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  2020-08-01

  Schooling during covid

  At the time of August 2020 I was a new student going back to college as a 30 year old. Now this was during the pandemic so there were many challenges. Firstly we had to wear mask in class and this made it very difficult to understand the teacher at times. Not to mention we had to be socially distant so we were spaced out throughout the classroom which made things more difficult to hear. And this is all if you were lucky enough to get into a hands on class that would be held in person. As most classes had moved to a virtual classroom (zoom) at this time. The classes that I had on Zoom presented their own challenges as you didn’t have that personal touch as if you were in person. There was also lots of time where students were talking over each other. As these obstacles presented challenges I’m very fortunate to have at least been given the opportunity to go ahead with my education instead of it being put on hold.
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  2020-06-01

  Retail in Covid

  As someone who works at a grocery store I was considered an “essential” worker during the height of the beginning of the pandemic I witnessed quite a bit. First off when it first started and people weren’t aware of what was going on people were confused and didn’t have any guidelines to follow. And thus unknowingly were spreading to the general public within the walls of my work place. Later when the safety measures were instilled there was a lot of push back from ignorant people not wanting to conform and wanted to be difficult causing workers to feel unsafe. Eventually most people followed the safety guidelines. But weren’t pleasant about it. There were many complaints of customers arguing with each other in an attempt to police each other. Not to mention the mask mandate was another issue. As employees we had to wear a mask for 8-10 straight while working. And while customers were in and out they refused to wear a mask properly and weren’t understanding to the fact that is as employees had to wear one all day so there’s no reason they can’t for the quick 30 minutes they are in the store. Then there were the out of stocks. Due to manufacturing/supply chain issues we were unable to keep shelves full. We would regularly have customers not understand what was going on and argue with employees that we weren’t doing our job because we couldn’t keep the store stocked. All in all the pandemic has shown me that the general public is mean and inconsiderate. We were already dealing with the fears of being forced to work in hazardous conditions and to top it off most customer interactions resulted in the employe being unnecessarily harassed in some manor or the other.