You’re Welcome For All That Emo Labor Pt 1

Mini-series on the nonexistent return rate of investing in a job

A couple weeks into the pandemic I hosted 17 individual zoom meetings with people to discuss their reduced pay and work hours. I’d just had my own salary cut in half, but was still in charge of culture and people. No one knew how the shutdowns and lockdowns and whateverdowns were going to effect video production so we had to put precautions in place. I know, I know it sounds very “Up in the Air,” but it really wasn’t.   

I worked for a small video production agency. 17 people was about 85% of the staff. I’d hired over half of the people I was talking to and I really liked and gave a crap about all of them.  Our camaraderie is what made it pretty great to work there. A creative agency can really be one of the best places to work if you have to j-o-b.  I’d been in a management position for a while so I was almost used to the inevitable anger and frustration that came my way, but this was rather bumpy. Looking back I admire my composure considering not only was I on my own with half the pay, I’d recently gotten the news that my mom’s cancer was inoperable, terminal, and all around really f-ing bad and I was getting concerning reports from my brother who worked in a hospital close to Manhattan about the number of bodies stacking up and his hospital’s lack of protective gear. Memphis has about a tenth of the population of that area, but that didn’t stop me from imagining the same headed our way. 

Back around the time I was promoted, my boss had a heart to heart with me and talked to me about how there’s a specific kind of workplace loneliness that comes with being in a higher leadership position. I should have remembered that chitchat as I marched toward extended pandemic isolation, but I didn’t anticipate that support in my personal life would disappear like it did. Work-bossing is a one-way relationship in that department. You’re the support. You’re the one encouraging and tending to the needs of everyone and your encouragement comes from, um… I don’t know…your paycheck? The satisfaction of being an overlord?  I’d say it is similar to a parental energy and effort exchange, but it really isn’t since at least if you’re a parent there’s a decent chance you’ll be paid back with a lifelong relationship and presents and companionship on major holidays. With work, not so much. 

Most of my friends were experiencing the work crunch from the employee seat. A lot of them were worried about their jobs, so when I told a few of them how shook I was from the 17 meetings it didn’t register much more than a typical shitty day at work. For them and for me really. Time has given me perspective on a lot of things, but what time can’t do is put you back in your frame of mind. You can’t ever really accurately remember things because it’s the you-now mind back in the time and place you’re remembering. My me-now brain is recalling that it was around this time I somehow determined that everyone was having a hard time and that meant I shouldn’t expect much or bother already stressed out people by asking for support.  Yes, I know, a fifth grader with a TikTok account could analyze my life-long issues with just that last sentence.   

The concerns my friends were expressing totally matched all of the questions and demands I was getting from the people at work.  “How long is this going to go on?” “What about safety?” “When will there be tests?” “Do we have to wear masks?” “What am I going to do with all these kids at home?”  “When are we getting hand sanitizer?” And I’d think, “Uh, why are you asking me? Have you SEEN the president’s press conferences? If those are supposed to reflect the national message and strategic plan I can assure you, no body knows shit.”

But that’s just what I’d think (or say to my pals). In real life, I had to try and extract whatever solid, usable information we had from the dog and pony show in DC and create new policies for our office, for remote work, and for offsite production.  I studied visual arts so obviously this came naturally to me and I adore arbitrary rules and policy documents. 

I was doing this while balancing the bananas-spanning range of anxiety and resistance of both the staff and the clients we worked with. We had people scared to leave their homes and people who thought the entire thing was an overhyped libtard news story and everything in between and beyond. As a practiced observer of humans in stressful, dangerous, and/or unprecedented situations, I appreciated the reaction styles and matching concerns of all of them. But we had to have people work to stay afloat and we had to have some kind of policy because no one knew what kind of ethical and financial liability we were dealing with. 

We were all looking at the same empty shelves, ok?

