The scourge of mute-button incompetence has been troubling video calls for years, but the massive shift to remote work during the pandemic has made the issue that much more prominent. During digital meetings, it’s essentially a given that at least one person will begin talking and even gesticulating wildly while everyone else waits for someone to point out: “You’re on mute.”
The White House surprised private businesses in the US on Sept. 9 by announcing it would ask the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to draft an emergency rule directing companies of more than 100 employees to adopt Covid-19 vaccination mandates. US president Joe Biden said that “patience is wearing thin” with the 25% of eligible Americans who have yet to get vaccinated.
In September, US president Joe Biden announced a multi-step offensive in the ongoing battle to control Covid-19, promising vaccine mandates both for federal workers and at private employers.
What does it mean to celebrate Pride month remotely?
Before the pandemic, few people would have suggested that generous vacation policies would be of paramount importance for remote employees. How could paid time off be all that valuable to people who were already working from their living room in athleisure, free to pop out for a midday grocery run, able to be on call when a child was home sick from school, and never having to worry about their commute getting sidetracked by snowstorms or signal problems?
El Salvador became the world’s first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender today (Sept. 7).
In El Salvador, “chivo” is slang for “cool.” It’s also the name of a new bitcoin wallet app, which president Nayib Bukele plans to launch on Sept. 7, the day the nation becomes the first in the world to adopt bitcoin as one of its national currencies.
At this point in the pandemic, I would happily sit through a meeting that could have been an email if it meant being in the same room with a bunch of work friends. So when Facebook released Horizon Workrooms, an app that allows people to gather in a virtual-reality office, I was prepared to keep an open mind about its potential.
To modern workers everywhere,
“The moment you’ve been waiting for is here,” US president Joe Biden said yesterday (Aug. 23), speaking to the roughly one-third of Americans who are eligible for inoculation against Covid-19 but remain unvaccinated.
Netflix is routinely criticized for showing a certain lack of compassion to preserve its cutthroat company culture. Managers are pressured to apply a “keeper test” to their team members, and employees have apparently used the firm’s commitment to “radical candor” to shame peers.
When the US Supreme Court responded for the first time to a case testing the legality of Covid-19 vaccine mandates, it didn’t go as the anti-mandate camp would have liked: On Aug. 12, justice Amy Coney Barrett decided not to block Indiana University from making vaccination a condition of attendance this fall, dashing the hopes of a group of eight students who had brought an emergency petition before the court.
The late American comedian Robin Williams once famously likened Canada and its proximity to the US to a “really nice apartment over a meth lab.”
Even as major companies like Disney, Google, and Walmart adopt vaccine mandates, there are a number of reasons why some US employers are staying away from them.
As of Aug. 9, just half of Americans are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 putting the US far behind other developed countries.
The past week has brought a flurry of news about companies and governments making proof of vaccination mandatory as a condition of employment, or to enter a worksite or business. New York, for example, became the first US city to require proof of vaccination for anyone looking to dine, work, or attend a concert indoors, while companies such as Tyson, Netflix, Facebook, and Walmart have implemented vaccine mandates for employees.
In recent weeks, companies like Walmart, Disney, Google, Facebook, and Netflix have declared that employees must get jabbed to keep their jobs or come into the office. It’s one of a number of nudges aimed at pushing up vaccination rates to protect Americans from the ravages of Covid-19.
“I’m done” has become a not-so-unusual refrain among American workers, who have been walking away from their jobs in record numbers this year. Some are prioritizing their physical and mental health over the demands of a job. Others simply want to find employers willing to pay more. Still others have found the pandemic has served as an unwelcome memento mori, reminding people who have put aside personal or professional goals that they don’t have an infinite amount of time to get things done.
Danny Meyer, CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group and the founder of Shake Shack, has made a surprising announcement: Soon, both employees and customers who want to eat indoors at one of Union Square Hospitality’s popular full-serve restaurants will need to show proof of vaccination.
The great work-from-home experiment of 2020 could have raised awareness in many heterosexual households about the frustratingly persistent gap between how much time men and women spend on housework. And that heightened consciousness could have prompted more men to pick up a broom or scrub the toilet more often.
Parenting through the pandemic famously put many Americans at risk of burnout.
To modern workers everywhere,
