Oh boy.
How’s everyone’s apocalypse going?
I have some newlywed friends that are stuck at home with just each other and their dog. Go ahead. Tell me what it’s like. Is there constant screaming whilst the sun is up? Do you get to sleep? When you have to poop does anyone bust in the bathroom crying? When you make yourself food, is it ever still hot when you get to eat it? How do you enjoy your mornings if you aren’t trying to juggle work and teach elementary school and manage a baby? Are your meal plans more Coq au Vin or Mac & Cheese & Hot Dogs? Has anyone been in Time Out? Have you put yourself in Time Out? Do you drink for fun or just because you have to?
I think the weirdest thing about the Coronavirus is that it’s going to change the world, we just don’t know how yet. I was Jonathan’s age when the Challenger blew up. I was in High School walking to French Class when the first plane hit. I graduated college in time for the financial crisis to be in full swing–the first year that GM didn’t hire anybody out of Georgia Tech. We did all right. So this is another shitty thing we have to live through, but we’ll get through it.
Most of us anyway. A lot of my family is at high risk. A lot of your family is too, I’d guess. Existential dread is an awful companion, isn’t it?
But what’s going to happen on the other side? We’ve got massive, massive organizations like The Coca-Cola Company going through a huge experiment of running the company with zero staffing at the headquarters. They’re going to get that data. What’s that data going to say? Other side of the coin, we’ve got the entire workforce experiencing working from home. How’s that going to change things?
My parent organization at Coke is Food Service on Premise, so our organization is focused on beverages in restaurant dining rooms, cafeterias, bars, offices, and schools. We’re hurting, and we’re trying to figure out ways to help our customers survive. Our business is going to change.
What about the laser focus on the quality and value of teachers? This experience has proved their worth in spades. We ought to come out of this building shrines and temples for our children’s teachers, and we need to invest in schools that we send our kids. We should pay them more and give them the respect and support they deserve.
This experience will hopefully give us a different perspective on people fleeing war and famine and disease and poverty and hardship. Fear, searching for help, striving for a safer future: they’re all human emotions. Hopefully, we’ll see more of ourselves in other people trying to improve their own situation.
Restaurants let us add beer to a take-out order now and the world hasn’t fallen apart from it. Maybe we should let that continue. And in Georgia, we’re now allowed to buy beer from a brewery. Imagine.
It’s rare, but maybe the most obvious lesson from this pandemic will come from the most obvious place. Expertise is vastly important and our medical infrastructure is critical to our survival. Maybe we will all agree that our healthcare system needs to be as strong as possible, and our current system isn’t there yet. Maybe we could stop handwringing over who has a good idea and just start implementing the good ideas. I know. LOLZ!
Our entire life has moved online. I mean, we were almost there, but now… My entire office is there. My parents are there. We’ve fired up Google Hangout for the first time. I’ve seen dinner parties through an iPad. I have a friend that attended a wedding on Facebook Live. That’s weird, right?
Anywho, that’s what I spend my time thinking about.