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Collected Item: “The Covid Disconnect”

Give your story a title.

The Covid Disconnect

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

text story

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

The story and my experience are an example of the many ways in which the pandemic affected individuals in different ways. It goes without saying that each person was impacted in varied ways due to Covid-19, however, not all of them were either explicitly negative or an outcome that is easily defined as being either beneficial or harmful. During the height of the pandemic in the United States, I was employed as an Assistant Warehouse Manager in Green Bay, WI. My workload and responsibilities were already a little taxing, but once things got in full swing with Covid they became even more so. I went from working an average of 60 hours a week to over 75. This was mainly due to about a third (or more) of our employees being out of work due to quarantine-type measures or actual illness. This went on for months at the beginning. Many weeks out of that time period there were as few as about a dozen of us running three shifts in a warehouse that normally employed roughly 40 workers. Also at this time, my wife became unemployed because her place of employment shut down. Others around me were losing their jobs in droves and facing financial hardship. But due to my position and the nature of the job, I had never had more job security and we never faced any kind of financial difficulties. On the contrary, during the entire pandemic, my wife and I never went without or struggled. This gave me a surreal feeling and one that I almost felt guilty for living through. Aside from some minor changes in my daily life, I barely noticed any personal changes due to Covid. All in all, it was an extremely odd time to live through; the pandemic wasn't necessarily bad for my wife and me, but I know it was for countless others. And that made it all the more strange.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

Arizona State University, HST 643, Sensory History, Green Bay, essential

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Scott Bartell

Give this story a date.

2021-10-17
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