Covid Support Thread
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First day back officially at the office. I am working twice a week but honestly it’s disruptive and might go back full time. We can be physically distanced at my office. However the Daily podcast today about droplets indoors freaked me out, probably rightly so.
I don’t know what to wear to the office. I popped in before in jeans and felt underdressed because assistants were in dress pants. Some female lawyers are wearing jeans. My nice jeans are dark wash which may be too hot for summer. I also lost weight over the last couple years so some of my jeans aren’t the best fitting. So I might have to buy some nice medium wash jeans. And all because of this limbo office work time. And I know this is small potatoes!
Why jeans? How about some of the inexpensive lightweight fitted pants they have at stores like Target (or Loft or similar)? Really any black or gray or printed cropped pant, or white even, is great for summer. Or dresses are easy. You can throw on flat comfy shoes with either one, and bring a cardigan.
I think medium or lighter wash jeans can be too casual for some offices, particularly in Legal or Financial fields.
I was thinking along the same line as Kate. One of the executive in our office, despite wearing a lot of the pants from lululemon, always looks put together because of the top, jacket and shoes she wears with the pants.
EDT. There are some really great, lightweight travel pants out there that look good for the office.
@hfantods Is this a new job? I think jeans can be appropriate office-wear when styled correctly, assuming they’re okay with whatever dress code your office has. I wouldn’t over-think it. I’m never hot once I’m at the office — I’m always freakin’ freezing — and I wear a lot of dresses to work year-round because they’re easy outfits.
I’ve been listening to The Daily on my dog walks every morning and this morning’s episode made me nervous for fall.
I also think, jeans are jeans, the material is generally the same, so you’re probably going to be equally comfortable or uncomfortable in dark washes (which I think are easier to pull off professionally) as medium washes. White jeans are another office-appropriate option.
I cannot face wearing jeans in summer. It’s just too hot and humid. I could do it if I drove to work, but not on public transportation & walking. I need a dress or a lighter cotton pant.
Thanks all! Yes, I could look into expanding my summer clothes in general to include options of not jeans. It’s not a new job. It’s just a weird period of coming into office when it’s not completely business as usual. Some male lawyers are wearing jeans too. It’s a small firm. But I feel for females and, just personally, there’s still pressure to look nice and put together despite not e.g., wearing a suit (also I do “need” to get some more spring/summer suits too).
Do you need actual suits? Those are fun, but you can also just have a couple of jackets to throw on over dresses or pants or even jeans.
I work at a finance company, and people do wear jeans (did; we stay home now), but would dress them up with dressy shirts and/or blazers. And nice shoes or boots. But not every day. In the summer, women wore a lot of comfy dresses.
I second getting a couple of nice jackets to throw on top of whatever. I work in the legal industry, though not at a firm, and we’re business casual, I’d say. Jeans are okay on some days but not all. But we have a fair number of meetings and events with attorneys in our offices and I keep a couple blazers at work and on days I need to look a bit more dressed up plan my outfit underneath to look nice with one of the blazers and just throw it on.
But I feel ya! I really felt this past winter that I needed a pretty major style upgrade for summer work clothes. It’s cold like 8-9 months of the year where I live so I feel confident in my cold weather work attire. Less so my warm weather attire. But with COVID, seems like my summer work clothes won’t really matter this year.
Literally every day now I wear stretchy high-waist jorts as a bottom (I have 2 identical pairs from Target), and whatever top. Usually like a short-sleeve blouse that I’d wear to the office. One day I had on a sleeveless top and threw on a light blazer for a couple meetings. I can even get away with cropped tops that I couldn’t wear to the office if the shoulders look fine on Zoom.
I was at Target for milk and saw they had a white pants suit that was super cute. I want to try it on. I also have cropped fitted pants from there that I’ve gotten lots of compliments on at work. They have a few different colors and patterns of them in stock.
No I don’t need suits but they’re easy to throw on with a shell top under. Unfortunately no Target here on Canada. I bought some Pixie pants from Old Navy last night. Hopefully they will work for now.
