I am reading (occasionally) with mild interest about how workers are adapting to telecommuting. This was a non-issue for my work team. We do it all the time. Or at least some of us do and others of us do occasionally. Most of us telecommute whenever there’s a snowstorm and others telecommute at least some days a week because they have long congested commutes. And then there’s India and a long-time telecommuter in Chicago, etc.

I don’t think ANYONE was lacking the proper equipment, which for most of us consists of a laptop, power cable, and VPN key. And the VPN key has been a phone app for a couple years now. Oh, and wi-fi of course.

This NPR article mentioned some of the drawbacks of using the popular Zoom app. Besides getting everyone set up with it (and not mentioning the reported security issues), the article talks about what it’s like to be looking at everyone’s face throughout every meeting. From the article:

But the default setting on a lot of these videoconference technologies is a Brady Bunch grid, where everybody’s staring at you right in the face. It would be exhausting and superweird to have disembodied heads just staring at you for hours.

I think that would drive me crazy too. We don’t use Zoom at my work. We have been using MS Teams for a couple years now. It isn’t perfect but one thing we don’t have to do is look at each everyone’s fugly COVID-hair mug. Our badge photos show up as little cameos when we join and when we are talking. I think all of us are adept at ignoring those.

I am not trying to dis Zoom. We are using Teams because that’s what The Mother Ship decided we were going to use a while back and installed it on our laptops. We have no choice so we adapt to whatever they install. I know that others are scrambling to figure this stuff out. Imagine switching from in-person music lessons to online. That’s been a Hot Topic on my “floot loop groop”.

At home we are using Facetime to meet up for Friday Porterization, Happy Hours with our kids and niece et al, and I am doing Coffee with MMCB at Barry Bagels that way. It’s what works for us.

BTW, I have attended ONE Zoom meeting. It was set up by a client (I RARELY have any contact with clients). I quickly found the setting to go to Audio Only and so did everyone else!

P.S. My hair looks like COVID hair 95% of the time anyway🐽🐽🐽

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2020 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.