Memphis came up with a color-coded system that made just slightly more sense than all those directional lines and arrows they taped down on the aisle floors at Kroger.  It was based on reported covid cases. If they were over X number we were in the chartreuse zone and X number meant puce or whatever. The whole thing was ridiculous. They should have had a system named after Stax artists or Elvis eras. They could have blasted the code-corresponding songs through the streets. Ya know, for auditory learners.

There were so many public health communication flubs I’m saving the rest of my communication professional notes on the topic for a pitch to Ken Burns.  Government people really love reporting stats because it gives the appearance of orderly systems. They chose positive cases as the benchmark and people were desperate for someone to tell them what to do so we all said great! That sounds like a no-plan plan we can get down with. 

Of course, because of how hard it was to get a test (anyone remember drive-through testing lines?) and how many people gave not a shit about getting tested, this was a lame non-plan. Some of the testing sites would report in huge batches after not reporting for awhile so there’d be a week in the green zone and everyone would be out in restaurants French kissing and sharing dirty handkerchiefs and then ten days later numbers would come in and all of the sudden it appeared like 70% of the city had covid and it was time for all of us to get our affairs in order. 

The city announced information sessions on zoom for business and community leaders. I joined the first one but zoom imploded because I think Shelby County only had a regular pro zoom account and didn’t think there would be more than 100 people interested in what in the cold Kentucky rain was going on and if they were going to lose their business or get arrested for shaking hands. 

So with no real help from the feds, state, or city, the fate of all humanity rested on my shoulders. What? Are you kidding. Just checking to see if anyone is still reading. But really, the way the people at work were coming at me with questions and concerns was about that intense.  I do like calling shots and having the idea and creating the plan and delivering info and bringing people together to make a thing, but I have always been taken aback with that part of having authority.  The part where people project all of their stuff on you. It’s probably how Taylor Swift feels. 

There were a couple people on the field production crew that were freaking out about us not having enough sanitizer. During this period there wasn’t any around for less than one million dollars. Any sanitizer. For body parts or objects. I am using freaking out accurately in this case. Freaking out as in demanding I answer for the disastrous state of the global commerce supply chain.  I was not a human also dealing with the personal ramifications and logistics of this pandemic. I was a human there to absorb the anxieties of an entire workplace and to answer for the failings of entire institutions. Being a seasoned policy-writing leader, I didn’t take it too personally, even when they didn’t want to hear about an article I read about the supply chain problems. I looked for solutions. Solutions of the sanitizing variety. 

One of my (favorite) coworkers told me about a whiskey distillery up near Dyersburg that had changed production to sanitizer. I drove up and bought a pony keg and two fifths of pretty much what we used to call white dog. It smelled like a bread loaf in a buttcrack and everyone let me know that when I brought it back to the office. A couple weeks later sanitizer and Clorox wipes were everywhere and when someone brought them into the office, they were like OMG you could have just bought these at the store, why are you using yeastinfection scented cologne to spray down the table? 

Hey guys! Tell me how this smells.

Ah those quick turnarounds of the early pandemic. Have there been any professional analyses (with stats of course) of what that has done to our psyches? How it is so easy now to see what a clear path to post-truth it was?  One week you were spraying your groceries with peroxide and brainstorming alternatives to toilet paper, and the next week you aren’t even sure that it was you doing those things. Repeat in variations for several months and see how much you trust your reality.

The panic of the unprecedented settled as our Kleenex and Clorox supplies steadied. We found our pandemic work groove pretty quickly.  We got a PPL loan thanks to the fact that my boss was in the southern good ol’ boys private school church business mafia exchange and already had an existing relationship with a qualified bank. Tons of small businesses did not. With everyone back up on regular payroll and me working my culture magic with policies and Slack and zoom meet-ups about The Last Dance and Tiger King people seemed like they were buying the idea that we could get through the lil covid hiccup without much incident.  

I wouldn’t have to have any more horrible zoom meetings about pay cuts.  Certainly not. I was headed into another virtual gathering era. The zoom funeral. 

We’ll get to that in the next parts.  

Thank you for reading!