Pandemic planning (day six)

It’s coming towards the end of the day before press day and we’re nearly at the end of our emergency exercise week.

At the beginning we knew to expect the unexpected and even discussed what we would do if one of us caught swine flu for real. The obvious answer was carry on regardless, because that’s what the exercise was all about. But we didn’t think that one of us would come down with chickenpox and be signed off work for two weeks!

At least my colleague isn’t feeling too ill and is happy to work through it at home. But it does mean we’ll have to arrange for various things to be couriered back and forth, even in this electronic age.

I discovered a new problem with working from home today. During what I found a rather trying exchange of e-mails my daughter arrived unexpectedly with a friend and my grand-daughter wanting to put a tent out to dry in the garden. Then they started a food hunt in the kitchen and got busy on the telephone. Had to work hard to stay focused.

Harriet, our news editor, has had a better day and has simply reported “business as usual”. I suspect the word “frantic” got left out.

Others report:

“I’ve had enough of swine flu and am ready to come back into the office. Webmail is annoyingly slow, my e-mails are clogging up my inbox and need to be filed in folders, and my home desk and chair are not set up for long periods of work. I am thankful I am going to experience a miraculous cure tonight!”

“Upside: liaising with Leila over the phone and by e-mail regarding her news feature was not as inconvenient as it sounds. We were both very prompt with replying to e-mails and I thought it worked rather well.

“Downside: with both the deputy editor and senior contributions editor away from the office, I had to do a lot more work than usual. Usually, by this time on Tuesdays I am almost finished making up the pages for press day tomorrow and am doing a final read before handing them to the editor/deputy editor. This week, I have only just started working on the Letters to the Editor pages!”

“I’ve discovered a problem with Microsoft Office applications when I’m not connected to the office server. So I’m using Textedit to write and will cut and paste into Word docs when I'm back in the office. The IT guys are on the case so that the issue gets sorted for future attempts to work away from the office. Currently, I can’t open any Excel or PowerPoint docs that are sent to me.

“I also continue to resent the limitations of the external e-mail system, which is far more basic in its functions than Entourage.

“On the work front, delays in getting responses from various sources will mean I won’t make the deadline for my news feature, but I’ve been given the reprieve from Above, providing I keep my nose to the proverbial. Thanks to the wonders of the world-wide web, that’s really not difficult. Despite the more basic e-mail system, I can stay in contact with the office, and can continue to work on PJ Online.

“It’ s hard to know when to start and stop work when you’re already home, though. It's tempting to crawl out of bed at 9.30 rather than be sitting down to your work, and all too easy to keep working past office close time when there aren’t people packing up and shutting down all around you to remind you that enough’s enough. It’s reminiscent of uni days when day, evening and night all blurred into one. More self-discipline is needed in order to stick to office hours when you’re based away from the office.

“It’ll be interesting to see how tomorrow goes, when I’ll be making up pages for this week's issue of the PJ from my new sitting-room/office.”