A day at work in Pandemic Seattle
I’m feeling refreshed after that short break from blogging!
I was recently hired at a local small business called Clēēn Craft. It’s a small business in a restaurant building in downtown Seattle. The job is typical physical labor warehouse work, most my day is spent moving pallets of soda around, packing sodas into cardboard trays like the picture above, or into 4 pack boxes to be sold at stores. Not many places have our product yet since the business is new, but hopefully business will pick up for the Christmas season. My boss has made some deals, but nobody knows what will happen. Add in the pandemic world, and a looming recession/depression and as the Cliche for this year goes… It’s an uncertain world. (Not that the “regular”, non pandemic life isn’t uncertain). For now this is a part time seasonal job with potential for more. I like my job, and my coworkers, and am grateful to work here.
If you would like to help the company I work for, and help to keep my job past December, you can order from our website here: https://cleencraft.com/
It’s nice to work again, as I haven’t worked a this many hours in a week since January. It’s been rough looking for suitable work as I’ve looked since June this year.
I expected packaging sodas would be like this scene from I love Lucy:
The difference between this scene and at work is that the canning machine is incredibly loud. The machine is so loud that I have to wear earplugs, or listen to music/audio-books. This is a pretty nice perk of the job. I’ve finished a couple audio-books while working. Between the shifts in October and November, I’ve listened to 87 hours of books. Noice!
In reality it’s more like the below gif:
When all the machinery is going smoothly like yesterday, it goes like this:
If the speed is too fast, or i fall behind for a few seconds while stacking the 24 packs of cans onto the pallet, it looks like this:
This hasn’t happened yet, but if say the pressure builds up, worst case scenario this can happen… The last can can cause an avalanche and the soda machine techs have to stop the line:
I haven’t worked in downtown Seattle in a few years, so going to work again during the Pandemic was a double adjustment.
* The following political opinion is my own.*
Seattle pandemic rant:
One is seeing all the homeless living in tents everywhere. It’s an absolute shame that homelessness is still a problem in this city. There are multiple billionaires and trillion dollar companies in the greater Seattle area. And our solution is to round them up and push them away because everyone is too selfish to change our taxes to a fair income tax system from our outdated Sales tax. We as a state could solve this problem tomorrow by having more politicians like Bernie Sanders, but no… Bezos wants to build rockets for space… Which I assume he plans on leaving Earth behind to not pay taxes and colonize mars for Amazon.
Two, it’s tragic to see so few homeless people not wear masks, and act like the pandemic isn’t happening. I mean I get it, as there is no hope from the Federal or local governments that their situation will change pandemic or not. When I see people not wearing masks, it’s like seeing potential covid-19 ghosts.
Third, its infuriating that so many non homeless people are not wearing masks or doing the chinstrap bullshit. I’d say that 80% of people have been wearing masks properly. Probably 70% of those people are giving the 6 feet of distance on the sidewalks. Less so on the lightrail. I’m concerned I might be gambling with getting covid by riding it. Parking in Seattle isn’t possible anymore in downtown Seattle. It simply isn’t there anymore. While a good thing due to the investment in public transportation, its a risk taking it during a pandemic. According to my county public health statistics, the odds of catching covid are 1498 per 100,000 residents. Riding any public transportation is risk for riders health. I can’t afford to take an uber both ways to and from work. So it’s public transportation, or walk about 7 miles. On the plus side, I can get a good workout from this exercise!
Walking home every day is a reminder how fucked up the U.S, and the city government is. And thanks to the asshole republicans in the Senate, and Trump, no help is on the way. Way to hold our politicians accountable in the Senate, America. Having Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and VP will help, but the reality is that many more Americans are going to die from coronavirus due to our own selfishness. As a human being with empathy, and a Liberal that has tried to convince right wing people otherwise, this current election is a reminder that all I can do now is watch people die from Covid. That is the message this election sent.
If you voted for Trump this last time, fuck you. I am willing to forgive those that voted for him in 2016, but changed their mind after seeing Trumps selfish and hateful behavior. To vote again for him says that the things he said and done are acceptable morals to have. That those are the values you as the person who voted him have. So, fuck you. You don’t deserve the Covid vaccine. You don’t deserve this democracy, the right to vote, or the benefits of science. Trump made the corona virus a political issue by ignoring expert advice over and over again this year. By voting for him, you said that is acceptable behavior for an adult and a leader of this country. You are saying that it’s okay for people to suffer from illness and possibly die because of your political beliefs. You could have voted third party, or not at all. Instead you chose Trump. I will never forgive you. I don’t give a fuck if you stop reading this blog or unfriend me because of this. I’m not losing anything from my life anyway. Thank you for showing me who you really are behind closed doors.
Maybe… Maybe I would reconsider in the future with a genuine apology, that saying that Covid-19 was not fake, that science is real, and that you have a problem with Fox News. Maybe I’m still in denial that America really is a piece of shit.
January 20, 2021 can’t come soon enough… 66 days to go.
Music of the post:
Thank you for reading this, if you enjoyed it, please give it a like, tell me what you think in the comments, and share on Facebook. Don’t forget to subscribe to my email list for updates!
Please wear a mask outside that covers your mouth and nose, wash your hands, clean your cell phone, and keep your physical distance from others to fight Covid-19!
© Reilly Anderson. 2020. All rights reserved.
Reilly's blog 
