The shivering started in the middle of the night. I zipped up a pullover, piled on the sheets, and tapped the thermostat. The chill grew more intense. My teeth chattered, my collar quivered, and my forearms broke out in goosebumps. When I stood it felt like I had a full body hangover. From my temples across my brow I was dizzy and top heavy.
I took a hot shower until my bathroom became a sauna, plugged the tub and fell asleep in the bath. This was my morning routine for two weeks.
If you take too much Tylenol in a day your ears will ring. I don’t know why, but that’s a thing.
I worked at a UPS Store. Before the COVID-19 cases were widely reported a customer told me he wasn’t worried. “It’s all about your outlook. You choose what you let in. You put negative energy out into the world then negative energy gonna come find you.”
Days later a mailbox holder challenged me for wearing a mask. She was usually a good natured, charming woman who cracked jokes as she unwrapped tubs of vitamins. On that day she was stepping over the 6 foot line on the floor to say, “Everybody’s freaking out about the Corona virus, but they should be freaking out about what they’ve being putting in the water. Do you have any idea how happy the pharmaceutical companies are right now?”
Another customer told me that the 5G Verizon installed during the NCAA final four games will make us more vulnerable, because of the microwaves it emits.
“Don’t you mean radio waves?”
After the governor shut down all the coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, the UPS Stores stayed open. We are an essential business. Our customers might need to ship medical masks, hand sanitizer, or toilet paper. They might need to overnight ventilators to New York City. I say might, because most of the people in the lines out our door were returning underwear, dresses, and socks.
The store makes about 80 cents for every Amazon drop off it takes in. It doesn’t matter if it’s an iPhone case or a 150 pound safe (like the one that I threw my back out lifting). They are worth the same to us. I started calculating the risk/reward factor once the stay-at-home order began. Everytime an item slid across the counter I thought, “This was worth risking your life and mine?”
A few weeks into the quarantine, Hennepin county became the epicenter for the outbreak in Minnesota, a customer knocked on the delivery door in back. She started to say she would like her mail walked out to her car so that she could keep a safe distance from the other customers. She started to say that, but cut herself off. “You look sick. Are you sick? Because you look sick.”
In truth, I’d been feeling weird. I wasn’t sure if it was stress from the sudden rush of customers or if it was a psychosomatic response to news of the virus. I checked my temperature every morning, and as long as I was at the same average of 98 degrees I felt I was fit to go to work.
Then my temperature went past 100 and I felt something in my bones. It’s still flu season. My boss theorized that this could be garden variety influenza, maybe adult onset allergies. But we’d been told if anyone had COVID-19-like symptoms we’d be paid to stay at home, so I took the company up on the offer.
Then I was told corporate needed some kind of proof before authorizing sick pay. I’m in my thirties. My job does not provide health insurance. My symptoms are not so severe as to warrant a trip to the ER, and there’s a finite amount of COVID-19 tests to go around. I downloaded Apple’s COVID-19 app, took the survey, and it told me to self-quarantine. I took a screenshot of the results and sent it to my boss. That’s the quality of healthcare I can afford.
This is all I’ll say about the American healthcare system: this is a country where a science teacher cooking meth to pay for his cancer treatment is a plausible plot line on TV. Breaking Bad would make no sense if it took place in Canada.
Not long after that my boss called to say she was laying me off. I wasn’t sure if this meant I was being furloughed, if I had a job waiting for me when I got better or not. She said this is the best way to make sure I got paid without crippling the business.
I was told it was important to file for unemployment on Wednesday, because the office was flooded with requests and the last digit of my social security number is assigned to that day.
Before my symptoms started to show. I spent a lot of time walking around. I live next to a chain of lakes with hiking trails. Those trails are packed so densely with people that there’s no way anyone can keep 6 feet away from one another and it seems like no one cares.
The customers at our store didn’t care. We had tape on the floor meant to keep people from getting too close to the counter. They always crossed it. We had to instruct them to step back. Some people thought it was funny to pretend they were sick and cough on the door handle on the way out.
A string of retail jobs has sullied my belief that people are essentially good. This pandemic has obliterated it. If you’ve read this far then there’s one point I want you to take away from this: be kind to the people who are risking their lives to serve you. If you ask how someone is doing you better mean it. Most clerks are past pleasantries. They just might tell you.
