Date: October 8, 2021

Happy Friday my fellow readers and writers!. It's my favorite day of the week again!.

The Bad News

Yesterday, we had a team meeting where my Manager (who is based in the United Kingdom) announced that the Manila Management has sent a memo to mandate the Manila employees of our company to go back into office amidst the number of positive COVID-19 cases we have in a daily basis. My manager said it's already final, but then he asked us to write all our concerns and doubts and send it to him, so he can raise it with the Senior Management.

He then forwarded us a PDF file containing the Return to Office (RTO) guidelines.

In the first page, you can immediately see the plan of Return to Office policy. By November 8 of the current year till end of January next year, we are required to work 2 days onsite and then from February 1 next year till end of April of the same year, it will be incremented by 1 day.

So we immediately scrolled down to the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section to see if our doubts in mind are already listed in there. And I must say most of our concerns and questions are already answered in the FAQs section. However, most of the answers are against with what we want them to consider (NO).

My Personal Concerns

Since I know, most of the queries and concerns will already be covered with my colleagues, I then decided to raise my queries that greatly affects my current situation. Below are the concerns that I've raised.

1. We know that Philippines is still struggling in contact tracing, is it possible for the company to provide a point to point shuttle exclusive for the employees only? In this case, contact tracing will be easy and faster and hence the employee that has a close contact to a covid positive employee can isolate themselves which prevents the further spread of the virus.

2. I have three kids (11 yo, 7 yo, and 3 yo). My first two are currently enrolled in  distance learning due to pandemic. We don’t have a stay-in nanny or stay-in helper at the moment. I don’t have any relatives nearby as well to look after my kids  while I am away. May I request for an extended WFH period of at least 1 month for me to find a stay-in helper/nanny who can take care of my kids while I am away?

First in my concern is the transportation. I know that none of my colleagues will raise this one because they have their own car and can drive to office anytime. But in my case, I have to commute to work because I don't know how to drive and our car is mainly used by my husband in the store (to pick up or deliver rice and grocery items).

I would like to ask if our company will be able to provide us a point to point shuttle service. This will help to easily trace who have a close contact with a covid-19 positive individual and hence we can immediately isolate ourselves to prevent the further spread of the virus in our house and in our community as well.

My second concern has something to do with my kids. As you may already aware of, we have a stay-out helper at the moment (who is always absent every Monday - due Monday morning sickness). She cannot go and stay with us because his husband don't want to because even though they don't have a child, she still needs to take care of her husband (of course).

However, given my proximity from the office (more or less 45 kilometers away from the office), I will be away for a total of 15 hours and I have 3 kids that also needs my care at home.

My husband could not stay with my kids because he has to assist in our sari sari store. He couldn't bring our children to the store as well because aside from the fact that it's a high risk place due to multiple customers coming in and out of the store, my first 2 kids are currently attending online school and we do not have wi-fi in the store. So I am asking them if they can give me at least another month to find a stay-in helper we can trust who will look after my kids while my husband and I are both away.

My colleagues and I had lots of discussions yesterday when we heard about the news.

Let me just post a quick throwback selfie of mine in the office way back before the pandemic. I loved to work in the office because you can focus more as compared here in our house where there are lots of distractions in every corner of our house. However, due to the current covid-19 positive cases count? I would rather work from home despite of the challenges I am facing in a daily basis being a working from home mom of three.

If I were the BOSS.....

If I were the Boss, I will give my employees an option if they want to go to the office or continue working from home. We've been in this set-up from more than a year already, and we have even proven to our Manager that our productivity has doubled and even tripled with this set-up cause we have saved time from travelling into the office. We have proven enough that working from home is never been an issue with attending meetings. We can always submit our deliverables before the deadline

If I were the Boss, I will respect my employees decision if they cannot take the risk of going into the office yet given the current rate of COVID-19 positive count in a daily basis. We all know that most or I would say ALL hospitals in our country (Philippines) are currently full and don't have a capacity to admit more patients at the moment. Some hospitals don't even accept COVID-19 patients anymore. Hence, when we have been infected by the virus, there's very low chance to get a hospital bed, which will then force us to self-medicate at home which in effect will expose all our family members in the virus.

If I were the Boss, I won't make the return to office mandatory because it is like me forcing them to get vaccinated as well. Some of my office mates (about 20%) are not vaccinated yet because just like the others, they are also afraid of the side effects that the vaccine may cause to their body.

But then on this newly mandated policy, it's like leaving no choice to those employees but to get vaccinated because going back into the office means exposing themselves in the virus and hence they will have to choose now. Which risk are they going to accept? Will they rather accept the risk of how their body would react to the covid-19 virus, or the risk of how their body will react to the vaccine?

This is my entry to @JonicaBradley writing prompt #18 - If I Were...

Here are the rules just in case you want to join as well:

Write anything about If you were...

• Write anything about "If I were".

• Write 100% original content.

• Join and submit to the community PromptlyJonica.

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I will have to go back to work now. Friday feels is real.

Before I end this, I just wanted to give my sincere gratitude to my below list of sponsors for the trust and motivations you're giving me. Thank you as always.