Hope you are all doing well in these strange and interesting times! I thought I would keep a running diary of my days during the 30 day “stay at home order” issued by Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas.
I work for a food and vending company and we are on the list of essential companies that gets to keep going to work and serving businesses that are still operating. I have a letter from the government that I have to carry around in my work vehicle and personal vehicle in case anyone questions me about it. I am still showing up early, around 5:00 AM, and working a pretty full day. Our company still has clients to service and our branch consolidated some routes and those of us left are running those routes.
I figured traffic would be pretty light on day one of the order, but even at 4:45 AM this morning there was plenty of traffic on the roads. I thought traffic was much heavier today than it was yesterday, which was the last day before the “stay at home” order went into effect!
It’s such an odd world we’re living in right now. Some people are confined to their homes for the most part and spend time watching the news on tv or looking at social media. With not much to do, I fall into that trap as well. I consider myself very lucky that I still get to go to work and see that there is still a lot of normalcy out there and to realize that the world is not completely shut down. It’s very much still running.
Some businesses I service have are completely shut down and have mandated employees work from home. Some businesses have about half of their employees working from home and half from the office (or some percentage like that) and some companies are operating business as usual. The food distributors I service, for instance, are so busy that they can’t keep up with the demand due to all the hoarding going on at the grocery stores.
It’s nice getting out of the house and interacting with people. I don’t know how I would do if I was confined to myself with nowhere to go. I’d suggest if you’re one of the “work from home” people, that you try to get out to the grocery store or at the very least get in your car and drive around a bit just so you can see that life is still going on. It’s just a suggestion, but I know that’s how I feel about it. I’m actually looking forward to going to work right now just to get out and about and that’s not always the case!
I have a couple businesses that make me sign a waiver to enter their facility and a couple that take my temperature before letting me in to make sure I don’t have a fever. Today I was handed a thermometer to take my temperature. It was one of those that you hold up to your temple and it supposedly gives your temperature. It said my temperature was 188 degrees! It was obviously malfunctioning so she had me try it a few times and it still didn’t work. Eventually she got frustrated and let me in. I think she trusted me that I felt fine and had no symptoms. I just find it interesting that some businesses are taking precautions like that and others are not. There are probably no right answers, as these are unprecedented times.
I’m going to try to provide an update every day. Who knows if I’ll have the motivation to do it. We’ll see.
Hope you are well. Call your friends and family often and make sure they are ok. We need each other.