Ch-ch-changes part one

Remember the winter of 2020?  How inch by inch, Covid-19 created chaos?

Well, you may remember that amid that chaos I left a job in NYC  and accepted a position with a company on Long Island. I don’t think I ever told the full story …

The norm in 2020 - every morning, five days a week, I’d take a train from Long Island to NYC, take the subway downtown, and walk to a huge office building, and take an elevator up to an office that was full of coworkers.  I used a desktop computer and had a landline phone on my desk. Lunchtime meant leaving  the office, either for a cafeteria in our building (we were lucky) or for any of the myriad restaurants, street food vendors  and delis of lower Manhattan.

When I interviewed for the new job, in February 2020, I had to drive to an office and meet with my prospective employers in person.  

And when I accepted the offer, my expectation was that I’d be driving to the office five days a week, a much shorter commute.  And the office is located in an area where there are shops and restaurants and etc.  It was exciting,

I gave notice at the NYC job, my last day would be  Friday March 20.  I’d start the new job the following  Monday.

But … Covid.

 So … March 13, an announcement at work:  Go home, you’ll be working from home for the next two weeks. [It would be much longer than that, but no one knew that at the time.]

And I found myself throwing my personal stuff into a bag and making hasty goodbyes!

Monday morning I reported to the new office, filled out paperwork for the HR department while IT loaded software onto my personal laptop and forwarded my landline phone to my personal cell phone, then I was sent home to work remotely “temporarily”. We all learned how 

to use video conferencing software (Zoom being the most popular) and became even more reliant on email and text messaging.

I had worked remotely right after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, so this was nothing I couldn’t handle.

We never went back to the office.  The only people you’ll find on site are “essential workers” who cannot work remotely.

Eventually I got a company laptop, a docking station and monitors, and software that forwarded my phone directly to my laptop.  

I loved this job.  Really loved it.  

My last day with that company was December 19.  I’ll be starting a new job December 29.

To be continued…