CHECK-IN: 🌸🌼🌻FRIDAY 7/17/2020🌻🌼🌸 - All are WELCOME!

neen , the visits sound so nice! So does the cake!

My sister says that it is official that my father will no longer be able to drive. His driver's license is officially revoked. She just told me that she talked to our dad about this and he seemed to accept it, but we really don't know for sure how hard this is for him. He says relatively little. Sis said she will do a lot of the driving for/with him, plus my brother can, and I can, on occasion. I live furthest away. Fact is that this is a major change in his and our lives.

My husband and all of his colleagues have been working from home since March. The nature of what they are doing has changed as a result of the pandemic. Hubby hates it! He decided to call a particular colleague with a question. He hadn't talked to her since March. She said that she and her husband had covid-19 and that she had been seriously ill in bed for almost five weeks. And yet the department head didn't tell anyone about any of that. That colleague told him that she suspects new layoffs may happen as soon as the end of September. That is a suspicion of hers, but when she described the basis of her suspicion, it made a lot of sense. Hubby and I talked about this yesterday and honestly feel, now, that a layoff may be the best for him. We had worked on adjustment to such a possibility a few months back, but it didn't happen then. Now, we are less scared and a bit more prepared. If it happens, we will likely quickly start planning a move to Europe. Of course the pandemic makes that a bit harder, but we are thinking about first going to my husband's native country (Czech Republic), then perhaps to France a while after that. It's more likely we could go to Czech Republic since my husband has dual citizenship. As his wife, hopefully I'd be accepted, too.

I'm here.

cyndee, are they possibly not telling people about the colleague's covid situation because they're all working from home anyway and no one has had in person contact with her? from the office anyway.

my office has been closed/work from home since march 11th and i can't imagine at this point they'd tell us if anyone caught it while we're out since there is no contact anyway.

in any case, a layoff with a severance package may end up being a positive (as you mentioned) and a move to czech republic sounds great. i absolutely loved prague. we took a trip there for a little over a week and did an overnight trip to vienna via train and it was amazing. the only thing i didn't love about czech republic was the swindling due to us being tourists. luckily we were also visiting with a friend who lived there at the time (but who is originally from sweden). we had additional drinks added to our tab that we did not order (at two different places) and she said you just go with it because otherwise they threaten to call the police on you. and the call the police really means take you out back and beat you up. still, was certainly an experience and i would do it again!

Hi finreporter. Your assumption about my husband and his colleagues all working from home is correct. I guess you're right that maybe they didn't think it relevant to let people know, but I still think it odd that nothing was said. A different colleague of my husband recently died (but not from covid-19). The department head did call a department video meeting to announce that, but did so in what my husband felt was a cold manner. I guess considering that behavior, it's understandable about the colleague who had covid-19.

I'm sorry you experienced such swindling in Czech Republic. I could certainly believe it. Even Czechs, themselves, have to be careful about being victims of such behavior. Czechs are generally wonderful honest people, but there are opportunist bad types, for sure. Some of that behavior is likely leftover from former communist days. It's hard to change some mentality. I hope things improve more. Czech Republic also has people that come from elsewhere that don't always have the best intentions. I don't want to name categories (countries) of people, because I know even within those most are generally good. My husband is pretty tough so generally fights such behavior. I'm pretty tough in some ways, as well. Nevertheless, it is sad and painful when you have to deal with that.

My husband does have some police stories from when he was still in Czechoslovakia (as it was then), but this is the first I've heard such a story of Czech police beating foreigners up over bills. I'm sorry your friend has heard of or experienced that. I assume that was just a few bad apples (bad cops) and not necessarily the norm. There are clearly bad apples in police forces in many countries, including ours.

I've traveled throughout Europe many many times, but never made it to Vienna. My husband knows that I want to visit there, big time. It's fewer than 4 hours drive from Prague. We do have airline tickets to Europe for September, but it's not certain we will make it there then. We may have to cancel because they're banning people from the US, because of covid-19. We purchased insurance so that changes/cancellations won't come with major penalties. 

cyndee and finreporter, our neighbor is a regional manager for a supermarket pharmacy division. When one of the pharmacists was diagnosed (early in the pandemic and now recovered) they could not inform her colleagues due to HIPAA laws (this was before they started quarantining known contacts). My former company stopped printing an employee newsletter, citing privacy laws. I guess that kind of news is "grapevine only".

yeah HIPAA laws generally won't allow a company to announce who has covid within the organization, but if the employees are in contact (and not work from home) i would think the company has an obligation to at least let people know that someone has it, which location it is, and therefore the people from that location (again only if not work from home) can start figuring out if they need to quarantine themselves. i know that people generally will need and want for their medical issues to remain private but i feel like with covid, they need to be forthright and let people they came in contact with know they got it. it's the responsible thing to do.