How are you doing right now?

[smarkmouth]

Just checking in, if you're comfortable to share. Vent as needed. Take care and stay strong.

[Storm Trooper]

Just checking in, if you're comfortable to share. Vent as needed. Take care and stay strong.
I find it difficult to quarantine when I'm going to work 40+ hours a week. The person that was supposed to relieve me at 7AM Sunday called out Friday with symptoms and is on leave. The person they tried to get in to relieve me was running a fever and had a lot of contact with said symptomatic coworker. The second person who was supposed to come in decided to self quarantine and not really tell people. I had to do 12 hours before my boss came in and told me to go home. I'm expecting similar issues all week now.

I have minimal contact with the person, but that doens't matter. I'll end up being a carrier or getting symptoms soon.

[Slyfox696]

My job has closed until at least April 6th (public school) so I've been home for a full week now. While the coronavirus is certainly not desirable at any time, if it had to happen now has been the best time for me. Lots of things going on in life that I'm now able to work on.

[Jack-Hammer]

Things are a bit tense at work due to the fact that there are so many people packed into such enclosed areas. I'm a prison guard so everyone is being extra cautious as we're wearing masks, washing our hands and/or using hand sanitizer about every 10 minutes or so. New inmates are thoroughly screened before they're brought in, which doesn't happen as often as you think. The inmates themselves are helping out by keeping their cells clean, washing their hands, etc. as much as we do and a lot of us guards chip in to make sure the inmates have enough soap and hand sanitizer.

We have a few younger guards, guys only in their mid 20s, who're a little nervous and us older guys are sort of doing the big brother thing as much as possible without looking like we're trying to baby them. One of them has a 6 month old daughter so he's more skiddish but it helps a LOT that the prisoners are behaving better than usual. We don't have many problems from very many of them, working in a prison isn't like being in some gladiator movie despite how movies and tv shows have depicted it over the years, but everyone's a bit nervous.

['Ravishing' Ned Flanders]

With this new order letting people pump their own gas I may be out of a job here soon. I'm not sure.

[Y 2 Jake]

Is having somebody pump gas for you purely an American thing?

[#AbsoluteUnit]

I don't know where he's from in America but I've lived in 5 states and I've always pumped my own gas. Unreal though.

[Storm Trooper]

Is having somebody pump gas for you purely an American thing?


I don't know where he's from in America but I've lived in 5 states and I've always pumped my own gas. Unreal though.
There are some states that do not allow you to pump your own gas. New Jersey I know is one of them.

ironically I would think they'd want to only have employees pump gas, as otherwise you need to sanitize the pumps every damn customer.

[#AbsoluteUnit]

There are some states that do not allow you to pump your own gas. New Jersey I know is one of them.

ironically I would think they'd want to only have employees pump gas, as otherwise you need to sanitize the pumps every damn customer.

ok.

[Big Nick Dudley]

My friend's parents both contracted the illness (early due to contact with people who had been in China). They were sick for roughly four weeks. Bad cough, fever that lasted ten or so days. Were finally prescribed a nebulizer, which helped a lot. They're recovering, said it was a lot like a bad flu that lasted as long as bronchitis. Both were told hospitalization wasn't a bad idea, but chose to stay home.

[Fire Marshall Bill]

I?m going stir crazy. I?m sick of being home. I?m sick of no sports and wrestling with no audience. I?m fortunate enough to be able to work from home, but sick of being here. My wife has worked from home for over a year now. Not sure how she hasn?t gone crazy. I can appreciate why we?re doing what we?re doing, but can?t wait for it to be over.

[Fire Marshall Bill]

There are some states that do not allow you to pump your own gas. New Jersey I know is one of them.

ironically I would think they'd want to only have employees pump gas, as otherwise you need to sanitize the pumps every damn customer.

OMG Oregon just started allowing self service a few years back. The comments on the article about it were hilarious. People from Oregon we?re making it sound like rocket science and special forces all in one. I practically died laughing. New Jersey and Oregon are the only states.

