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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

I work in a hospital. 90% of the administrative staff is still here, in our offices. Those of us who didn't get laid off never left.

Sure, we get asked if we 'have any symptoms', have our temperatures are taken at the front desk, and we're required to wear a mask going in/out of the building...but other than that, it's business as usual.

The office my wife works in, they won't let anyone come back. They can work from home, which is fine-but she's tired of being cooped up. She had to sneak in on a weekend to get some devices for testing.

They are considering opening back up in the fall, and would be requiring everyone to wear a mask the entire time they are in the building.

We're going out to eat in restaurants again, we're all still going grocery shopping (where I've never see anyone cleaning anything), malls are open, so what's the big deal with going back to work?

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> We're going out to eat in restaurants again, we're all still going grocery shopping (where I've never see anyone cleaning anything), malls are open, so what's the big deal with going back to work?

You're exposing yourself to those places for very brief periods of time. Why should I equate feeling safe walking into a building with open doors and windows for less than 20 minutes, to sitting in a closed office with HVAC running all day for 8+ hours?

Moreso, why should I feel obligated to go back to the office because your wife is tired of being cooped up?

I'm fine with clingy extroverts going to the office if they need to socialize that badly. I'd rather not be demanded to make a return just because.

I fully agree that opening up the offices before there's a vaccine is very unsafe and shame on any company that brings people back early but it's not just extroverts that want to go back to the office. Speaking as an introvert with social anxiety basically 100% of my physical interaction with other humans happens in the office and WFH in my tiny nyc apartment has been miserable (better than being sick for sure, but not something I'd do for one day longer than required). Especially in tech, isolation is real and we can push for caution while also recognizing the human cost of cost of having people at home (for my company they're increasing tele-therapy resources; maybe as this stretches on more and better solutions will be discovered)

You need 113 sq feet per employee to maintain 6 foot distancing guidelines. Y'all in your offices have at least that much. Folks in cubicles and open offices do not. The restaurants and grocery stores are supposed to make sure that they have 6 feet in between customers, and of course, customers are allowed to leave if the guidelines don't look like they can be followed.

What makes you think I'm not sitting in a cubicle?

Cub-icle?? Whats that, I have never seen one in every open office I have worked at.

> in our offices

Office = building

pi * 6 * 6 = 113

But shouldn't it be a 3 foot radius? Or about 28 square feet.

Because if everyone had a 6 foot radius people would be separated by 12 feet.

That sounds odd. I work at a hospital and if you're not patient facing or need some sort of specialized equipment then you're at home, likely through the end of the year if not longer.

Running into a store for 10 minutes is very different from spending 8 hours in an enclosed space.

Personally eating in restaurants seems like the worst possible scenario, I don't understand it.

> We're going out to eat in restaurants again

Where I am (Bay Area), restaurants are outdoor only.

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