The "I've not been furloughed" thread
Discussion
Same here
Flat out since a long weekend away in February with only weekends off
50hr week is the norm
Hearing from friends and family about how much of a chore it was to have so much time off got tedious very quickly
Now hearing the plight of the previously furloughed having to wear the ppe weve worn for a third of a year, and how they want to book their accumulation of annual leave is beyond boring
Still, I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to have many months off work with pay ........ when I draw my pension in 30 years
Flat out since a long weekend away in February with only weekends off
50hr week is the norm
Hearing from friends and family about how much of a chore it was to have so much time off got tedious very quickly
Now hearing the plight of the previously furloughed having to wear the ppe weve worn for a third of a year, and how they want to book their accumulation of annual leave is beyond boring
Still, I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to have many months off work with pay ........ when I draw my pension in 30 years
lenny007 said:
.... Wife has been working from home, kids at home.
I come home, it's like i'm invading their space. They have their quirks and little foibles that i'm not part of. Which sucks.......
Such a hard conversation to have with loved ones ...... the simple joy of occasionally coming home to a silent and empty house for a handful of hours.I come home, it's like i'm invading their space. They have their quirks and little foibles that i'm not part of. Which sucks.......
I worked from home anyway so other than being able to get out the Gym and the Pub as I did, I haven't noticed much difference at all other than my GF who is self employed be at home the entire time.
I'm fortunate to work for a company who look after its staff very well so for all those who usually didn't work from home and now have to, have all been given a work from home allowance.
Nearly every client I am working with have all been recruiting throughout the whole thing as well so it's not all doom and gloom.
I'm fortunate to work for a company who look after its staff very well so for all those who usually didn't work from home and now have to, have all been given a work from home allowance.
Nearly every client I am working with have all been recruiting throughout the whole thing as well so it's not all doom and gloom.
My work contract is WFH normally, so it has been reasonably amusing to see the office based people in my office saying theyre doing so much more work at home. Well done - you just openly admitted you do piss all in the office, which I why I only ever went there myself once a month.
Company wise, we're doing OK. There was an initial shock at the start, 3-4 of relative quiet, and then things picked up massively. However, I am left wondering what 2021 is going to bring, as we look at the full 2020 performance.
Workload has been silly though:
1. Everyone started to use the teams app, and suddenly there are messages, often lazy requests flying everywhere. Worse still, someone might invite you to a meeting space, give you an action, and wonder why you haven't done anything about it. Especially for me, I service a lot of different teams, and they have no idea that I am not the centre of their universe.
2. Short notice meetings. Completely infuriating. No respect for someone else's time or the fact they might be doing something else (i.e. their job).
3. Working hours creep: I could generally contain my hours to 9-5/6, then the creep happened. 830am, 8am, 730am. Again, no respect for personal time.
Oh, and the small fact that my wife went back to work (key worker) and I had to look after our 7 month old whilst working full-time. Honestly, it nearly killed me. No job has no scope for doing the work in the evenings, so I literally had to juggle baby and conference calls. Wife has quite work now to be a full-time mum, but doing two high-priority things simultaneously was nigh on impossible.
Overall of course, I am very grateful for my job and seeing that pay-packet come in as usual. Lots of people say they've saved loads because they aren't spending on commute costs, but nothing much has changed for us as we weren't spending those anyway.
Company wise, we're doing OK. There was an initial shock at the start, 3-4 of relative quiet, and then things picked up massively. However, I am left wondering what 2021 is going to bring, as we look at the full 2020 performance.
Workload has been silly though:
1. Everyone started to use the teams app, and suddenly there are messages, often lazy requests flying everywhere. Worse still, someone might invite you to a meeting space, give you an action, and wonder why you haven't done anything about it. Especially for me, I service a lot of different teams, and they have no idea that I am not the centre of their universe.
2. Short notice meetings. Completely infuriating. No respect for someone else's time or the fact they might be doing something else (i.e. their job).
3. Working hours creep: I could generally contain my hours to 9-5/6, then the creep happened. 830am, 8am, 730am. Again, no respect for personal time.
Oh, and the small fact that my wife went back to work (key worker) and I had to look after our 7 month old whilst working full-time. Honestly, it nearly killed me. No job has no scope for doing the work in the evenings, so I literally had to juggle baby and conference calls. Wife has quite work now to be a full-time mum, but doing two high-priority things simultaneously was nigh on impossible.
Overall of course, I am very grateful for my job and seeing that pay-packet come in as usual. Lots of people say they've saved loads because they aren't spending on commute costs, but nothing much has changed for us as we weren't spending those anyway.
