Collected Item: “Corona and Coffee”
Give your story a title.
Corona and Coffee
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
This is a somewhat blurry photo of me and a few of my coworkers living the Starbucks life. (I received verbal permission from my team to include their images)
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.
I'm a barista at Starbucks coffee company. It's been a disturbing and fascinating few months, to say the least, and like most, I've experienced some significant changes to my work and personal life. Most notably, my job is now my bubble. When the quarantine orders went out in Oregon, Starbucks kept going. I had two weeks of mandatory self-isolation after one of my work crew came into possible contact with COVID early in the pandemic. Otherwise, I've been working more than ever before. Interacting with the public makes me constantly on edge. But the coffee industry seems to have been deemed "essential," and my team and I are kept busy supporting the public's caffeine addiction through the global madness that has been 2020. Because of my hundreds of interactions with strangers daily, I've cut off almost all contact with my friends and family outside of work. The risks of my coming into contact with the virus are high, especially when not all of our customers feel inclined to comply with COVID-19 regulations. I'm happy to have my job and not have experienced the economic uncertainty that so many have dealt with in recent months. Despite the loneliness of feeling removed from my family and friends, this pandemic has brought my work team closer together. We have all experienced the pandemic the same way and become a support system for each other for which I feel lucky.
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?
#COVID-19, #starbucks, #REL101
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Olivia Schmitt
Give this story a date.
2020-08-10