friday the 13th
OK, Friday the 13th. Bring it.
In corporate-land, we’ve got WebEx conference calls to review how it is that we might work from home together. Each department head gets 50+ of us on a line to review closures, messaging, and our new normal processes. We’re being assured we all still have jobs to do. The work output is changing, they tell us, while the business outcome remains the same.
The call that actually kind of freaked me out today was our regional call. Everybody on it from San Diego, to Vegas, to Phoenix, and of course all of us in LA all reported what the new normal is out there. I think the answer is that there isn’t one. I’m hearing panic in the voices of our Vegas team. Gatherings of 250+ people are being shut down during a local state of emergency, so events are off. Restaurants and bars are closing down. Our reps can’t get into businesses to sample or sell product and meetings are off.
Meanwhile, at home, my next-door neighbor’s power is out. She’s subletting from her ex-boyfriend and it seems like he missed a bill payment. She can’t switch it into her name without his SSN and he’s not responding from wherever he is up north. I ran an extension cord from my bedroom plug across the front of the apartment building into her bedroom window. This feels like true crisis stuff. But it’s a thing that would have happened anyway. And it’s so she can watch Real Housewives. The walls are thin here so there’s an added bonus: if she’s annoying and playing the stereo or TV too loud, I can just unplug her. (I talk a big game and it’s a lovely visual but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.)
The boyfriend (who realized I would be blogging this and who has asked to be called “The Stallion”) is meant to go to Vegas today for some weekend meetings. Usually, either of us would fly rather than make the four-hour trip by car but we’ve agreed maybe it’s better for him to take his mobile isolation chamber.
But after the call with Vegas, where the team reported hotels are closing their restaurants, and hotels seem like a poor idea… I called him and suggested he stay in the rental house with the members of his team who are stationed there temporarily. The place has six bedrooms, six baths, and four young guys living there. Probably the safest “social distancing” – a new phrase for this new normal – he can do while still making the trip. I’m not sure he should even make the trip.
Every day, it seems, I say something that sounds like it came right out of a movie script. “Hotels are closing.” “Vegas has declared a state of emergency.” “Restaurants are shutting down.” “Maybe it’s too dangerous, babe.” Even as I hear the words come out of my mouth, I struggle to believe them.
