Here’s an update, in case you were curious. Starting this weekend, Metro put in place further service cuts, making it thirty minutes between each train, all trains. It takes me two trains to get to my night job, so I could be looking at, conceivably, hour of waiting in train stations plus the forty minutes it takes me to get there when the trains are running normally, one way. On a bad day, I could spend up to three hours and twenty minutes commuting to and from a five-hour shift. 

Between this and my utter lack of confidence in the CEO’s plan to keep us uninfected, I sent a detailed email to all of my managers plus the regional manager explaining why I wouldn’t be coming in until the crisis passes (including said lack of confidence in the CEO’s plan). I got a very kind and understanding email in return from one of the managers, who promised to keep my updated on what was going on. 

I don’t like doing that. Calling in sick to an understaffed retail job seriously screws over anybody who didn’t or couldn’t call in sick, which is why I’d been forcing myself to go when even when I was at serious risk. But this thing with the Metro is the last straw. The government doesn’t want us to go out for inessential reasons, and it’s making it harder and harder to do that. The Container Store isn’t particularly essential in the first place, and I felt in my gut that, the longer I worked there, it was only a matter of when I became infected, not if.

So now I have a weekend again, after months upon months of not having one, and I can’t do anything with it except wonder what my cats just broke and try to convince Nicole that what she has is allergies, not the coronavirus.

I don’t like to speak ill of my employers in such a public forum, but I’m at my wit’s end here. As you know, I work part-time at night and on Saturdays. My store, as we learned in a recent note to all employees from the CEO, is going to remain open. That means the time during the week that my day job has quarantined me in my own home is kind of pointless since I have to go out every weekend into the plague pit. 

Why? Why is it so important to keep the store open? The Metro is instructing people to only get on the train in the case of vital business. Is this really vital? How is it possible to maintain social distancing when you’re checking someone out at a cash register? What kind of person would risk getting infected and spreading it to get a countertop makeup organizer? I’ll tell you what kind of person—someone who doesn’t take proper precautions and is more likely to have the disease than someone who can wait to get their box of expensive hangers. 

The motto for my store is “Employees First,” but at the moment, that’s not feeling particularly sincere.

The following is a dramatic interpretation of an actual email conversation.

ME: And that’s my problem.

IT: Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on?

ME: Yes, I have.

IT: Okay, but have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?

ME: That is literally the first thing I tried.

IT: Most software glitches can be solved by turning it off and then turning it back on again.

ME: That’s why I tried it first.

IT: Have you tried this thing I may have mentioned in passing once maybe a month ago?

ME: Okay, I’m trying it now, but I can’t seem to get it to do that thing.

IT: It will work if you do that thing.

ME: Look, I will send you screenshots. It is impossible for me to do that thing. See?

IT: Yep, this is complete unrelated to that thing. I don’t know why you’re doing that thing at all. Try this other thing I’ve never told you about before.

ME: It worked. Thank you.

IT: You should have started with that.