Day 781: Covidese

We have a very young intern here at PlagueBlog Headquarters, in relation to whom arose the question of what were the most memorable words or phrases to come out of the COVID plague years. I prefer the bad cat's "Baysian datacrime," though what he's really talking about there is "immortal time," another vital concept to carry out of the pandemic (if there is ever an escape from the pandemic).

Today he outdoes himself with "they took the wheels off the trebuchet," the short summary of a long discussion of the apparent contradiction of so many employees burning out while working in their PJs:

your boss got more and more annoyed about calls being truncated to “go make lunch for the kids” or “because the rug cleaning guy is here” or “to see what the dog is freaking out about.” these are not things of the office. the office is, by design, meant to keep them out because they are distracting as hell and they break workflow and atomize it. they waste other people’s time. you probably did 100 of these things. perhaps you realized they were annoying to co-workers and employees, perhaps you didn’t. but, it started to create a new kind of license to demand accommodation and a sort of passive aggressive tit for tat of “well yes, i AM chopping onions because last week you were eat[ing] pizza!”

no one’s time is “their time” anymore. it’s all “our” time. this sets up a full blown tragedy of the commons. no one owns the resource of time, so no one takes care of it. everyone tries to overconsume and it gets grabby.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a twentieth of a percentage point today.