I work in an office based sales job (not a key worker) in private healthcare.
In the spring and November lockdowns, my colleagues and I all worked from home. I didn’t have any problems with this and was able to do my job, although I worked extended hours in the morning to allow me extra time to homeschool DD and DS.
However, this time work have decided we are “COVID secure” as they’ve spaced out our desks and segregated us from the non office staff.
The only reason I can think they have done this is that we made slightly less sales during the lockdown months than when we were in the office- but not by many.
The workplace is not COVID secure, in my opinion. At all. The “segregation” from the non office staff is a joke- they use the break area on our floor (we’re not allowed to as part of the segregation and eat at our desks). They use the same kettle we do. There are boxes of Quality Street left out for everyone to dip into.
There was recently a positive case in the non office team so an entire shift had to self isolate. No change to the WFH policy. A member of the sales staff had her housing situation compromised by the work policy and had to leave her job. They didn’t offer her the change to WFH even though she did so in November.
A colleague recently returned from overseas and had flu like symptoms on Friday. His wife is a junior doctor on a COVID ward. He self isolated while he got tested but we all still stayed In the office.
I developed a cough yesterday, didn’t go in and we all self isolated while I waited for my test results (which are negative).
The cough scared the shit out of me. I have been sticking to the rules throughout the pandemic, but I don’t think my boss takes the virus very seriously at all and I’m scared to go to work. There’s no justification to make us work from the office beyond not trusting us to do our jobs ( which, being sales, are target and commission based so slacking off isn’t really possible). I’m also uneasy about my test results as I have seen there could be a high number of false negatives especially with self swabbing and with the new strain of the virus, and I don’t want to infect anyone else.
What can I do? If I have to WFH it means homeschooling again (DH counts as a keyworker so DC are currently going to school) but I’d rather do that than potentially spread COVID.