COVID Chronicles Pt. 1

One Woman’s Experience During the COVID Pandemic of 2020

[March-April]

The day we found out that Massachusetts would be shutting down, I was working a management shift at the restaurant I’d been employed with for three years. A friend, who also managed restaurants, sent me the breaking news article. Boston would be shutting down in 24 hours.

The restaurant I worked at was in Cambridge, I lived in Somerville. As a company, our owners decided to adhere to the city of Boston guidelines and I was told we would be shutting down at 11pm, not our usual 2am, per the mayor’s order in Boston proper.

I knew all of this before the staff, whose energy was already nervous and scared. I didn’t know how to cope so I messaged the COO who said he’d be there to help. All I had to do was avoid the topic until he got there.

The restaurant was not the bustling place it normally was, understandably so. I made myself busy in other ways, organizing and checking supplies. I noticed we only had a few bottles of hand soap in storage so I told the staff I was running to the store to grab some more back-ups.

I used this time to cry.

And of course: there was no soap to buy. There was no soap, no sanitizer, no anti-bacterial wipes, no toilet paper or papertowels. The shelves of the stores looked like pictures I’d seen in history books. Pictures of impoverished cities, during or after wars, pictures that were always in black and white because…