Winners, Losers and In-Betweens

 

Thursday, March 26, 2020

A senior Federal Reserve official estimated that up to 30% of US workers may eventually be out of a job, a figure bolstered by the news that over 3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, compared to the previous week’s total of 282,000.
-U.S. News and World Report

Who is earning money in the shut-down and who isn’t? Orders to stay at home mean that many workers can’t work. These are the losers in the employment lottery. Restaurants, as one example, have been hard hit, as they are not considered essential and are places where large groups of people gather in enclosed spaces, considered dangerous for spreading the virus. Many have closed – temporarily or for good – and have laid off their employees. Both the businesses and their employees are hurting. To alleviate the financial burden of business closures, on Wednesday, the US Senate approved a $2 trillion measure that expanded unemployment benefits and provided aid to businesses. The Seattle Times called this action “unprecedented.” The funds are expected to keep many afloat until businesses can reopen.

In stark contrast, local government orders to stay home have made online shopping more popular than ever. Amazon, the leading consumer shopping/home delivery business, headquartered in Seattle, is hiring warehouse workers and delivery personnel all over the country. Amazon has seen upwardly spiking sales volumes. For them, every day is like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the days that follow Thanksgiving and traditionally kick off the Christmas shopping season. Housebound customers are buying as if all purchases were door-buster deals.

Grocery stores also remain open and are hiring. Although other essential businesses are defined differently by different cities and states, they generally include: pharmacies, big-box stores, banks, gas stations, hardware stores, and health care providers. For now, I guess you could say these are the “winners,” inasmuch as they are open for business and their services are in demand.

Local businesses of all types continue to reinvent themselves and remind me pandemic life is a work in progress. Only a week ago Monday, I stopped by our local Sky Nursery for some garden supplies. Although I felt somewhat guilty for escaping my house for a one-hour change of scenery, what I saw looked oddly normal. Employees buzzed about, helping customers and rearranging plants, as though news of the pandemic had yet to arrive. I asked two of the employees, “Are you folks closing?” The only response I got was a casual, “No, we’re open, seven days a week.” As though they lived in a greenhouse bubble.

Now, only a week later, and six days after the governor issued his stay at home order, Sky’s website says they will take orders for pick-up only. The bubble has popped and reality has set in.





 

I live in Seattle and have time to think. Muse, even. Retired from research consulting and report writing, I now write about family history and life around me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Sight

Image
March 10, 2020:  For the past five days, my husband Doug and I visited our daughter Angela and her husband Harry at their home in San Francisco. Over the weekend, each received instructions from their workplaces that starting Monday, March 9, they were to work from home.  Doug and I made ourselves scarce on Monday so "the kids" could get their work done. We drove to the north end of the city under blue skies, for a walk along the Yacht Harbor. As we arrived, we noticed that several people were taking pictures of a cruise ship passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. On any beautiful sunny day like this one, the bridge is a stunning backdrop for ships sailing below. It would not be unusual to see people snapping photos. This time it was different. People made detours from the walking path to take their photos. The moment we parked nearby, we realized this was not just any ship. It was the Grand Princess cruise ship we had heard about - the one carrying 21 passengers who had teste
Read more

Introduction - Read this first

In January, 2020, a man in his 30's was the first in the U.S. to be diagnosed with COVID-19, a novel coronavirus related to SARS and MERS. The man had traveled to Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began, and returned home to Washington State, where I live. At the end of February, the first death was reported in Kirkland, Washington. A nursing home in that city became the center of an outbreak where two-thirds of the residents and dozens of staff members tested positive; 40 deaths became linked to the facility. But the virus did not stop with our state or our country. In March, as the World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic, I realized I was living through what would become a significant point on historic timelines. I began to write about the ways the coronavirus was changing the lives of everyone around me.  The first stay-at-home orders from local officials kept us from work, school, and most of our daily routines. Those of us stuck at home stocked up on basic food
Read more

Kitchen Re-org

Image
Tuesday, March 24, 2020: Last week, I tore apart two of my kitchen cupboards and rearranged them. For twenty years I have loosely separated baking ingredients from canned goods in my pantry and called that good enough. Now the fruit is separated from the vegetables, the condiments from the jams. The crackers have their own corner and gluten free ingredients reside above the glutinous flours. The shelves never before had labels. They do now.  When I was done, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, bigger than I expected. Why was cabinet cleaning the highlight of my week? As I spend more time at home, neater surroundings become more important. When the world has gone topsy-turvy, neatness brings a calm I seem to crave. But is that all? When there is little to look forward to on my calendar, rooting around among the ingredients on my pantry shelves suggests new cooking and baking projects – projects I can plan for the future, even if the future is only a day or two away. While I feel tied
Read more