Might I suggest you stop asking, “How’s it going?” and start saying, “Thank you for being here.” instead.
I know it’s hard, but please be decent to each other.
I’m sorry for your bad experiences. I thanked someone for serving food yesterday with exactly those words. It’s a shame that some people are treating this as a joke because it’s not. Wishing you the best and thanks for writing.
Yeah, more than a few guys have been chuckling through it. The door cough seems to be their go to joke. Also the conspiracy theory people. I’d started saying, “I’m not being paid to listen this.”
Thanks so much for reading all of that. Hope you and everyone you know are doing good
I hope you’re feeling better now, and if not, that you start feeling better soon. (And I hope the unemployment goes smoothly for you while waiting for things to get back on track).
I am feeling better. Thank you. I think I could take a walk without feeling winded. This is my first time on unemployment and the first week went well. Still waiting on the second check.
Hope everything is going well in your neck of the woods.
Oh darlin’. I’m glad you made it through–at least, I’m assuming the worst is over. And yeah, I have so many friends still working retail, and many in the healthcare industry, including my sister. I try not to think about it too much. But I am taking extra care with people when I do leave the house once every two weeks to drop off jewelry order packages at the post office and go grocery shopping. I went yesterday, and was happy to see how much folks were respecting one another’s space, and the designated spots on the floor. A year ago, I never would have thought Louisville had it in them to put kindness and empathy first, but our new governor has a lot to do with that. We got rid of a monster in November, thank the lort.
I love you, hon, this’ll all work out, fingers crossed. Get some good writing done, save up a little of those UI payments, maybe get a nice bike or something once this is all over. It’s weird, these UI payments aren’t necessarily more than we’d make in a month, but since we don’t have anywhere to spend things other than on necessities, I’m able to sock hundreds at a time away into savings. This all changes our plan to move to Ely in June, but we will also have a far bigger amount for a down payment on a house when we do move in probably August.
Take care of yourself, sugar booger.
Fingers crossed this will work out. I’m happy to hear from so many folks who are doing their best to be good to each other and acknowledge the humanity of everyone who is at risk.
Thanks so much for reading all the way through…
Sugar booger
That is brutal! I hope you are on the mend, and thank you for sharing your story. I’m trying to remain optimistic that the world will come out of this with better policies and protections for people.
I want to be optimistic, but when there is so much injustice pessimism feels healthy. Right now might be the time to be angry. If only to motivate us to act. To look at all the flaws in our systems that this pandemic has either exposed or revealed the extent of.
Thank you for this post, Drew. And thank you for being here. 🙂
Thanks for the outpouring of support. I hope you and yours are doing well
No problem, Drew. Thank you, dear. 🙂
I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through all this. And hearing about people fake coughing and not following the distancing rules infuriates me. Both of my parents are still working through this (both are considered essential workers) and although they are both taking precautions, I worry about them a lot.
The last line of this section hit me hard:
“My job does not provide health insurance. My symptoms are not so severe as to warrant a trip to the ER, and there’s a finite amount of COVID-19 tests to go around. I downloaded Apple’s COVID-19 app, took the survey, and it told me to self-quarantine. I took a screenshot of the results and sent it to my boss. That’s the quality of healthcare I can afford.”
That is a very powerful and frustrating story about the American healthcare system told in just a few sentences. I will never understand the people who think our healthcare system is fine or doesn’t need radical change. I’m not optimistic enough to think this pandemic will change many minds either, but a part of me still hopes it does. It would be a silver lining to this crisis.
Anyway, I’m sorry to hear about your job and I hope things get better for you soon. Stay safe and well.
Yeah. I’ve become less and less open to hearing opinions in favor of our current system. I don’t want to look at those people like their sense of empathy is broken, but I kind of do. At least right now.
Yeah, it’s one thing to think the system is good enough when you don’t see the effects directly. But right now we are all seeing the effects of our broken healthcare system and how important paid sick leave is. At this point, it’s not about ignorance, it’s about not having empathy.
That’s exactly it. People need to pause their pride long enough to consider empathy for others.