#So one of my coworkers tested positive for covid

[iero]

Woke up feeling like walking death and turns out? I HAVE FUCKING COVID AGAIN! Thus, I will not be at the Philly show this Monday… This is literally the worst timeline.

[wrightfamily]

[girlblocker]

girl who has been exposed to covid twice in the last week. im so nervous

[safyresky]

how's everyone else's friday going? 🙃🙃🙃

[splendiferous-bitch]

i s2g my management team at work is so fucking useless!!!

[raeathnos]

.

[tinyredpoppies]

Yesterday was rough as hell. I am exhausted.

[fuck-customers]

I loathe my manager and the company I work for so much. My manager has tested positive for Covid for the second time and apparently his symptoms are worse this time. He has already stayed home for 5 days and according to him, he’s feeling better but still positive and he still has a cough. He has asked HR to work from home to avoid exposing everyone else to Covid and so he can get work done, but they were against it. His options are either to come into work or use pto, but he doesn’t want to use pto because he doesn’t want to be home with his wife and kids, who also have Covid. So he’s at work and refuses to wear a mask. He says since HR isn’t making him wear one he won’t. So I’m the only one wearing one and he and my coworkers keeps asking me if I’m just going to keep talking to them with my mask on. Uh hell yes I am! Why the hell not? If they’re not going to take precautions, I am. And I don’t understand how it’s a concern that I’m wearing a mask but not someone coming to work sick and exposing other people.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[madokamagicasecrets]

I think a lot about when I had covid.

I had very sickness symptoms for 2 full weeks before testing positive. I would throw up almost daily, my meals combined with lots of mucus. My manager told me to work and just avoid people, but she ended up asking me to talk to and help people all day even though I couldn't even talk properly due to a sore throat, cough and constantly needing to vomit.

When I finally tested positive I called immediately and told her that I was positive. She refused to accept that the faint line meant positive, despite the fact that I was showing her the chart that said a barely visible line meant positive. "It's so faint, its probably no big deal," she said.

I tested again and the line was much more apparent. She let me stay home but every day for the week I was sick she asked if I was better and ready to come back in. I was coughing constantly till my throat was so raw it tasted a bit like blood.

After a week I started to improve, she said the work policy was if I was improving I should come back. I was still positive.

I avoided everyone and wore my mask, refusing to interact with anyone. I told my coworkers I had it and to avoid me. My manager told me not to tell anyone so as not to worry them. I work in food.

Every day I thought about my coworkers. A woman with a mom who has cancer and who's in the hospital. A mother of 6 young children. Smokers, older women with physical and medical disabilities. They would all die and likewise kill their vulnerable family members if I gave it to them.

I was told that I needed to come back as soon as possible because she needed the hours. She never thought of the permanent hours she would lose if half her work force died.

This is how corporations think about covid. Even pragmatically they only consider the short-term. Never forget that they're the ones who caused this.

[myeyesarebrighter]

Here’s a list of things.

My mom is seeing a therapist.

My coworker who I’ve sat next to in a closed room for two days has just tested positive for Covid.

I might get to go home from my week away early. Or at least skip some shit.

I’m supposed to meet the people I’ve been interviewing tomorrow at a conference. Don’t think I should really do that now…

I’m laying in a hotel bed, where I’ve been relaxing for the last three hours.

I don’t need to be up until prob 8am tomorrow.

I don’t have neighbors near my room tonight. It’s amazing and so quiet.

My boss and her boss are here. No one is acknowledging that I’ve applied for my boss’ job (they all know and asked me to).

Life is weird and hard and wonderful in unexpected ways.

[mevima]

My wife and I have avoided getting COVID so far. Four years with no infection, because we're careful. We got every booster and we mask in public.

She tested positive yesterday.

We know exactly where it came from: a coworker who came to work with a nasty cough, feeling like death but talking to everyone unmasked while loudly proclaiming he "doesn't believe in COVID" and "nobody he knows has ever gotten it."

Fucker.

I'm still testing negative, and we'll see how long that lasts. But you know, even though I'm disabled and immunocompromised, I'm more worried about the elderly ferrets we care for.

Ferrets are so susceptible to COVID that medical labs used them to test treatments and vaccines. If we pass COVID on to the eighteen ferrets we currently foster - something that will be difficult to avoid in a one-bedroom apartment - we are likely to lose a lot of them very quickly. Most of them are 6+ years old, or have special needs already.

She's going to lose out on a week's pay, and I make hardly anything. We're going to be relying on Instacart, which costs more, because I can't drive. We're going to be buying and using extra masks (indoors), dayquil, cough drops, quick meals, and tissues; running the air purifier on high; and hoping to high hell it stays contained and we have enough savings, because she's sure as fuck not going to work and passing this on.

