Questions and Answers 2 in Everyday Things

What has working during the pandemic been like?? Better or worse than normal times?

Even though I touched on this in the previous entry, I wanted to devote more time to detailing what it was like working during the pandemic.

If you’ve read me long enough, or follow me on fb/ig, you know that I deliver to Emory University. CDC is located close to the Emory campus, and one of my drivers actually delivers to that very CDC you’ve seen on the news. We first caught wind of covid during the middle of february, but we were hearing mostly rumors. It didn’t take long before the rumors started becoming more concrete as the month went along. The biggest concern I was hearing was how long it would be before Emory would shut down? People were speculating that Emory would shut down for a couple of weeks then maybe return to classes by the end of April.

Meanwhile, Fedex didn’t give us any indicator as to how we will proceed going forward. I’ve talked about the inner workings of the terminal, but there was a lot of uncertainty about everything during this time period. It didn’t help that we were kind of shut down/shut down, but we still had to work anyway. Masks weren’t really mandatory anywhere in the building. Emory started mandating masks around the middle of March I believe.

Emory underwent a drastic change in how they operated. In the eyes of the local government, Emory researchers were not quite deemed essential though they tried their hardest to prove they were essential. I was hearing stories of researchers having to shut down their research with no way of restarting it. Some of the researchers were actually defiant in complying with orders to shut down their research. Undergrads were told they were no longer allowed on campus. Only senior level people were initially allowed on campus until Emory could formulate a way to safely operate at a lower capacity.

Another big change was that every department was not allowed to order anything for about 2-3 weeks. That significantly slowed my deliveries at Emory lol. The entire campus was on lockdown, and only approved faculty could access their buildings. All vendors who had access were denied due to the safety concerns. I had to go through the process of having my badge upgraded allowing me full access to all buildings on campus.

I’ve mentioned how Emory extended spring break indefinitely in the previous entry. What I forgot to mention was how chaotic things got when it came to students having to pack up their dorm rooms. They were given only a handful of days to make arrangements to move out. It was a huge deal for international students as well because they wouldn’t be able to return to campus or something like that.

I stopped seeing students on campus, and most of the faculty shifted from working on campus to working virtually. Most of my deliveries were altered to minimize face-to-face interaction. Emory had to change how their respective buildings received packages. For instance, School of Medicine (SOM) had to have tables put out in a central location where delivery packages can be delivered. This was NOT optional though there was pushback from researchers because they didn’t like having to go to a central location to receive their packages. Obviously, we loved the idea!

Another thing was every lab had to have a limited number of people within the room for safety reasons. Elevators were restricted to 1-2 people depending on the size of the elevator. Buildings were closing earlier, so we had to make sure to get to them before they closed. Graduations were virtual, so that was a huge change.

Oh, and did I mention that traffic was light as hell during this time period? It was so refreshing not seeing all the traffic on the roads LOL.

Really, after the initial lockdown, the rest of the spring/summer just runs together to be honest. I got used to having a lighter workload and doing everything I could to minimize getting sick. The hardest part was just trying to stay level headed and not get caught up in all the misinformation that was running amok online.

The easiest part about the pandemic was that there were no students just being stupid LOL. I didn’t have to worry about students walking behind my truck as I was backing up, or students blindly walking in my path while I’m trying to drive my handtruck smh.

The hardest part? My truck can’t go through any drive thru’s 😂. Seriously! Trying to find something to eat was next to impossible lol. No restaurant was open for take out for a minute. The only way you could get something to eat was by going to the drive-thru. Well, my truck obviously can’t do THAT, so I would have to settle for gas station food ha!

And that pretty much summarizes what it was like to work during the initial stages of the pandemic :-)