[Storm Trooper]

My store lost 2/3rds of their workforce because of a coworkers testing positive, and I had to do a 12 hour shift during the day (I work overnights) with no notice. Been up for 2+ hours, and need to switch back to nocturnalness for Wednesday night. By the way I interacted with the person who went out the day before he got sent home. So...... Yay?

Seriously everyone needs to stay the fuck home.

[Fire Marshall Bill]

Oh I only go out if we need something. Most days neither my wife nor I even leave the house. My fear is, like my sisters county did, our county will instigate a full quarantine (minus essential businesses) with only a few hours notice. It was hard enough to find toilet paper and other items 2 weeks ago, and any other time I?ve been out since I couldn?t. Short notice full quarantine will make everyone flock to stores, both making it more dangerous and even harder to find stuff.

[#AbsoluteUnit]

^ Where in Oregon are you?

[Fire Marshall Bill]

I don?t live in Oregon. I just know about the gas stations because the reaction to self service was hilariously overblown. Legit laugh out loud comments on the article. Both the people who made it sound hard and the people making fun of those people.

[A11]

I spent friday night and saturday night drinking on video conferences to mates and it made me feel good. Then Sunday I was downhill fast. Like didnt want to get out of bed, couldnt sleep. Then today I've worked from home and normalled/levelled out. I'm not even in a bad situation all things considered and cant see how I'm going to last if this goes 6 months. Maybe it'll normalise or something. Genuinely concerned for mental health and suicides for the forseeable future

['Ravishing' Ned Flanders]

I don't know where he's from in America but I've lived in 5 states and I've always pumped my own gas. Unreal though.


There are some states that do not allow you to pump your own gas. New Jersey I know is one of them.

ironically I would think they'd want to only have employees pump gas, as otherwise you need to sanitize the pumps every damn customer.
The only states that don't let people pump their own Gas are Oregon & New Jersey.

[smarkmouth]

I spent friday night and saturday night drinking on video conferences to mates and it made me feel good. Then Sunday I was downhill fast. Like didnt want to get out of bed, couldnt sleep. Then today I've worked from home and normalled/levelled out. I'm not even in a bad situation all things considered and cant see how I'm going to last if this goes 6 months. Maybe it'll normalise or something. Genuinely concerned for mental health and suicides for the forseeable future

Keep strong dude. I too am worried about mental health at large while trying to cope in my own way. I have two kids and half the battle for me lately has been keeping my cool around them, which doesn't afford me a lot of time to process what I need to process. Objectively I know I don't have it bad. I worked from home to begin with anyway. I just miss my friends and restaurants. I have similar boundaries, they just have a sharp edge to them now.

My family and I live in an apartment building and we have a confirmed case somewhere in the building. While they're quarantined or whatnot I still don't feel at ease using the front door, so we borrowed a ladder so I can climb off my balcony for the necessary errands. Probably look stupid as shit but, y'know, *gestures broadly*

[Sully]

Hey all,

It's been a minute. I've been doing alright. I was working at a psych facility for kids with trauma and mental health challenges for the past year or so. Currently working on my Masters in School Psychology, and so I moved into the emotional support school part of the facility as a TA. But I decided somewhere around Christmas that I wanted to move on, and find a job in a more secure setting like a school district...or ideally a preschool since I loved working in that setting during college.

My plan was to leave at the end of the school year in June, change my status to PRN as an employee there and pick up some shifts while I found a job over the summer. However, COVID happened and screwed up all my plans. They took all of us TAs and threw us on the psych unit while all the teachers got to chill at home on salary. Kind of made me realize how undervalued I was despite having as much education as most of the teachers if not more. So I put in my request to go PRN right there in March, and have been just picking up weekend shifts since. I still love working with the kiddos on the unit. They can be challenging most of the time, but I don't think I could work with "normal boring kids". I like the trouble makers. Getting spit on or restraining them not so much, but I like being able to process trauma or even helping calm them down when they get upset over silly things.

