow state and local directives as it pertains to re-opening their facility to players and staff. Statement below. pic.twitter.com/AZMWldrMJs
Sean Cunningham (@SeanCunningham) April 27, 2020
While everyone is desperate for basketball to return to our city, the Kings are making the right call by keeping the health of their players and their community as their top priority. California has one of the highest case counts of COVID-19 in the United States and continuing to follow social distancing protocols will be the fastest and safest way to return lives to normal, including watching some beautifully disastrous Kings basketball.
Good.
Makes sense to me. What a weird time we live in. Reminds me of that old Chinese curse of may you live in interesting times….
My company just emailed us our COVID-19 and PPE policies for when we come back to work (which won’t be until at minimum June 1 since the Bay Area extended their stay-at-home orders for the rest of May), which includes wearing masks, eyeglasses at all times, not entering other people’s offices, just to name a few things. Definitely going to be an adjustment not just for when I go back to work, but also just everyday life. This will definitely be the norm for the foreseeable future until there’s a vaccine available.
My coworkers and I have all been working quite well from home. I’m hoping they’ll give us the option to do that in the future since there are no hiccups. I’ve saved a good amount of money from not buying gasoline, and pajamas are always the most comfortable attire.
My company has us all working from home at least up until June. Wonder how we’ll do going back to the office whenever they want us to, since the new office we moved into is an open office floor plan, and 20 staffers work in an open office setting, and those of us in ‘offices’ are in giant cubes without ceilings on them.
Casual Fridays will never be the same:
But can that cat still haz cheezburger?
Ummm .. yes?
How is that cat not freaking the eff out?! Mine freaks out if if I rub it’s belly for two seconds too long.
I thought that was the “Bear Trap”: when they expose their belly for you to rub, and then they snap their claws and teeth on your hand.
Ummm .. yes .. duh
My brother’s girlfriend’s cat freaks out when someone he meets for the first time tries to simply pet him.
My company signed a lease to move into a new office about two weeks prior to sh*t hitting the fan and sending us home to work remote (talk about great timing!). Our owner and HR person have been moving stuff into the new office over the past week. Just like you we’ll have an open floor plan. They sent us all a picture to show that the desks are spaced six feet apart.
Fun times ahead ð
For the record, I absolutely despise the new office, it’s 3x as noisy as the old one, the ‘office’ (large cube) they put me in has a glass wall on the front, no ceiling, and is directly across from the only large conference room, which you guessed it, also doesn’t have a ceiling. I spend 2-3 hours of my day on the phone, and this new space is not suitable for my work.
I was considering leaving the company over this, because they also bungled the roll out of the new space, but with what’s going on now…. that’s not gonna happen for a while.
The morale of this story is do not screw with TFM’s cubicle OR ELSE!!!
I’ve worked out of a full-on office for 12 years now. moving to what feels like a cubicle really sucks. 80% of my work is either on the phone or working at the computer by myself, so hearing everyone else all day, even through noise cancelling headphones really bites!
This one is about $7500. A lot of money, but they should pay for it to retain you, TheFifthMookie. Alternative: You burn the building down.
omg, if I could have my own phone booth at work, that would be awesome.
And the fact that that’s appeal says how f’d up this is.
Can you get this with a Tardis exterior?
You’re not alone in hating it or wanting to leave. In my own case, my department is in a large space with lots and lots of available cubicle walls. Employees have the choice to move around if they want to, but mostly they just fight over spare cubicle walls to create their own private space. When we did consider an open environment, it was met with overwhelming resistance. I have a friend that works at NIKE where they’ve created open work environments with small private offices off to the side that anyone can use. Guess which spaces are hard to reserve? 🙂
https://www.fastcompany.com/90204593/heres-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-open-plan-offices
One job I work for has an approximately 20’x20′ room for 4 of us to do our work–no cubicles, just desks facing each wall. I’m the newest guy so I can’t rock the boat, but here’s the culture: They watch movies on Apple TV everyday, almost all day. And the TV is directly above my desk, just a foot or two above my head. So not only is the sound really close to me, but everyone is staring in my direction.
I thought I was going to have a meltdown the first day I found this out and was trying to get my work done as a newbie and still learning all of the ropes. I’m fine with it now for the most part and enjoy watching on breaks, but it has taken some getting used to.