Edited by devnull on Thursday 6th August 14:52
Much like a lot of others in this thread, I've been flat out. I work for a large company who are, at times scared of making decision. Our core team of 12 has been eroded to 4, due to 'sheltering' and 'vulnerabilities'. This has meant I have been flat out, up to now i had taken 1.5days paid leave since Christmas. And often working overtime on weekdays and on Sundays. Short term my job is secure...but I'm not 100% about future prospects. How can paying 8 people full time wages with very little to no output for months and months be sustainable. These people have even been receiving shift payments, mostly due to incompetent middle management (there is zero incentive for these people to come back). It really does make me dispair.
Edited by orangesrule on Saturday 8th August 08:39
I do wonder how things are likely to play out.
In the short term, most of us most of us know the employees who were never that keen on working and could have predicted the ones who would suddenly have to "shield", or in their case have a six month holiday.
If there need to be redundancies you would hope they would be top of the list, but it never seems to work out that way. However, the antics of that type of individual are usually somewhat less obvious than simply not being in work for six months. So perhaps it will be different.
However, we've seen bad behaviour by firms as well as employees. So not immediately but *if* the economy does recover and jobs become more available I wonder what will happen there.
I can imagine the firms which leapt on the chance to enforce pay cuts and demand crazy hours will discover they have a problem retaining staff.
Equally I can already see a degree of bridling by those who worked throughout this period at having colleagues who disappeared in March and are only now reappearing (just in time to go away again on the holiday they accrued). Weak management which allowed unfairness to develop in the first place will also do nothing to smooth over those divisions so again. So is that also likely to see the good staff abandoning the poorly run firms?
I heard a few cases where all the staff were put on 80% pay and half were furloughed. Which sounds reasonable until you stop and think that that actually means the half of the employees who were not furloughed had to do twice the work for 80% of the pay. A sensible firm would have rotated who was on furlough and who wasn't, at least since the "flexible furlough" came in. But from what I have heard some firms have left it such that 50% of their staff have worked solidly without time off while the other half literally sat around at home for six months on exactly the same pay as the ones burning out. When those who were furloughed return with tales of how hard it was sitting around at home, it won't be pretty, especially if pay cuts continue to be uniform.
There are a lot of badly run firms propped up by cheap debt and now government-backed loans, might it be that a simple inability to find anyone who will work for them sends them over the edge instead? It's never happened before that I can remember, but we are in a world of firsts now.
In the short term, most of us most of us know the employees who were never that keen on working and could have predicted the ones who would suddenly have to "shield", or in their case have a six month holiday.
If there need to be redundancies you would hope they would be top of the list, but it never seems to work out that way. However, the antics of that type of individual are usually somewhat less obvious than simply not being in work for six months. So perhaps it will be different.
However, we've seen bad behaviour by firms as well as employees. So not immediately but *if* the economy does recover and jobs become more available I wonder what will happen there.
I can imagine the firms which leapt on the chance to enforce pay cuts and demand crazy hours will discover they have a problem retaining staff.
Equally I can already see a degree of bridling by those who worked throughout this period at having colleagues who disappeared in March and are only now reappearing (just in time to go away again on the holiday they accrued). Weak management which allowed unfairness to develop in the first place will also do nothing to smooth over those divisions so again. So is that also likely to see the good staff abandoning the poorly run firms?
I heard a few cases where all the staff were put on 80% pay and half were furloughed. Which sounds reasonable until you stop and think that that actually means the half of the employees who were not furloughed had to do twice the work for 80% of the pay. A sensible firm would have rotated who was on furlough and who wasn't, at least since the "flexible furlough" came in. But from what I have heard some firms have left it such that 50% of their staff have worked solidly without time off while the other half literally sat around at home for six months on exactly the same pay as the ones burning out. When those who were furloughed return with tales of how hard it was sitting around at home, it won't be pretty, especially if pay cuts continue to be uniform.
There are a lot of badly run firms propped up by cheap debt and now government-backed loans, might it be that a simple inability to find anyone who will work for them sends them over the edge instead? It's never happened before that I can remember, but we are in a world of firsts now.
We did a short period of furlough when the scheme was announced as we were unable to work for a month but we have managed to start to get back to normal.
What amazes me is the number of people I normally have contact with that are still off despite there clearly being a need for their position.
Long term these individuals and their companies are going to suffer as we are now using new suppliers.
Maybe come September if the schools go back (I say if as a friend is a teacher and says her colleagues are trying to refuse as its to dangerous to go back to work, but it’s OK for her to go to Bournemouth and out for lunch etc) we will start to see people coming off furlough and returning to work.
What amazes me is the number of people I normally have contact with that are still off despite there clearly being a need for their position.
