three weeks, a pandemic, and a supermarket

So, coronavirus.

I don’t want to bring it up, but I can’t not.

I’ve spent the last two months desperately trying to ignore it – eyes closed, hands over my ears, singing a la-la-la song to myself – in a pathetic attempt to make it all go away.

Funnily enough, that hasn’t worked.

All of our lives and so many industries have been touched by this, in so many different ways – I wanted to share my little corner of the experience so far and get some things off my chest.

I never, ever talk about work here – for lots of reasons, but mainly because it has nothing to do with books or writing. And I don’t know whether I could technically get in trouble with someone from some department I’ve never heard of for writing about what it’s been like to accidentally, and bizarrely, find myself and my colleagues on the frontline of a pandemic, but I’m pretty sure I’m not sharing anything sensitive or secret. Everyone has already seen the photos/videos of what’s been going on in the paper, on the news, or on social media.

I work in a supermarket.

The last three weeks have been the most ridiculous, unbelievable, and insane of my working life.

Personally, this is a little bit of what it’s been like…

It’s been shift after shift after shift of hundreds of agitated people swarming all around, filled with a panic, panic, panic that has become harder and harder to shake off at the end of each day. It’s been empty shelves and angry, snide, horrible comments from actual grown-up human adults who should know how to behave better. It’s been people crowding around for pasta and rice and tins and bottles and paracetemol and soap and toilet roll, with no regard for mine or my colleagues’ personal space and, consequently, no regard for our health (and, consequently, the health of the people we live with/care for). It’s been witnessing selfishness and rudeness on a depressing scale. It’s been telling elderly customer after elderly customer that there’s no bread left, no eggs left, no flour, no pasta, no potatoes; it’s been watching them walk off down the aisle with an empty basket and wondering what they’ll eat for the rest of the week; it’s been wanting to cry, knowing that they’ve risked their health to get their shopping but have nothing to show for it because the shelves were stripped of the basics by people who, most likely, were younger and healthier and less at risk than them. It’s been looking at all the queues, people squished together closely, and thinking: “this is exactly what people are supposed to be avoiding right now.” It’s been moments of staring at the ever-growing gaps on the shop floor and wondering: “what if the deliveries actually do stop coming?” (fyi: they won’t.) In particularly dark and melodramatic and pessimistic corners of my mind, it’s been looking at myself and my colleagues thinking: “what if this is worse than they say it is? We’re basically going to be the first people to die. And all so people could fight over toilet roll they probably don’t really need.” It’s been saying goodbye to older/at risk colleagues and presuming/hoping I’ll see them fit and well in 3 months’ time. It’s been itchy, cracking hands from a mix of cardboard, paper cuts, and hand-sanitizer. It’s been a sore back, painful knees, throbbing feet. It’s been getting home and feeling dirty and contaminated – a risk to my family (particularly my mum, who went through chemo last year, and my dad, who has high-blood pressure – plus they’re both over 60). It’s been trying to figure out if I’ll ever see my 94-year-old grandma in person again. It’s been trying to adjust to the side effects of the anti-depressants I was put back on less than two weeks ago – headaches, dizziness, a constant nausea – and then trying to work out if any of the new things I’m feeling are symptoms of Covid-19 or “just” symptoms of being an anxious person. It’s been desperately wanting to catch up with my friends – see their faces, give them the biggest hugs, cry on their shoulders – but knowing that is absolutely the last thing I can do. It’s been thinking “my job is safe for now – but what happens when the economic impacts of this start digging deeper?” And, completely selfishly, it’s been freaking out that I’ll be single for ever and ever and ever more; despairing that my destiny as a crazy cat lady (and now a crazy jig-saw puzzle lady) is pretty much sealed.

It’s been all that and more, but I think that paragraph is big enough as it is.

Basically – but then, this is true for everyone right now – it’s all been a bit shit.

Times all that stress and emotion by a million, and I can only assume that that must be kind of what it feels like to work in healthcare at the moment.

I have no idea what the future holds. Stuff has got super weird, super quickly.

Somehow, unbelievably, kind of hilariously, I’ve found myself classified as a key-worker in a pandemic. I would never ever in a million years have predicted that, but here we are. I’ll keep turning up, keep taking all the precautions I can to keep me and my family healthy, keep trying to help people have access to the things they need.

At the end of the day, though, we’re all key players in this – whether we’ve been classified by the government as such or not. We all help to make the world a better, happier, safer, nicer, more interesting place.

We have to, have to, have to look after each other.

For now, from afar.

Some day soon, from up close again.

❤