Back in late September, we mocked celebrated the leadership of Marcum CEO Jeffrey Weiner who, pandemic be damned, told his troops that he wanted heinies in all seats at Marcum offices across the land on Oct. 1—even in New Haven, CT, where employees found out on Sept. 30 that one of their colleagues had tested positive for coronavirus but were still told to get to the office.
Welp, guess who’s back working from home again?
A tipster sent us this email Weiner sent to everyone in mid-November that pleaded (Weiner said “please” three times!) with Marcum employees to stay the hell out of the office if they can’t responsibly social distance during Thanksgiving, and if they’re out of PTO time, for the safety of others, sorry, they have to take time off without pay:
In the last 7 days we’ve had 7 COVID cases reported firm wide. That’s 1 per day. The cases are mostly in different offices with no indication both anecdotally and through our contact tracing that those contracting COVID are contracting it at work, but quite the contrary, our experiences definitely indicate that every case is being contracted outside of Marcum’s office by people not practicing safe social distancing while not at work. In many (but not all) cases, the person contracting the virus has not been in a Marcum office for days, if not weeks.
So with the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday upon us, and our experience showing that out of work social interactions are the cause of what we’ve been experiencing, I must ask that if you can’t responsibly social distance while not at work, please, please, please don’t come to a Marcum office. Work remotely. If you can’t work remotely take PTO. If you’re out of PTO take time off without pay.
Please be responsible and don’t put your fellow Marcum team members in danger.
Many of you will be traveling and gathering with family and friends over the next 10 days or so. I’m not going to pass judgement on whether you should or shouldn’t. But if you do, don’t come back to a Marcum office until the week of December 7. The safety of the Marcum team is our greatest priority.
From my family to yours have a very happy Thanksgiving.
Stay safe, stay healthy and remember we are all in this together.
Jeffrey M. Weiner
Then on Nov. 23, Marcum employees got the “we’re returning to remote work” message from Weiner:
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen around the country and we head into the holiday season, we want to make sure we are putting safety of our associates at the top of our list. At the end of business tomorrow, Tuesday, November 24th, Marcum’s work force will again become a mostly remote work force. Our offices will remain open only for services that cannot be performed remotely. This includes, but is not limited to, mailroom services, banking, scanning, and year-end inventories (provided they can be done safely). Some of you may be asked to come in on a daily basis to deal with essential services, as you did earlier this year.
As we learned in March, our technological capabilities enable us to work seamlessly from remote locations. So while our offices may again be closed, you are expected to be working and responsive to co-worker and client emails and voicemail and to produce deliverables for which you are responsible. The Firm remains open for business, and we will continue to work together to servve our clients as per normal.
For now, our plan is to maintain remote work arrangements through Sunday, January 17th. We plan on reopening on Monday, January 18. We will be monitoring the situation regularly and will communicate any changes to this return date.
We feel this step is necessary to preserve the health of our team and help curtail the spread of the virus, while continuing to deliver superior client service.
Stay safe, stay healthy and remember we are all in this together.
Jeffrey M. Weiner
Chairman & CEO
Marcum LLP
Oh well. I guess those office-only “implicit learning opportunities, those unexpected conversations in the hallway, and the mentoring that just isn’t as effective over WebEx or Zoom” are just going to have to wait a little longer, Jeff.
Related articles:
Marcum CEO Wants to See Those Cube Farms Filled on Oct. 1
Marcum Has Positive COVID Case, Still Expects Employees to Come to the Office Bright and Early on Oct. 1
If the employees fail to abide the company rules for those who do not have respect for the co-workers fellows and don’t abide washing their hands and not wearing a mask the company don’t need people like this working and endangering the life of others.
0.13% infection fatality rate and you guys act like it’s ebola
25,000 people in NYC died of COVID. If the infection fatality rate was actually 0.13%, the city would have had 19.2 million infections, which is mathematically impossible since the city’s population is 8 million
“Endangering the lives of others”… really Ivan? Seems a bit over the top when we’re talking about a 99.98% overall survival rate.
“. . . and remember we are all in this together.”
BUWAHAHAHAAAAAA!! What a comedian.
Worst company I’ve ever had the misfortune of working for in my entire career, and second place isn’t even close.
Agreed