The return of The Cubicle.
Yeah, just had a meeting with the HR Director for our company, and we were talking about the million (and two) things we need to think about before getting the band back together in our Sacramento office. It’s going to be incredibly difficult, considering the disparate personalities, the layout challenges, and the potential liability in getting it wrong.
For sure. It’s gonna be hard because for my job I’m sharing a printer and vinyl cutter with two other people in the art department at my company, and at times I have to ask sales people questions and I am used to bringing papers with me to those people’s desks, so now we all have to get used to giving everyone space.
I remember before the shelter-in-place took affect, I had one particular co-worker who would say stuff like “it’s just the flu, there’s literally nothing to worry about.” I just hope everyone will do their best to wash their hands often and be cautious as much as possible whenever we go back in the office.
I wonder how many meetings like this it takes before companies begin to realize it costs less to evolve and move away from traditional office spaces. Doesn’t work for every industry, obviously, but for a lot of them.
More and more companies are already getting very flexible on this. Worked remote from my company for the last two years in a different city and just flew to clients or our office when I needed to. Ironically, I missed the daily interaction and was fortunate enough to get a better job offer. Days before I was set to fly to the new city and start working, COVID got very serious, so now working from home again.
No doubt. I asked her if the CEO was worried about productivity, and she said they didn’t see it as an issue to this point (seven weeks in). Seems like the answer is right in front of them.
In the Netherlands they have been promoting flexible work and especially work from home for a few years now. In general, productivity is not the main issue. Health problems due to poorly equiped home offices and employees missing the social aspect of work and lack of connection to the company are often mentioned as drawbacks.
I assume there will also be differences in age groups.
To add, I think the work place here could be quite different from the US. In general, there are strict rules on health and safety, employees are protected under strict labor laws and there is employee participation via works councils etc. In general, legislation is written from the perspectivbe that the work force is one of the main asssets of a company, not a commodity.
It seems that this is slightly different in many places in the US.
The social aspect really is what bothers me. I like my coworkers and not seeing them is hard. My company is looking at remote work but coming into the office 1-2 days a week. Likely split for everyone at first but eventually come together for meetings.
Yeah, that is one thing I do miss (at least right now). It can be fun to be around people while working and goofing off (The Office-style), getting lunch together, office parties, etc….
If my bosses do allow us to work remotely in the future post-pandemic, I would fancy working remotely from far off lands in other countries wherever there’s good Wifi! …….and going on fabulous adventures on the weekends, and experiencing the food and city after work.
At some point, it makes you wonder what the point of coming back to the office is. Office is great for meetings and accomplishing tasks you can’t at home. If your office basically has a policy that you have to dress in the most uncomfortable way possible and not interact – you might as well work from home longer.
I think it’s an assumption that they’ll get less production from employees at home. Maybe they need to get away from worrying that employees are doing something every minute of every hour, and just evaluating if they are getting their work done.
To some degree, if you’re worried about getting less production from your employees when they aren’t constantly supervised, you probably need different employees.
or a new manager…
(Hah, this is like saying that Vlade just needs different players.)
True.
Full-disclosure: I’ve been working almost entirely from home in a highly collaborative field for nearly 14 years now.
That kind of environment should allow for high productivity on The Kings Herald!
Normally, I’d agree. Right now, when many of our employees are wearing the teacher hat as well, it gets trickier.
There were studies not to long ago on how countries who work less hours are actually more productive.
Those studies also suggest that those people who had more personal time for themselves and loved ones were happier and healthier mentally, emotionally and physically.
Middle School teacher here…
Some of my least productive and most poorly behaved students all year long are thriving big-time with distance learning. I haven’t dealt with poor behavior or disrespect in over a month. I could get used to this, but I know most parents don’t agree with me haha.
I’m really interested to see what kinds of best practices this forced educational innovation may stick around post-pandemic.
My wife is a teacher and she tells me stories of how it only takes a couple of poor-behaving students to ruin the class for everyone. Maybe it is now easier for some of your students to concentrate and behave without the classroom distractions from other students?
Good cause Walton has A LOT of tape to catch up on. Like all of it.
King Commentors. Oh how I missed you.
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