Pandemic planning (day five)

It’s Monday and we’re now into day five of our flu week  — yes we have odd weeks in the PJ office because the weekly print cycle runs from Thursday to Wednesday.

I can’t say what it’s like in the office this morning, because I’ve decided to work at home because I don’t want risk catching swine flu from contact with large groups of commuters. But I had an e-mail from Olivia (editorial director) early this morning saying that it was like the Marie Celeste.

Started work earlier than normal and have got a lot more done than I normally would due to fewer interruptions and distractions.

There was a minor hiccup with the technology first thing when I found that I couldn’t access the office servers via virtual private networking (VPN). This turned out to be because the remote access server had crashed and no-one had noticed. But 15 minutes after I sent a message to our IT guys by webmail everything was up and running and it’s almost like being back in the office.

Harriet (news editor) however isn’t finding things quite so straightforward. She’s reported that it’s quite hard to stay on top of everything at home because all the usual prompts aren’t there.

“Today I am back in the office as I have recovered from swine flu. It appears that I wasn’t the only person having problems with my emergency licensing key for Quark last week — my colleague Lin-Nam also had the same problem.

“Our IT guy spent another 30 minutes trying to correct the problem today. He’s sorted it so we can work out of the office if we check out our licence, but we still have broken emergency keys — a problem that is going to take longer to fix.

“Another possible problem that I’ve noticed today that could occur is having a number of different people all replying to e-mails that come into shared e-mail inboxes. We need to remember to clearly define who will be answering messages to shared mailboxes.”

“Having a co-ordinated and informed administration system helps keep things flowing. Someone needs to know of people’s whereabouts and if they are in meetings and so on. I found it much easier today knowing who was where and had what equipment and/or problems, because it meant that I knew what to expect in terms of feedback time.”

“Following my two days last week manning the news-writing helm, which was an extremely busy couple of days (but set in the backdrop of a rather peaceful and distraction-free office), the flu-practice scenario now has me facing ‘severely disrupted train services’ as a result of the pandemic. So I am soldiering on with work from home for a few days.

“Short of a minor blip getting connected to the Society’s webmail system, working from home has been surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) plain sailing. But it's harder to monitor your inbox when you don't get a handy little ‘ding’ and an envelope icon appearing on your screen when you get a new message, because you have to refresh the inbox manually. But these are challenges I can cope with, on the grand scheme of things. Particularly armed with the extra hour and a half's sleep that having the office a mere five minutes from my bed has afforded me!

“Apologies for the army and navy metaphors — I can think of no reasonable excuse for them. Perhaps working from home under practice pandemic-flu conditions has put me in some kind of President Bush style war-on-flu state of mind.”

“Slight issue with my car this weekend meant I was marooned in the party capital of Northumberland, Haydon Bridge, for an extra night until my wagon could be fixed. Therefore, today's working started with a 2.5hr drive back to Liverpool, where I am to be based for the week.”