Items

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  2020

  Starbucks Barista in 2020

  I worked at Starbucks Coffee Company from 2019-2021. The company begging their workers to continuously go to work under awful conditions, with little regard for their safety, took a huge mental toll, not only on me, but every barista. We were told providing coffee to our community was an "Essential" job, when in all reality is was essential for us to work to ensure that company's made a profit. We had to work to pay rent and buy food because the united states government offered little support, but were not justly compensated for our work. These pictures of myself remind me how tired I was working from 3 am to 2 pm, in the middle of a pandemic, in order to be able to afford living.
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  08/10/2020

  Helen Brechlin, Oral History, 2020/08/10

  Alex Brice interviews Helen Brechlin, who is an administrative supervisor at the Boston Institutes Contemporary Art Museum. The interview begins with Helen discussing the onset of quarantine and the transition to working from home. She explains the intricacies of managing a team digitally. Additionally, Helen goes into how living with a partner who also works from home, you have to develop a new routine and learning to balance time and space. Helen then explains some things she did teleworking to keep her team strong, including having weekly communications and diving deeper into some of the artists displayed at the museum. Then Helen is asked about the George Floyd incident and how it impacted her and she expressed the importance of community, advocating change, and separately the importance of real communication over social media. Lastly, Helen talked about the differences after reopening the museum and making it safe and comfortable for visitors.
• 2019-03-20

  The disregarded

  My experience was disheartening and eye opening. My department and municipality seemingly showed their true colors toward specifically road patrol. We were to continue to show up and perform our duties. When Covid-19 got a little more serious we told we could relax traffic enforcement and stay out of business unless called there. That was appreciated. And that was all we got. About a month road patrol was told we were being forced to take a day off to help limit our chance of exposure by a whopping %16. Sounded good, then we were told our forced day off we were to be “on call”. Then we were told that as road patrol since we were only supposed to be fit for duty/on call for 8 hours, we would not be getting our CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED and EARNED 4 hours of compensatory time! That was a big morale boost, sarcasm heavily implied. The. We as road patrol we found out every other department in the city was “working from home” including inside positions at our own department, ie detectives , court officers and administration. Those inside positions would receive full pay and not lose any financial compensation unlike road patrol. All the while other area department were being compensated extra for working during a pandemic. Some department got extra pay some got extra vacation time or comp time. We got nothing and were threatened in actually losing compensation. But we were expected to perform our duties still. We did receive a bonus of $1,000 from the federal government that was taxed. So we got $800. I am not complaining about an extra $800 mins you. But that money came from the federal government Not my municipality who has yet to recognize our efforts to this day. Needless to say morale is in the gutter and with an upcoming contract negotiation it is not going to get better. I feel the municipality could have done more or at the least something to recognize what we did. Granted it was unprecedented for all, but dealing with unprecedented from the road and the comfort of your home on Zoom are two polar opposites.