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Comment by ornornor | Hacker News Reader

> “I will personally be at work, but that’s just me,” he said in an email. “Totally ok if you want to stay home for any reason.”

Obviously not “totally ok” with this wording.

My office had the same message “you can work from home if you want but I’ll be in the office”, signed The Boss. Of course no one dared work from home.

A week later comes another email saying “I’ll be working from home and you should too. Send me a message if that’s not possible” and poof everyone now works from home.

The way musk statement is worded was intimidating. Of course everyone read the subtext and wouldn’t wfh.

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The company I contact for has 450 people on site regularly. This week, the boss sent out one of those emails saying that you can work from home, but do not have to and that no one should judge others choices. He also made it widely known that he would be in the office, door open in case anyone needed to see him.

At our all hands meeting Friday, only he and the receptionist working several floors below him were still in the office.

Ordinarily we are a pretty gung-ho culture. People come to work sick. People take half days even doing chemo. People work 10 hour days because “product needs polish”. Yet no one is willing to take the risk of catching the virus, then bringing it home to our families.

Maybe if this was earlier in the crisis, it would be different but it is too late to not panic.

> People come to work sick. People take half days even doing chemo. People work 10 hour days because “product needs polish”.

I hope you all have lots of equity in the business. Otherwise, you’re all nuts.

Even then, not actively discouraging sick people yo work from home or take time off when they share office space with people undergoing chemo is reckless.

Well if it no one else is there your boss now has no excuse to not be in as he can't catch the virus in and empty officr.

Reading even deeper, there is further subtext where individuals with backbone will work from home if they want to. I see “do what you think is right”, with a first hand example of the owner of the company doing both at once.

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