So currently I'm in limbo. COVID I think is impacting a lot of the jobs available. Most of the preschool jobs I'm finding are only $11 - $12 an hour, which is less than I make where I'm working now. I'm trying to find a job that is close to my graduate school so I can commute there easily, but it definitely hasn't been easy. I'm aiming for something that's at least $30,000 a year so I can afford a decent apartment, but again it's harder than I anticipated especially right now where most schools aren't bothered with hiring because they don't know if they'll even be open in the fall. I do actually have an ofer for a position in a school district that fits the area I'm looking for, but it's to be a one to one with a middle school student who has autism. Middle school isn't my ideal population to work with, especially right now when I really had my heart set on preschool. Plus, I've worked as a one to one before. Being with the same kid for an entire school day, every single day, is a huge burn out. The money on paper looks good, but I realized for only 10 months it amounts to as much as I make right now in my current job. Since it's not salary, I'd be two months without pay.

So I'm stuck right now trying to figure out if I want to take this job, that isn't totally an answer, but is the only one that's readily available, or if I want to just keep doing what I'm doing with the weekend thing and focusing on grad school. Right now money isn't a total priority as I'm living with my good old Gram who's got my back. But I'm 24 now, and really determined to move out on my own into my own apartment. If I wait until September, my non compete disclosure I signed when working with a foster care agency expires and I have that avenue to go back to as well. I've been looking at things like behavior intervention and maybe even casework again too...because I'm losing hope I'll find a quality paying preschool job without having a degree in education (My degrees are Psychology and Criminal Justice). I've also still really been counting down the days to when I can adopt my own child out of foster care. But I've already convinced myself it's best to do that after finishing grad school, and finding a secure job as a school psychologist. Because I know when I do graduate, I'm probably going to have to move across the country to get a job. I won't be able to do that if I'm fostering a kid and am waiting for parental rights to be terminated.

Overall though with all that I've been pretty good. I'm up to 11 tattoos, hoping to get number 12 once this COVID shit clears up. Been playing TLOU2, and am on my second play through, and yup...that's about it.

[SSJPhenom]

I've been miserable. My line of work (trade shows/conventions) completely shut down due to COVID-19. All shows were cancelled. My company continued to pay me for awhile, but as you can imagine that didn't last long. So I applied for unemployment which took forever to get. So I've just been sitting at home doing nothing.

I'm not scheduled to go back to work until August, but that's looking less likely as now the August shows are starting to be cancelled because of the COVID-19 starting to surge again. Right now, I'm doing something that I haven't been able to do in years due to work and having such a busy schedule. I'm in KY visiting my Mom and her side of my family. It's so good being back home. I never thought I'd miss it so much. I'm going to be here for a month or so. It's going to be great.

At least one good thing has come out of this mess.

[Sully]

I've been miserable. My line of work (trade shows/conventions) completely shut down due to COVID-19. All shows were cancelled. My company continued to pay me for awhile, but as you can imagine that didn't last long. So I applied for unemployment which took forever to get. So I've just been sitting at home doing nothing.

I'm not scheduled to go back to work until August, but that's looking less likely as now the August shows are starting to be cancelled because of the COVID-19 starting to surge again. Right now, I'm doing something that I haven't been able to do in years due to work and having such a busy schedule. I'm in KY visiting my Mom and her side of my family. It's so good being back home. I never thought I'd miss it so much. I'm going to be here for a month or so. It's going to be great.

At least one good thing has come out of this mess.

I know how you feel. I'm a huge workaholic myself, and being home for so long as been really draining. I get cabin fever after usually just a few days out of work (anything past the normal weekend off) and it's tough.

I've been in the job market myself, something I was planning BEFORE Covid hit, but with COVID it's made it extremely difficult to find anything because one most places aren't even hiring, and two a ton of people have been out of work due to this pandemic and looking for jobs. I'm in Education, and I honestly don't even know if I WANT to find a job in a school district, because nobody knows what that's going to look like come September.

It's a total mess, and I like everyone just can't wait till life returns to normal.

You're right that in at least you get to spend time with family. It IS important to find the positives for any negative situation. I'm a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, and reframing things is one of my healthy coping methods. So just remember when things seem bad, try and reframe it in a way where you see the optimism. It's not always easy, but it's always an option.