I've Been Working Since Wednesday
For those who don't want to fill their Saturday with potential negativity (I'm not sure where all this post is going to go, but I'm feeling a little 'mad at the world' right now), please don't read. The rest of you, consider yourself duly warned.
These company game machines were already helping players to practice social distancing way before it became a mandate.
No, I'm not that happy about going back to work. I should be, but I'm not.
It would have been better that I wasn't laid off in the first place, and didn't finally start drawing unemployment, which pays me $300 more than my best grossing month (let alone net) to not work, cause so much uncertainty over the last nearly two months, all just to go back to work in what feels like a doomed to fail kind of scenario.
I truly hope I'm wrong. I hope this is it for COVID-19 and we can all go back to our lives. But if what the virus scientists are saying is true, we'll be right back at it by winter time, if not much sooner. I guess we'll know how soon in the next coming weeks as more and more states and countries reopen.
I can already tell you I hate wearing a mask, and I haven't really done it that much yet.
I could just focus on the positive, which is I get to drive through forested areas like this on the way out and back from the coast.
May 13
Since Wednesday, I've been helping move machines, mostly out of places, and filling ATMs. Businesses in most of the counties in Oregon got the go ahead to open yesterday (Friday, May 15), but not all of them are going to do so. Still others need to have machines removed or moved farther apart in order to maintain the six feet social distancing constraints.
As far as following any of the rules goes, it seems to be all over the board. So far, as long as a business isn't open yet, even if there are employees there, we haven't been wearing masks at their establishment, and neither have the people working at the businesses.
I can't say there's been more than 10 people in any given location I've been in yet, except for one, which I'll detail a little later.
The places I was able to get into on Wednesday to fill ATMs included a bar, which was yet to open, and two restaurants, which were doing some form of take out and/or delivery. At the bar, just the employees were there and apparently they'd been able to stay afloat through take home of some fashion.
The first restaurant wasn't even sure if they were going to open their doors to patrons on any level by yesterday, and I ended up standing around in the front counter for a few minutes while the supervisor split her time taking a takeout order over the phone and chewing out an employee for not investigating who I was more thoroughly.
I'm not sure what the girl was supposed to do. I was wearing a company shirt, carrying an ATM cassette box and the supervisor knew full well who I was. Apparently, I was part of a teachable moment, one I know I didn't need to be around for, and I'm sure the girl didn't appreciate being called out in front of me, either.
After the supervisor called my boss to make sure he wanted me to fill the ATM even though they didn't know when they might have customers coming in (aside from serving food they also have a backroom for video gambling the state operates, which is what does most of the ATM business), and he told her yes, she let me go back.
No one was wearing masks, by the way.
The last place was another restaurant in a different town. The last time I was in there was about four weeks ago to use $75 worth of gift certificates that had accumulated. At the time, no one was wearing masks, though they did have spit shields up. This time, everyone was wearing one, so I put mine on, too, even though two customers who were waiting for the pizzas were not.
On my way home from the last place, I stopped at a Taco Time to see if it was open or not yet (on a previous visit there were signs saying they were temporarily closed—that was about a month ago, too). In order to see what a printed sign said, I had to get close enough to the front door as I passed by in my car, but in doing so, I failed to see the guy sitting there with his parked bike waving and smiling at me from ten feet away.
It was still temporarily closed down, by the way.
It was definitely time to go home after that.
Four hours to drive 188 miles for two ATM machines. This does include the return trip, by the way.
May 14
Thursday was more of the same. Tear down at a place that no one seemed to know what was going on there—though it didn't sound like they were going out of business—and then go fill some ATMs. The cannabis shops have stayed open throughout the pandemic, and no one at the two I went to were wearing masks, and social distancing was kind of iffy in at least one of them.
May 15
Which brings me to yesterday.
The map shows the driving I did mentioned in the title of this post. I actually started out somewhere else, but got a text before I left home (which happens frequently) that I should go to another town after I was done in the first one. A bar needed their two games removed. I'm not sure if that's because they were going out of business or because they needed the entire area for seating, but either way, the games never did very much business, anyway.
Then, I was back to the second restaurant where I finished out Wednesday to help remove and move around their machines for the whole social distancing thing. They have a large playground area in a totally separate room that is now all blocked off. As it is, I don't know how they're going to hold kids to social distancing. When I left, the regional manager was giving instructions to a local employee to wipe down games every time someone used them.
