This Is What Happened When the Coronavirus Came for Christmas
This is the story of two people who work as “essential workers” in the United States. Sadly, these two people are not important, like doctors or nurses or pharmacists, but instead a grocery store employee and a dock supervisor for a beer distributor. For this article, companies will be left out, as I suspect people can plug in their own company and tell similar stories. That and I am not about to get fired. But now, back to the story.
So the grocery store employee works for a company that does daily health screenings, requires masks at all times unless eating, pays for testing for employees who need it, pays for two weeks if someone tests positive, and generally has a positive work environment. The dock supervisor, on the other hand, works in an environment where people believe covid is a hoax, employees are not required to screen their health or temperature, and masks are encouraged but not required or enforced.
The grocery store employee has had covid go through her store three times, each time coming away unscathed. In fact, the grocery store employee’s boss tested positive a mere two days after they had been in very close contact working overnight inventory. But nothing came to the grocery store employee but overtime and extra hours to cover for the loss of an employee. (They also shared a computer….and nothing happened.)
Just before Thanksgiving, the dock supervisor heard through the grapevine, as no one informed them at all, that covid had hit their warehouse. It spread like wildfire, and, just three days before Christmas, he learned that his cube-mate, for lack of better explanation, had tested positive. And then, on Christmas Eve, it happened: the dock supervisor tested positive. And that’s when the fear took over.
Thankfully, absolutely nothing happened. The dock supervisor first lost his taste then, about a day later, smell; had a stuffy head, a little trouble breathing for about a day, and then it all started clearing up. That was the worst of it. There was no fever, no need for ventilators, no need for hospitals. We were very blessed. The grocery store employee (knock on wood) has remained unscathed, but there is still about a week of exposure time to get through. The child of the dock supervisor and grocery store employee has also, seemingly, escaped unscathed (though, again, still counting down that exposure time).
Here is where the story gets interesting and exposes what is wrong with how the United States is handling covid 19. So the dock supervisor received his positive test result on Christmas Day and immediately contacted his primary care doctor, as required. He contacted his work HR manager to follow the processes to receive covid benefits while physically ineligible to work. He spoke with the health department to do contact tracing. So far, it seems like everything is great. He was told by his PCP that, provided he was symptom-free for 24 hours, he is cleared to return to work on January 2.
Now, the grocery store employee, who still had no symptoms, took the health screening for her work, which immediately shut her down and made her ineligible for work, since she had come into direct contact with someone who tested positive. So she contacted her HR department, as required. The agent directed her to remain off work, fully paid, through January 8, the full 14 days after the positive test. The agent contacted the store director and administrator for her. She also gave her further information on what she should do to get covered should symptoms start. Basically allowed the grocery store employee to rest while they took care of everything.
In the meantime, the dock supervisor receives an email from his company that says they will no longer cover covid as an illness as of January 1, so people will need to use FMLA or PTO should they test positive. Naturally, people were angry, and many began to just assume people will now work WHILE HAVING COVID just because they cannot afford to take time off. This is where we are as a society.
This new bill rushed through Congress eliminates any liability for employers. They no longer have to care about their employees now. Some companies, like that of the grocery store employee, seem to actually care, while others, like that of the dock supervisor, don’t care about anything but making money. People are expendable. And that’s what happened when Covid came for Christmas.
