Other People's Actions

Hello Everyone: A very quiet work. I actually finished a post and published it. That's how quiet it was. Right now I'm in the main group Zoom room, waiting for the supervisor and the big boss to come in for a talk about a few things. There was an incident yesterday involving a co-worker that's led to a not so welcome change. The co-worker disappeared for a couple of hours without completed her assignment. This co-worker prides herself on being very professional, more professional than everyone else and has no problem reminding the rest of the group about it. People did try to contact her but she didn't answer the messages or emails. Eventually she re-emerged and was pulled aside by the immediate supervisor for a chat. That led to the supervisor instituting a new message acknowledgment policy: Use emojis to indicate you read the message. At the time I didn't think anything of the new policy. I figured the supervisor didn't want to clutter up the chat and decided that an emoji response was better. I thought something was up between the co-worker and the supervisor when he asked to use an emoji to respond and she refused to comply. Again, I didn't think too much about that because I thought she was just being difficult. Today I find out that the co-worker, the supervisor, and the big boss all had chat and things got heated. Surprisingly, she still has a job. I know this because I can see her time clock stamps for today. If she was my employee and disappeared for two hours, she probably wouldn't have a job anymore. This led to a not so welcome change: No more small separate work group Zoom rooms. That sucks because the smaller groups meant everyone got the time and attention they needed for their questions. What geninuely sucks is that one bad apple has to ruin it for everyone. We all have some level of discontent with the nature of the project, I certainly do, but I do address them with people I need to speak with, try to find a solution, and move on with life. The problem is the remote nature of the work makes it ripe for abuse. It's not fair to the rest of us who suit up and show up everyday be punished for someone else's actions. Punish the person, not the rest of the group. Anyway, it looks like the big boss won't be making an appearance this evening. Oh well