I am a big fan of dresses, but you can only cycle through so many. We don’t wear jeans at our office other than now…
Yeahhh, when I go back to work initially, I assume it’s not going to be business as usual and plan to wear jeans if I feel like it, even though it’s not really our norm. All in-person events and meetings have been canceled or moved to an online format through September for now, though we’re aware that rule may be extended. I don’t see a point in getting “outward facing ready” if it’s just going to be me and like three other coworkers in the office on any given day. Like I’m not going to hang out in a blazer just because.
I had my first hair cut in like… 7-8 months last night and chopped maybe 4-5 inches off. My hair stylist said that she noticed more short-haired women who used to come in every few weeks thinking they’ll try to work with the length and keeping growing it out a bit, whereas those of us who have longer hair were more likely to be like “omg get this hair off my head.” I fell pretty squarely into the latter category. Anyway, felt very safe there. They were being cautious and even had signs up saying that there were extra levels of precaution they could take (e.g., face guards) by request.
Today’s the record for the highest number of cases that my state has seen since the pandemic began, just barely beating out yesterday which had also been a record high. I’m getting frustrated with people who seem to think it just isn’t worth bothering with safety precautions any more, because here at least it not only isn’t over but has spiked higher than it ever has.
I don’t see many people in my area wearing masks nowadays, although even at the height of precautions only about 1/4 of people at most were wearing them. I can’t see our state authorities ever requiring them, not here. I’ve been seeing grocery store workers and doctor receptionists that are told by their employers to wear masks putting the mask under their nose or chin or just taking them off until someone walks up to them. When I went to the grocery store last week, only 1 of the checkout lanes had a cashier who was wearing a mask in a way that would prevent transmission. And that’s the grocery store I go to because they are better than other grocery stores about precautions. It is getting extremely difficult to social distance at grocery stores and other places because other people will just walk up to you or right by you, they don’t care anymore, even if you are very clearly trying to social distance yourself. My state is continuing to move forward with reopening regardless of the spike we’re in. I went for curbside pickup at one of the places I get Chinese recently (I like to support the Chinese restaurants here a lot more lately ever since people started spouting “the Chinese virus”) and saw they’d opened up their freakin buffet again and were no longer doing curbside pickup. When I called to say I was there for my order, like usual, they just told me to come on in and that they weren’t doing curbside any more. The whole parking lot was packed, and inside no social distancing methods were being enforced. I’m not going to that restaurant anymore for now, but there’s another Chinese place that I can still support that is taking precautions.
Also my Mom’s been furloughed from her job of many years. She told me today. They said that her work has been fantastic, but her company is in health care and they have been canceling everything but emergency treatments. Apparently they have lost tens millions of dollars, and are thinking that for the year 2020 total they may lose hundreds of millions of dollars total. They are still paying for her insurance for the 90 day furlough, which is a huge relief as my mom requires regular health care. I’m really glad their doing that. She’s going to try to file for unemployment, she expects to be terminated. She says filing will help her fill up the hours where she would normally be working, as other people in the same situation and state say the holds on phones are often 4-5 hours long and the website is so antiquated as to be hardly usable.
Oh, and my husband’s family is gathering for their church meeting this summer as usual. People come from all over. Usually a few people come from overseas too, but I don’t know how that will work with various travel restrictions in different places. When my Mom-in-Law suggested to her sister who is recovering from cancer that she should wear a mask if she goes, her sister said she didn’t need a mask because she would “pray more”and trust in God that she won’t get sick. I started to bring up the story about the drowning man praying to God for help and then refusing the helicopter. But I just…can’t even. And even if she’s being silly about it, she’s still been so kind to me and I really don’t want her to get sick, no matter how stupid she’s being. I don’t want anyone to get sick or die from this, even if they are misguided or sticking their head in the sand or refusing to take advantage of the medical precautions we are blessed or lucky enough to have access to. I hear people on both sides of the political spectrum saying they hope the other side will have a lot of people die from their various political gatherings and it just makes me so sad. No one deserves to die from this. And it is heartbreaking that so many lives have been lost, and that so many more will be lost, and the number of lives that have and will be taken could be so much less if people made different choices.
