Racism, Ageism, Sexism, Why Working from Home is a Winning Chicken Dinner for the American Worker

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
— Bertrand Russell

Good morning, 6:28 a.m. I woke up at 6:00 and became a piece of man meat slammed between two women.  On my left was my wife and on the right was my pup, who chose to do a trust fall into my back, thus creating a morning sandwich of love.  I enjoyed the cuddle, slowly moved the dog so I could get up.  I made some coffee; the pup is out hanging with the chipmunks and will head back to bed with the Queen if I’m guessing correctly.

I’m not sure if you heard, but New York City had imposed vaccine mandates starting yesterday for all citizens. This authoritarian move seems a little odd; if you have some time, You can read the declaration here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/technology/vaccine-passport-ny-privacy.html

It’s a tad concerning. For example, what if you are a person that has severe allergic reactions to any ingredients in the vaccine?  What about people with autoimmune or other conditions that their doctor tells them not to get a vaccine.  Are these people less than citizens?  Everyone else can get out to eat, a gym, or a museum, but you must stay home due to your personal health condition.  That sounds a little like discrimination based on an individual medical-based situation.  

Imagine telling people in wheelchairs they could not come to your venue.  People with the flu, common cold, herpes, or other transmitted diseases must prove their health status.  Imagine telling a person of color they could not come into your venue due to the color of their skin.  Oh wait, can we take a peek at the data for a hot minute?

According to a very legitimate website:

https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/vaccine-demographic-data

Here are the vaccine rates by race in New York:

70% of White People are vaccinated;
13.2% of African Americans (their words, not mine) are vaccinated.  Asians are 14%, and others like Martians are 2%.   98% of Martians cannot explore New York City?

Does it seem that the government is favoring White folks in this little gimmick?  I mean, if you want to see a racist policy, look no further than New York City.  The people to claim to fight for the underserved and the marginalized just passed a bill that will keep 87% of all “African American’s” out of Gyms, Restaurants, Public Venue, and Arts Centers?  And here is a valid question, why are people of color so resistant to get the vaccine?  Here are the charts.

If you are not concerned about race, well, let’s talk about age discrimination.  Below is a chart of who will be going out on the town in New York; sorry kids, younger adults, you must stay home.

Oh, lookie here, racism, ageism, and now, wait for it, sexism. More women are vaccinated than men.  That means by the decree that more women can live everyday life. Interesting, isn’t it?  

Some carve-outs, including entertainers out of state, people who need to use the bathroom, and other silly things you can read since I gave you the report above.

My question is will other cities and states follow suit? Will the nonvaccine passport areas have been a boon for the unvaccinated congregating and potentially spreading the disease?  Remember, I’m not a doctor, nor a lawyer, just a man who likes to write and occasionally brings

data to support something I find interesting.

In other news, I caught this story on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/in-austin-its-go-office-or-go-home-5122708/

It seems the boys in Austin Tech Companies are mandating a return to work policy.  As a small business owner, I’d like to speak to that notion.  On March 13th of 2020, we shut down our physical offices.   A week later, I got a call from a national publication asking how we quickly moved to telecommute our workforce.  I was honest, open, and had shared we were having our employees work from home for the past five years; we had a blended model, but when the country got shut down, we went to our plan B.  If you have any interest in listening to an old white guy talk about boring stuff, listen here:

https://www.scic.com/resources-best-practices-for-working-from-home/

We are now 18 months out, with the majority of our team still working from home.  Our productivity increased; we added some self-reporting that we audit to “ensure” work accuracy. Our ops manager manages all from his home. We just picked up a new 30-year veteran in Florida because we allow 100% work from home.  If you mandate your employees come to your office and are in the insurance industry, people with my mindset can usually hire that person for less money.  Creating a culture of trust and verification works well if you have the right people on the tour bus.  

Build it, and they will come and let them stay home and have ways to bring your team together every week.  We meet for 30 minutes a week; our ops manager runs the weekly meeting where we learn each teammate’s favorite band, play movie triva, and have a good family time before charging back to our kitchens, bedrooms, or bathrooms knock out some work.  Employees with kids, we learned, every room is an office.

Let’s say we have 20 employees; in the old days, people would drive an average of 20 minutes to work. However, since most of our service staff work in the Midwest, they live closer to our offices, and traffic is not a significant concern. So if you take those 20 people x 20 minutes each way, that’s 20 x 40 minutes; we just reclaimed 800 minutes or 13.33333 hours of labor.

We are going to turn our offices into coworking spaces. We now only need about 20% of our area; leasing the other 80% will help our bottom line. And expose us to other business owners that may or may not refer us business based on our culture and ability to get shit done.  If my wife and I didn’t own our buildings, we would strongly consider going without bricks and mortar.

A couple of topics are near and dear to my heart. First, I hope I made sense; I hope my words do not trigger you; if you think differently, please intelligently share your view without calling others names and showing your Cindy Lauper’s. Well, I must run; my solar crew is heading up the mountain; we will begin adding electricity to the grid in a couple of days; we’re doing our part to go green; join us and help save Mother Earth.

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
— Bertrand Russell