Five years ago, in March 2020, the company I worked for announced that we would work from home for the next two weeks while this COVID thing blows over. It was a Friday.
We were told not to take too much stuff home because it was only two weeks after all. The temperature of the announcement suggested that the company did not think this was necessary, but they had to follow the rules and/or do what everyone else was doing. We, the employees, thought the company, all of America, and the world were overreacting.
We never did come back from the two-week break. It was an in-office job (although there was flexibility to work from home when necessary), and I worked as a Senior IT SOX Compliance Analyst. I quite liked my job and the people I worked with, so working from home for two weeks felt more like an inconvenience.
We were told not to take too much stuff home because it was only two weeks after all. The temperature of the announcement suggested that the company did not think this was necessary, but they had to follow the rules and/or do what everyone else was doing. We, the employees, thought the company, all of America, and the world were overreacting.
We never did come back from the two-week break. It was an in-office job (although there was flexibility to work from home when necessary), and I worked as a Senior IT SOX Compliance Analyst. I quite liked my job and the people I worked with, so working from home for two weeks felt more like an inconvenience.
Gradually, we began to come to the office to pick up more and more stuff. Even my office chair made it back to my home, and I still use it to this day. It’s now missing its right arm, and the height is no longer adjustable, but I refuse to get rid of it. It has sentimental value.
Coming into the office to pick things up was such a complicated task that an official document had to be filled out and approved by the powers that be before we came in. No two employees could be scheduled to come in at the same time for fear of contamination and contraction. The guy who worked at our mailroom was often the only one in the entire building because COVID or not, mail was still coming in, and it had to be processed.
At first, I dressed up pretty and wore makeup for our Team meetings, trying my best to continue acting like I was still in the office, but by the two-week mark, I was burned out and tired of playing dress up, so I started appearing as I was. Ada Verastic’s daycare closed, so I took the opportunity to teach her how to read, and she picked it up so quickly. She was 4 and a half years old when she started reading fluently, and I was more impressed by myself than I was with her ability to read so quickly because I had never thought of myself as a great teacher.
Soon, nail salons closed, so I stopped grooming my nails. Restaurants closed. Going to the grocery store was like a scene out of those movies where there is a mysterious virus and everyone is either sick or dead (or a zombie). Hand sanitizers and bathroom tissue had their weights measured in gold. Every day on the news, the numbers continued to rise. Hospitals were overflowing with sick patients, and if you went to the hospital because of a different illness, there was a great opportunity that you would come back with COVID. Every sneeze and cough was suspicious and enough for people to tie you up and throw you over the bridge.
The pandemic reshaped the world. As a millennial, I can say with my full chest that I have been through a lot. In no particular order, these are a few of the things that millennials have endured: the crash of the housing market, the Great Recession, Political polarization, social confusion, and of course, COVID. I think we deserve reparations of some sort.
Meanwhile, every other day, we see videos of Asian people eating things that are alive and crawling and jumping, and I cannot help but wonder: This is probably how COVID-19 started, and are we going to endure another pandemic?
I really hope there’s no more pandemic ever again. There are so many conspiracy theories around COVID that I don’t know what to believe again. 🙄
Lol at you being impressed with yourself on Ada Verastic’s reading win. She’s a genius! 💪🏾
I’m so happy to read your blog post again. Cheers to more reads ahead! 🥂