That's one way to ensure job security.
ATM No. 1
The first stop was a cannabis shop in Lincoln City I've talked about before. There, nothing much has changed. I again was waiting in line outside as a customer would go in one at a time, until the manager (or owner) of the establishment showed up and let me "take cuts." She wasn't wearing a mask (nor was she the previous time). I didn't get a good look to see whether or not the employees were or not (the woman in the head to foot full on surgeon gear wasn't there).
After that, with another text from the general manager, I ended up getting detoured to a bar further downtown that was just trying to open. At first glance, the jukebox wasn't working, but it turned out to be something that normally happens when the machine is off for over 10 days and the internet isn't back up and running. So, I basically wasted 40 minutes or so waiting for the jukebox to reboot just to confirm that everything was plugged in and functioning on the inside.
Hopefully, that's all it was. It's an hour and a half drive one way to get there if not.
ATM No. 2
The last place I ended up going to is the bar I mentioned above that wasn't following any kind of protocols whatsoever. I got there just before 4:30 pm, and the place was already hopping, with people crowding the bar, playing pool, and the jukebox cranking out tunes. No masks. No social distancing. No COVID-19 scare at all.
The place is in a little out of the way town, so unless someone reports them, I doubt they'll be on anyone's enforcement radar, unless of course, there's a significant coronavirus outbreak. It turned out to be my fastest stop, though.
Three days. 25 hours. I won't qualify for unemployment next week even though I didn't work a full 40 hours, and I won't see any of what I've earned until the end of the month.
But at least I've got a job, right?
Thanks for nothing, fortune cookie fortune.
Then There's This Little Gem
I'm going to leave that little statement sitting there for now. It's not like I dislike the work I do per se. It has its moments, but my mood is more of a combination of things—feeling like I have no control over many of things I used to have control over being chief among them.
And it's not helpful that I've been stewing over things that have been happening on HIVE lately, either, but that's another post I may or may not get to.
Something else thrown into the mix...
It's been a while since I've shared a fortune cookie fortune, and this one will be the first on HIVE. It seems to fit with the theme of this post, so I will end with it.
First of all, I feel a need to let people know that I do not live and die by these things. I've yet to see any of them completely fulfilled, though, several for a while had an uncanny way of showing up when I was thinking about or experiencing more or less what they were telling me. At the very least, there was more than just a passing correlation.
I do think, however, that fortunes, if you choose to, can serve as a topic for introspection, when they're actually telling you your fortune, rather than making some statement about your personality or your appearance.
This one, though, has me scratching my head.
I have no idea what it's talking about. Since I consider the most important work I've ever done to be raising a family, I believe most of that work is behind me. Both my sons are grown, married and starting their own families. While I'm not completely out to pasture as a father, and just barely getting going as a Grandpa, I don't know that the next 30 years are going to include "my most important work," unless essentially staying out of the way constitutes work.
All I know is, I don't want to contemplate raising grandchildren. I can't really keep up with them now, and not one of them is yet three years old. What would it be like when they are teenagers? I know there are many older people who find themselves in that kind of a situation, and somehow, someway, they're doing it. Aside from what that might mean (as in, what's happened to my sons and their wives for me to be taking care of their children), things would have to change significantly for me and my wife for that to even be possible.
Wholesale, life altering change. I'm not retired. Neither is my wife, and neither of us will be into the foreseeable future.
As far as actual work goes, I doubt seriously I will even be working for the company where I'm at now more than maybe another year (that's barring another shutdown, of course). My wife doesn't want to keep working cleaning rooms at sleep centers and the hospital for a whole lot longer (when she might quit seems to vary, but if I could pull off getting a higher paying job with insurance within the next six months, she might actually quit by the end of the year).
There are no other jobs on the horizon, and certainly none that would constitute "my most important work."
What About Posting?
I don't know how to classify what I've been doing on HIVE. It can feel like work at times, but I don't think, in and of itself, it's that important. Collectively, with everyone else doing their share, HIVE might get somewhere, but I don't see myself trying to take on any greater role than what I'm trying to do right now that might bump up my involvement to "most important" status.
So, I'm just going to tuck this one away in the back of my brain somewhere and see where I'm at with it all somewhere farther down the line. In other words, I'm not going to be disappointed if my most important work is behind me.
I'm good with that.
I wouldn't mind having more lucative work ahead of me, though.
All images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen, except the map, which comes from Apple Maps.