People who are in self quarantine really have no idea how weird it is to be a base level essential worker through this whole thing. I donât mean a doctor or a nurse or someone else working round the clock to put a stop to it or find a cure. I mean a truck driver or a gas station attendant or a retail clerk. Because everything is basically normal, only a little bit off, and then again not as off as it should be.
Every day I get up. I go to work. I sell people things. There are fewer people coming through and theyâre buying more because theyâre stocking up or they havenât been shopping in a month, but there are still lines, like always. Thereâs plexiglass between the cashiers and the customers, and no dividers, and we have to continually yell at people not to put their items on the belt until weâve finished the previous transaction, and they ignore us or argue with us, same as always. The more rules we have, the more rules there are for people to ignore. And the longer it goes on, the more normal it gets. Pretty much no one thanks us for coming in to work anymore. People are starting to act like we should never, ever run out of an item. Itâs just blanket assumed that we will have hand sanitizer and soap and toilet paper and people are shocked when we say weâre out. But there are still ads on the TV in the break room telling us all to stay home and the more the customers ignore social distancing, the more management puts pressure on us to set a good example, until weâre expected to follow standards that are physically impossible.
The longer this goes on, the less âessentialâ I feel.
And then I come home and get online as always and there are all of these people asking what youâre doing while youâre stuck in quarantine and coming up with fun things to do when youâre in quarantine and talking about what youâre going to do when this whole thing is over and you can finally, finally leave your house. Everyone just seems to assume that you, the person reading their words, are in quarantine, because everyoneâs in quarantine. Itâs like this big, international, universal experience that youâre not a part of.
It feels like fifteen years from now everyone in the world will be looking at each other and asking âRemember what it was like to be cooped up in the house? Wasnât it awful?â and Iâll just be sitting there going ââŠâŠ.no, I donât. I didnât do that.â And people will look at me and wonder how I could not know.
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
