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Well, this one has all the potential for disaster.

PROMPT November 27^th

Things have progressed well in your town/city with the Pandemic. So well that you've been allowed to return to the office instead of working from home. Your co-worker Karly, is sneezing and coughing and refuses to wear a mask. Who do you call, or do you let it slide. Tell us why you would act that way.

I'm going to weasel out of this with "insufficient data."

Well, not really.

This is already a highly hypothetical situation, as I haven't worked in an office in over ten years (I worked from a home office for a while before I retired).

Enhancing the hypotheticalness of it is the idea that I would be "allowed" to return to the office. No, given a choice, I'd keep working from home. If we're talking about my actual career here, and not something fictional (to continue the hypotheticality), there's no reason for me to be in an office 95% of the time. I know some people who would rather work in an office than from home, and that's fine too, but we're talking about Me here.

Karly's an asshole. But my response depends on a lot of factors unclear from the prompt. Am I still in charge? Probably not, if I'm not the one making the decision about working from home or in an office. Because if I were in charge, I'd fire her ass on the spot. (I live in a state where I can do that).

Since I'm not in charge, though, there is a lot of missing information here.

1) Who else is in the office? If it's just me, I wouldn't be overly concerned about it. Assuming it's the 'rona and also assuming other things conforming to reality, being vaccinated means my chance of severe problems is probably less than the chance of me getting into an accident on the commute. Therefore, it's other people I'd be concerned about. And clients.

2) What is the company policy for shit like this? I'd want to follow that. If that means being a snitch, I'll be a snitch.

3) Is KarenKarly above, below, or equal to me in the corporate structure? It matters.

Most likely, I'd just want to go back to working from home. It's my preference anyway.

People are fucking crazy with this stuff these days, and they've turned it into a political issue, which I prefer to stay away from (most of the time). I've bitched about it before in here, and I see no need to repeat it, or go off on a tangent about it.

I will say this, though: I definitely think less of people who are inconsiderate of others. I say that as someone who generally doesn't give a shit about too many other people, but I still don't do stuff that actively endangers them. It's like how I live an alcohol-positive lifestyle, but I'm very, very careful not to drive drunk. Drinking only affects me. Driving drunk can cock up someone else's day.

I treat the unmasked and unvaccinated like a smoker in a restaurant. That shit used to be acceptable; it no longer is, because of studies about the effects of second-hand smoke. Same thing. Actually, I'd rather be around second-hand smoke; it's safer. Though I do understand there are legitimate reasons to not get vaccinated; "I don't wanna" isn't one, and neither is "it's against my religion."

And that's all I'm going to say about it. Today.