People, stay the fuck home when you have COVID symptoms. Get tested. Get vaxxed if you can. Protect your family and your neighbors. It's still killing people. It's killing pets. It's disabling people for life. It's not a joke and it's not just a flu.

[takeme-totheworld]

One of my coworkers went home sick today and immediately tested positive for covid, so uh. Happy holidays to my whole office??? 🙃🙃🙃

[exsequar]

August 18 is my birthday. I feel like I need to say something about this year of my life... and this is the closest I have to a blog. Pull up a chair.

Tonight I stood on the roof of my beautiful modern apartment building, in the most vivacious neighborhood of Seattle, gazing at the panoramic view of the downtown skyline, Space Needle, mountains and water and the rolling hills, all backlit by a softly electric sunset, listening to my gorgeous and sweet neighbor working shirtless on his bike behind me, and reflected on what a fucking year it's been.

Tomorrow I turn 36. One year ago, I thought I would never be happy again.

This 36th year of life, a perfect square as I am fond of pointing out, has been anything but perfect and certainly nothing so predictable as a square. But as I sprint across the finish line, proudly taking the trophy that declares I Survived Thirty-Six, I am deeply grateful for how this year has shaped me and set me on course for the life I want... for the first time ever.

One year ago, I was at the nadir of a monthslong spiral of anxiety and depression. The night of August 18, 2022, I did not sleep one wink, despite attempting many substance interventions, because my soul was so wrought with torment and guilt and fear. And this was a new experience for me; I had had low points before, but absolutely nothing even resembling this black hole that felt impossible to escape. I won't go into why, but suffice to say there was one new toxic ingredient in my life that had slowly devoured my happiness, my confidence, and my hope. I couldn't see a path out.

Then... slowly, then abruptly, things began to change.

In September, I decided to look for a new job, to change at least one variable and cut out some toxicity. With what felt like shocking speed, interview offers started coming in after just four taster applications. After a brief interview process, I was astonished to find myself in a new job much closer to home, joining a team that included one of my favorite past coworkers.

In October, I took a couple weeks off to try to gain my footing before starting my new job, and traveled home to see family. During these two weeks, I suddenly learned that my landlords were renovating my building and I was being kicked out from my apartment of four years (with 6 months to move out). I quickly recovered from my shock, went on one round of apartment visits in the coolest area in town right near my new office, fell in love with the third building I saw, and signed a lease within a week. Importantly, around the same time, a huge element of the toxic drain on my life became suddenly much, much better, which started to free me from that suffocating weight. Additionally, the relentless, deeply kind support of some close friends finally started to lift me out of the darkness. (You know who you are, I love you.)

On Halloween, 2022, I started my new job. I instantly hit it off with the other two women on my team. The third day, I tested positive for COVID - IN the office! No longer a COVID virgin, I slunk home to do my various new hire trainings in quarantine.

In November, I bought an e-bike to use for my new 1.5 mile commute. I immediately loved being back on two wheels and frequently commuted by bike even in the grey Seattle winter.

Two days before Christmas, 2022, I moved into my new apartment. I shed most of my furniture, many belongings, and started from a beautiful almost blank slate. My new place has the aforementioned roof with panoramic views, huge windows, and all kinds of amenities I didn't have before (a dishwasher!!!!!! laundry!!!!! being mid-thirties is losing your shit over in-unit laundry).

I traveled home for the holidays and had a wonderful break.

January 2023, I began preparing for the biggest fucking trip of my whole entire life. To ANTARCTICA. Yes, you heard that right. I began preparing for an EXPEDITION to ANTARCTICA. For FUN. I still can hardly believe it myself. My friend had invited me in Dec 2021 to join a trip to Antarctica in March 2022, but omicron kiboshed that, and I think the universe knew I needed this to happen in 2023. That I would be just emerging from The Great Dark, and what a better place to beckon me forward than the White Continent?

January, February, and March all felt like a frenzy of preparation. I continued to learn and grow more happy and confident at my new job, growing ever closer to mhy awesome little team, but all the while my mind was floating among the icebergs and penguins.

March. Two days before I was supposed to leave for Chile, the first part of my trip, I tested positive for COVID. IN MY OFFICE. AGAIN!!!

After a brief bout of despair, I ended up getting paxlovid, moving my flight back a week (for $1000 extra ;_;), and joining my friend and her mom in Argentina instead.

March 20, 2023, I set sail aboard the m/v Plancius for Antarctica. What followed was the most deeply spectacular, yet also the most deeply healing, two weeks of my life. I don't know how to summarize it. I felt true peace for the first time... certainly in a year, but in what felt like decades. Possibly forever. I was soul-happy. It's the only way I can describe it.

I landed back home on April 5.

On April 6, my company was hit by a massive cyber attack. Yay!!!!?

The next few months were a chaotic scramble of new experiences and creativity. But through it all, my team only grew closer, and the uncharted territory was in some ways an exciting challenge that only enhanced my sense of feeling alive.

