Rules and guidelines on masking in the US

The hotel in which I stayed in the United States is a part of a large chain. The official wording on its clean policy is that for guests staying at its US hotels, you do not need to wear a mask at the hotel if you are fully vaccinated. Staff are required to wear face masks.

As a cautious Canadian, I threw that guest policy out the window. I am fully vaccinated. I got my booster shot on Thursday. All is well. I have a sore arm. That's it. I'm boring that way. I'll take boring any day!

Whether I was heading downstairs to the kitchen area to fetch breakfast to take up to my room or doing laundry, I wore a mask. Heading to and from my room? I had a mask on.

As for staff, housekeeping never had masks on. When I headed to my room to check in back in late November of last year, I had to walk by two housekeeping staff without their masks. Luckily, I had mine on.

I'd say that 50% of the time, staff at this hotel had face masks on. The front desk was much better at it.

What I am trying to get at is that there are rules and guidelines on wearing masks, but they aren't enforced. We are still in a pandemic. Not wearing a mask in a public area is ridiculous these days, vaccinated or not.

The moral of this story is to mask up, to protect yourself and others from the various COVID-19 variants that are out there.

Verdict: I am not working with my ex

This saga with the ex-guy throwing me into a potential work nightmare is over. Both my manager and his manager told off the persistent project manager that I do not have time to work on this user guide.

The guide is in horrible shape. It is over a hundred pages and was written by a software developer who has no concept of writing a customer-facing document. As an example, his first paragraph has five instances of etc. This guide is both long and ugly.

Yesterday, my manager pinged me on our new messaging app at work. I don't like instant messaging when it comes to work. He had a discussion with his manager. He then asked me whether I have worked with this project manager and my ex before on deliverables that are separate from what I typically do. I have not.

I said that pretty much everyone reaches out to me because they know who I am and like the work that I do. My manager said something nice. He said that I have a good reputation and that I should be proud of it.

It's good to be helpful and nice. I am thankful that I do not have to work with my ex. 

I feel that he recommended my name to this project manager because he wanted to burden me with this work. Rather, he needs someone who can fix up an ugly document and put some sense into it. It was my ex-guy's way of saying that I'm a decent writer.

I do appreciate that he has respected my wish for him to not contact me. I hope that he continues to honour it.

Learning quickly

On Thursday, I realized that I am so determined to learn how to do tasks in a new software application that I end up being incredibly versed in it. I ended up telling a colleague how to do things in it.

I don't feel like I am an expert, but I have figured out how to do tasks that are needed for my everyday work. Most folks would probably give up. I have been fiddling around with it for weeks that I figured out functionality that wasn't in any of the instructional videos. I also couldn't find it in the user guide.

I felt good when I had my breakthrough. I am simply glad that I can use this application for my work, as the old system will be discontinued in a couple of months.