CoronaQuarantine, Day 15
There's a new woman at work who is taking over all the "private label" projects. She sits in the desk right behind where I sit, when we are all actually working at the office anyway, and she started the Monday of the first of the two weeks I took off work to go to Australia. Her name is Tracy, which is fun in a weird way, in that we already have a male Tracy who is one of the Deli Merchandisers, and our previous CEO who was kind of a psychopath was also named Tracy. (He's dead now.)
Anyway, the week I came back, I stated work again on a Wednesday, and that was the first day I met her. I was sent to work from home two days later and have been working from home since—with that day being Day 1, today is Day 15—but we have since been really getting to know each other in pretty lengthy emails. We've talked a lot about my vacation, about movies, and other things. I've already forwarded her all five of my Australia "travelogues" to her gmail address. She even sent me a list of what were here six favorite pictures!
Honestly, it's nice just having that kind of human connection during this extended period of isolation. For the people working at stores, it's such a double-edged sword: they are getting exposed to a potentially dangerous public every day. But, they aren't holed up alone at home all day every day. Honestly I'm more privileged to get to be in the latter category, which really hit home for me when Mark at the Bothell store emailed me about an InstaCart shopper sneezing on the back of his neck. Gack! He told me a lot of our regular shoppers are staying at home and doing online ordering, and the stores are filling with personal shoppers from places like InstaCart who have a lot less of an idea to be courteous shoppers or, apparently, even hygienic.
Shobhit had thought Big 5 would be closed yesterday, but he later texted me that they opened their doors after all. I have no idea if they have officially been granted "essential business" status or doing business under the radar. I know companies in Los Angeles in the latter category are frustrating authorities so much that they are threatening to shut off their water supply. I hope it doesn't get to that point here. We're not yet far enough into this mess for people to start getting desperate to a widespread degree; this is just outright carelessness. Of course, there should still be empathy for anyone worried about losing their business, which under the circumstances is a legitimate fear.
And when it comes to Big 5, it's hard to decide what I even want to happen. He did say they were expecting managers to work even if they closed, so there's that. Of course we'd both be safer if we could both stay at home through all this, but for the time being, we both kind of want him still to be getting hours more than we want him to stay home. Maybe that's dumb though; much more than most, we could weather him staying home from work a couple of weeks.
It's been two weeks for me now, and I am settling into it finally as kind of a "new normal." Temporary, but a long temporary. I'm guessing I'll be working from home another two weeks at minimum, if not more. It depends on how much worse it gets out there, or if the curve starts to flatten finally. And, thanks to a complete lack of federal government leadership on this issue, that curve is going to vary wildly state by state—New York easily being the worst off.
Anyway. Gabriel and I did finally do our "Netflix Party" yesterday, shortly after I finished my work day. He had trouble settling on something to watch, though. First we tried the Tom Segura comedy special that was released on Tuesday; about ten minutes in he said he wasn't into this guy. I watched the rest later and, while I thought it was all right, Gabriel definitely abandoned it at the point that he should have. He would not have wanted to see the rest.
Then we watched an episode of this animated series called Big Mouth, which I guess he was swayed into giving a try because of all the voice talent on it (including John Mulaney, who I had offered as a rare example of a great cis-male white comedian). Still, I found it annoying that he wanted to watch it at all, given his staunch refusal ever to give BoJack Horseman a chance, even though that's the best animated TV show ever fucking made!
Also when Big Mouth was on, I got up to use the bathroom and feed the cats, and smashed my shin on a metal piece of my bed frame. It hurt so bad for a second I felt like I was going to throw up. So that was fun.
Finally we just went back to Marc Maron's End Times Fun special, which I really wish we could actually get to the closer in together, but he eventually had to turn it off and go eat dinner (or maybe go help make dinner, or something). By the time he finally fucking finishes that special, he'll have had to watch it in at least three separate parts! We could have finished it had we just started with that, but, whatever. It was still nice to hang out with him for a while, even if it had to be via FaceTime. But, such are the ways of the world right now.
[posted 12:35 pm]