The peace I felt in Antarctica came home with me and spread through my life in waves. I began doing things for joy, and getting my body out moving in the world. I had quickly fallen back in love with biking, so I started looking for groups to ride with and began joining free bike rides all over the county as often as I could. I met delightful people on every ride. I bought a second bike that would be zippier and easier to tote around. I bought a new car that would let me carry around this second bike more easily. I joined a summer rec soccer league, biking to a local field to play under the setting summer sun every Friday, and met some of the fabulous queer folks in my new neighborhood. I watched halftime drag shows on artificial turf. I started feeling physically healthier to match my sense of my soul healing. I laughed all the time.

August 18, 2023 starts in less than an hour. Today, the penultimate day of my 36th year, I worked and laughed with my team for the morning. I flirted with a darling guy in my building, who I have been lightly flirting with for months, for over an hour. I went to the farmers market outside our office and bought beautiful berries from the handsome farmer who loves his bees so much. I picked up an order of fantastic cookies, an early self-gift. I took my new car for a fun new type of car wash (the car sits still and the washing robot arms move around us??). I called my dad. My best friend of nearly 2 decades asked if she could call and we talked for over an hour. I went home to my kitties. I played Stardew Valley and listened to my favorite music. I finished a spectacular audiobook (Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, a memoir of growing up an autistic girl with no diagnosis, and getting diagnosed in middle age). I went to the store to pick up ingredients for my favorite birthday cake that my dad always made for me when I was a kid.

I climbed up to the roof, where my handsome neighbor was quietly and shirtlessly fixing his bike, and gazed out over the gorgeous deep red horizon.

I didn't quite cry. My eyes stung softly as I bit my lip and smiled. Yes. This is where I want to be.

And I can't wait to see what 37 - a prime number, harder to come by as we age - has in store.

[jellogram]

We talk a lot about raising the minimum wage and yes obviously that should have happened like a decade ago but it's also about more than that. I didn't quit my retail job because it didn't pay enough. I quit because they had me work Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas Eve night, 6am on the 26th, New Year's Eve night, and 6am on New Year's Day. For all of that year I simply did not get a holiday season. I got time and half for some of these days but not for most. I was not thanked for this in any other way.

Then, on the morning of Jan 2nd, I find out that a coworker tested positive for covid but I "could still come in to work." This was early January of 2021 and vaccines didn't exist yet. I said I would not be coming into work. Five more people tested positive that week. I was told to come into work. I said no. They said okay, use your vacation time. So I used up all of my vacation time (a luxury that most retail workers don't get, and one that had been keeping me at that job) and then quit on the spot.

I was not making a lot of money, but California's minimum wage at that time was about double the national minimum and I was putting a roof over my head. But I still quit.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the way you treat your employees means a lot too, not just the pay. This doesn't mean you can win them over with a pizza party, but it means that things like flexible schedules and not being a dick about illness go a long way. I don't just want minimum wage workers to have a living wage, I would also like them to be treated as people with lives and problems and needs.

[slightlyaggressiveaffirmations]

I think I accidentally (it's a long story) came out as queer and autistic at work and I am freaking out.

I'm sorry this took me a while to get to, friend. I was in bed with something that wasn't Covid but felt so much like it, I tested 3 times.

This does sound very scary. But it is gonna be OK. You will be OK.

I remember coming out at work, just to one of my bosses. They appointed a new Deputy Prime Minister that day, and he had once made very homophobic remarks, and it was all over the newspapers, of course. I cried. So I didn't so much come out, as started crying while talking about it, and my boss said "Oh. I'm not allowed to ask this, but... are you..." and didn't really have to ask because I nodded and then she hugged me.

So, even though my experience was really very positive, with a kind and understanding person who supported me - it was still a very scary experience. My whole stomach just dropped downwards like I was in an aeroplane in turbulence. It feels extremely vulnerable to let people know this truth about yourself when you don't know how they will react.

And I'll be honest with you - I'd still probably rather my coworkers knew I was queer than autistic... because of the stereotypes and the judgements that people have.

What I'm saying, is that I absolutely understand why you are freaking out, and I empathise with your situation - and apparently my way of doing that is telling stories from my own life that relate.

ANYWAY - You will be OK. If your colleagues accept you for who you are, things may even be better. Your autism might be accomodated. If things are worse, you will still be OK. You will know who the bigots are. You will know if you are unsafe, and that it is time to start planning an exit. This is not an outcome that we want, obviously, but if that's what happens, it will still ultimately by OK.

Keep being you, bringing your unique skillset to work (and your autism gives you an edge in some places), and always giving your employer back what you feel they deserve.

I hope everything goes excellently, but trust that ultimately, you will thrive. Kick some arse, you wonderful Career Cobra!

The SAA