Long term these individuals and their companies are going to suffer as we are now using new suppliers.
Maybe come September if the schools go back (I say if as a friend is a teacher and says her colleagues are trying to refuse as its to dangerous to go back to work, but it’s OK for her to go to Bournemouth and out for lunch etc) we will start to see people coming off furlough and returning to work.
South tdf said:
We did a short period of furlough when the scheme was announced as we were unable to work for a month but we have managed to start to get back to normal.
What amazes me is the number of people I normally have contact with that are still off despite there clearly being a need for their position.
Long term these individuals and their companies are going to suffer as we are now using new suppliers.
Maybe come September if the schools go back (I say if as a friend is a teacher and says her colleagues are trying to refuse as its to dangerous to go back to work, but it’s OK for her to go to Bournemouth and out for lunch etc) we will start to see peoplecoming off furlough and returning to work being made redundant.
FTFYWhat amazes me is the number of people I normally have contact with that are still off despite there clearly being a need for their position.
Long term these individuals and their companies are going to suffer as we are now using new suppliers.
Maybe come September if the schools go back (I say if as a friend is a teacher and says her colleagues are trying to refuse as its to dangerous to go back to work, but it’s OK for her to go to Bournemouth and out for lunch etc) we will start to see people
selym said:
I left the world's most secure job (RAF) in April and started with a big company in March - double bubble wages and tax for about six weeks. I had more than a few sleepless nights wondering how long it would be until this company started looking at the situation. I'm lucky that it hasn't happened yet.
With regard to the mental health aspect, I have never really been susceptible to stress or anxiety kicking in, even in some of the testing times during my 22 years service.
Two weeks in a job I didn't really understand followed by lockdown and carrying on at home with no idea was tough; when I was tasked with a complex job I had a few weeks of sitting under a dark cloud. It was stressful, I couldn't sleep well and didn't want to get up to 'go to work'. It was only being introduced to an extremely helpful superior that eased the stress but it is something I don't want to go through again.
I appreciate that being stretched and tested is a good thing and I've thrived on it for decades but this was something different. One plus point; I managed to dig the garden every evening using the anger energy I had accumulated through the day!
I've rambled a bit, I know.
I had a late career change 4 years ago, related to my previous career but all new environment and role. I’d say it took me at least 2 years to regain my confidence, whilst having to appear outwardly fine. It was a tough time. With regard to the mental health aspect, I have never really been susceptible to stress or anxiety kicking in, even in some of the testing times during my 22 years service.
Two weeks in a job I didn't really understand followed by lockdown and carrying on at home with no idea was tough; when I was tasked with a complex job I had a few weeks of sitting under a dark cloud. It was stressful, I couldn't sleep well and didn't want to get up to 'go to work'. It was only being introduced to an extremely helpful superior that eased the stress but it is something I don't want to go through again.
I appreciate that being stretched and tested is a good thing and I've thrived on it for decades but this was something different. One plus point; I managed to dig the garden every evening using the anger energy I had accumulated through the day!
I've rambled a bit, I know.
Ruskie said:
6 day working week since end of March WFH. Bored, restless and hate being desk based in a job that normally requires field work. Waiting to deploy abroad but no idea when. Haven't got enough leave to take a few days and still cover later in the year. Grateful to have a job and not be furloughed but its taking its toll on me.
I actually left the UK 9 days after this post and have only been back for leave a couple of times since. Due back in a couple of weeks for leave but it’s a pain in the arse with mandatory COVID testing and test to release. Thankfully my work has been unaffected. I'm a self employed fire safety consultant. My work is only limited by my capacity to take it on really. Still traveling up and down the country carrying out site visits and working from home the rest of the time. So I can't say I have been affected too much.
Busier now than I have ever been - we have more business than people to comfortably deliver and most of us are pushing 60hr weeks every week at the moment - fuelled by how easy it is to do from home dipping in/out here and there.
Its good though, we had an initial slump and a 30% salary cut for May to August last year (essentially this was an interest-free loan to the business from ALL staff) and bonuses payments were cancelled for April 2020. We are getting the sacrificed salary chunk back very soon and payrises etc...
No bonuses this April either getting the business on an even keel but thats fine, just means they'll be better/bigger come April-22 (assuming I remain)
Its good though, we had an initial slump and a 30% salary cut for May to August last year (essentially this was an interest-free loan to the business from ALL staff) and bonuses payments were cancelled for April 2020. We are getting the sacrificed salary chunk back very soon and payrises etc...
No bonuses this April either getting the business on an even keel but thats fine, just means they'll be better/bigger come April-22 (assuming I remain)
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