Are you ready to go back to work?

Your chair and cubicle might look the same. Is there dust on your desk or has it been cleaned? Check your trashcan.

Or maybe you worked on a beltline shoulder-to-shoulder tearing poultry apart and making jokes about Michael Vick’s cockfights.

Or maybe you sat at a table sewing parts of shoes or handbags or labels on sweatshirts to be shipped to some foreign country for penitence.

Or maybe you herded animals for slaughter until no one wanted to buy them.

Or maybe you intermingled with other people’s children until they closed the classroom.

Or maybe you were that friendly bartender who would lean over the bar to listen to some story from a patron like a shrink and make more off the tips than your salary.

Or maybe you were that single mom who changed the sheets and wiped down the hotel room to make minimum wage for a family of four.

Or maybe you were that next budding superstar that can’t perform live or sell your t-shirts.

Or maybe you are the second oboe in the city orchestra who also lost your waitress job.

Or maybe your are the surf shop whom for three months makes your entire yearly income, until the beach is shutdown.

Or the baker who lived on a margin and now hands out bread hoping to take donations off in taxes.

Or the barber who spent hours creating a community within four walls with mirrors and laughs restricted to social distancing.

Or the CEO watching your stock sink and all assesses closed for an unknown limit of time.

Who is ready to go back to work?

I semi-understand. One day I walked into work and a few moments later I was unemployed.

It is a strange feeling, especially when you work at some organization or company for a period of time, to suddenly have it shutdown. Everyone you spend hours a day with is gone. All the daily tasks that have become the routine are over.

This is the new normal and there is no going back.

Now living in a shelter-in-place executive order looking for someone to make sense of the new reality and no one has any answers or solutions except to 1. Stay inside. 2. Wear a mask. 3. Wash your hands.

In between the time of munching on junk food and sorting through the toilet paper stock, there are news reports of 1. How many are tested. 2. How many are hospitalized. 3. How many are dead.

There is no promise of a final solution or even hope of a deadline.

Then comes the request to ‘get back to work!’

You need the money but are you ready? What is it like outside? Will I be safe? Why do they call nurses and doctors and grocery clerks ‘heroes’ and ‘warriors’?

Are you ready to go back into battle to earn a paycheck? Will your employer protect you? 

What happens if you don’t? Will the government send you enough money to pay the rent and feed your family?

I don’t have to make that decision anymore, but when the alarm goes off, what will you do?