A warning: I am eating Lorna Doone cookies and drinking Blue Norther vodka from the local distillery, so this may make less sense as it goes along.
The pandemic has hit the major population centers, notably New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Chicago. Because the federal government is run by the zany, uneducated, greedy crew from the RNC, little is being done on a national level to help the situation. The state governors are trying to step up to the plate and get shit done. Today we passed the 2000 deaths mark for a single day. The orange hued idiot in charge is saying we need to lift restrictions and get people back to work. We need to spread the rate of infection way beyond the ability of the medical service providers to cope with the situation is what he is really saying. Now he has made Jared and Ivanka in charge of supplies and then determining when restrictions are to be lifted. We, Are. Fucked. Jared says the NATIONAL supply is not for the states to use, and Ivanka will listen to her daddy to say that we should lift all restrictions for work and business and travel so the American economy can restart and they can say donald made the economy strong again and the Dow Jones and S&P averages are up so he should be re-elected. On the contrary, it will result in the deaths of several thousand more people.
On the local level, we here in Texoma are not feeling the impact of the Covid 19 like the rest of the world. A few cases in Denison the originated from someone attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but not much else. Due to some smart acting by the state government ( I can't believe I am saying this), non-essential stuff, except for Hobby Lobby, was shut down and restaurants were take out and delivery only. Home Depot and Lowes are considered "essential services" and remain available to the public. Since everyone else is not in their offices and have all this free time, projects need to be completed, and since no one else is available for a shopping trip, Depot and Lowes find themselves inundated. There was a metric devised to help maintain the six feet of separation: only 150 people at a time would be allowed into the stores. There is only one way in and two ways out. An application was built for our portable phone to help maintain that count and as long as the assigned people at the exits did their job, we could maximize the customer flow through the store. It was rocky the first couple of days and we showed 79 people still in the store an hour after closing. they weren't really there, just an accounting error. Some stores reported unruly and beligerent behavior and rude remarks, but for the most part the folks understood, and the lines moved quickly.
There are a lot of folks wearing masks, and some with gloves. Some of the customers I saw earlier in the day with masks weren't wearing them when they came back for that one or two things they forgot. I didn't mention it and they didn't either. Most of the employees aren't wearing masks or gloves. I spoke with a couple of medical professionals who weren't masked and they confirmed my thoughts that the masks were of little value. I said it gave the folks some feeling of contributing, and they said it was a very false sense of security.
A couple of the additional services we are providing are Buy Online, Pick Up in Store(BOPIS) and curbside pickup. We have, for a long time, had BOPIS. The curbside pickup is a little different. You send in an order online and as soon as we can, we pull the order for you. When you get to the store, you will park in one of ten designate spots and call into the store to let us know you are here and we bring the stuff out to you. If you have proper ID, we either load it for you or let you load it. Both of these systems involve additional people and they are being pulled from the sales floor. This means fewer people on the floor to assist the idiots who don't know which end of a screwdriver to use.
And factor that we have 8 to 10% of our folks out because of sick or fear of sick, you can easily see that we are trying to do everything with a short staff.
Reminds me of two things: first the Seabees motto: "we have done so much for so long with so little, we are qualified to do everything with nothing at all." Second is the story of the window washer in a high rise apartment building. He is washing the windows on and upper story outside a bathroom. As he is squeeging, a well endowed young lady steps out of he shower. She sees the window washer and with her towel out of reach, she puts a hand over her lower parts and an arm across her breasts. The ma notices her predicament and tries to console her. "hey, lady, if the Good Lord had meant for you to cover up, he would have given you three hands!"
There is probably a lot more to be said, but for now, I need to get to bed and get some sleep. It has been a very long week.
Happy chocolate bunny day!
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