PUBLISHED DECEMBER 1, 2020
Sarah Vaughn’s vocals drift through the speakers, the snow falls gently outside and I am comfortably lodged in the couch cushions in the living room of the house where I have lived since 1994. Those things feel normal and right. But if I look harder, very little feels right. It’s life in the time of COVID.
I am a strategist and a thinker and an organizer who loves a good challenge. I have stamina and energy and smarts. But COVID lately has me outflanked. Next moves are coming to me more slowly and with less confidence.
Who would have ever predicted in March, when we first shuttered our dining rooms, that we would be stopped in our tracks by COVID in December? Eight-plus months ago we began running and hiding from the virus. We donned masks, stayed home, and stopped hugging our friends. We applied hand sanitizer by the gallon. We Zoomed in for meetings.
Somehow for the first seven months all of us at the restaurant eluded the COVID monster. In September we grimaced as university students returned. Those of us driving deliveries saw the unmasked parties in the campus area and read the writing on the wall. Soon after, cases began to surge all around and we got nervous. Never having opened for indoor dining, in late October we closed down our carefully executed outdoor dining operation. I regularly issued lengthy missives to staff pleading caution in their off-the-clock activities. Our diligence really seemed to pay off. Until it didn’t.
Our illusions were shattered November 20th when our first employee received a positive COVID test result. It was near the end of a busy Friday dinner service. We were, thankfully, rocking and rolling. I was bartending that night, making carryout cocktails hand over fist. From my vantage point I could see into the kitchen and eyed the long line of food tickets. Despite the masks and the pandemic, things felt good.
And then the text came: “Phillis, I have some really shitty news…” and the spell was broken. As a business owner, hearing that an employee has tested positive is like being punched in the gut. I was stunned. My carefully constructed glass house shattered. At that moment I knew that something had fundamentally changed.
The rest of the night was a blur: a call to the health department, a conversation with managers, the process of determining who was in close contact (6 feet apart for at least 15 minutes) with the positive individual, and delivering the news to those six cooks that they would have to quarantine for 14 days.
Then came the rush for tests. Despite having been told by our health inspector that there was no point in testing yet – that it was too early to test positive as a result of the contact –we did it anyways. Two managers raced to urgent care, only to find it closed for the night, and then returned to the restaurant. After everyone else had left, five of us sat in what used to be our dining room, masked and far apart, and tried to determine what it all meant. The news especially devastating because two of the individuals in quarantine were the kitchen managers responsible for coordinating our sold-out Thanksgiving meal. Somehow we had to field a team for the four days from Sunday through Wednesday that would prepare the regular menu plus 120 Thanksgiving feasts. And we had to do it without half our cooking staff and crucial leadership.
Saturday we closed for a frenzy of cleaning and testing and planning, and then Sunday we hit the ground running. But that day we were stopped in our tracks once again. Midway through service came the news that the roommate of one employee and close friend of another employee had tested positive. Both employees left immediately and headed home to quarantine, bringing our total in quarantine to nine.
A handful of us clocked 60+ hours apiece over the coming few days and somehow made it through the regular menu plus the feast production. Wednesday night we left the restaurant tired and happy, but also sad that all of our personal Thanksgiving plans had been canceled. At least it would be a day to rest.
By Thanksgiving Day, over 20 staff members had received negative test. I became hopeful that maybe we were out of the woods. Friday felt almost normal.
But then the next day, one of the quarantining cooks called with the news that she had tested positive.
When you learn that an employee has contracted a potentially life threatening illness – and that it most likely happened in your workplace – it’s heartbreaking. But on the positive side, she had no symptoms and had been in quarantine for a week already—thus was incapable of infecting anyone else. So we extended her quarantine period and carried on.
Throughout this time, our two infected employees—as well as the thought that others could get it—were on my mind constantly. I reached out to them daily, or almost daily, to check on their physical and mental status. The restaurant supplied them with food; I or other staff drove around care packages whenever requested. And I promised to pay everyone in quarantine for their full 80 hours of missed work. Money also started becoming a concern: the price tag for the missed sales on Saturday plus all the paid time off totaled about $17,000. It’s a bitter pill we could swallow, but if it happened again…
We trudged onward.
That was Saturday, day 8 of the first group’s quarantine. Then came Sunday. And Monday.
Sunday night, while sitting in my yard beside a fire, I got a call from another cook – one who had not been affected by first incident – that he had tested positive. That news triggered a new round of calling the health department, contact tracing, delivering bad news to those needing to quarantine, and promising those individuals that they would also be paid for the two weeks. That incident brought our quarantine total up to twelve. Things were starting to feel dicey.
I remade the schedule for the umpteenth time and convinced a couple of cooks to work extra hours to compensate. We just had to make it to Wednesday, when our first round of quarantiners would return.
Then came yesterday.
Monday morning I was on my way in at 8am when I got a call from the kitchen manager on duty: we needed vegan mayo! I thought: ok, let that be our biggest problem of the day. I stopped by our bakery/café, grabbed the mayo and headed to Detroit Street. I helped get ready for service, then put together a big care package for a quarantining cook in Ypsilanti.
Approaching to the freeway entrance, I got a call from a kitchen manager: he had just tested positive -- quite possibly as a result of exposure to the cook who tested positive on Sunday.
Wow. That was a huge blow. I pulled over and just stopped. It hit me: this wasn’t just the “one more” effect, it was also about the infected individual. This kitchen manager was one who had stepped up and put in a Herculean effort to get us through the past week. He is so reliable and so good and so caring and so careful and so diligent. I also happen to have known him literally since the day he was born. He is young and healthy, but this virus is a monster and it is dangerous. And these young people in my employ are getting sick. The pressure and guilt and sadness of all that is incredible. I called the restaurant, told them to close, and continued on my way to Ypsilanti. At least I could deliver two boxes of food to an employee in quarantine who is too skinny and never eats enough!
I repeated the cycle: Health department, contact tracing, and quarantine calls (4 more this time plus the COVID-positive person, for a total of 17 employees).
At an all-manager Zoom call that afternoon, we discussed what to do. The decision was made to re-open Wednesday with reduced staffing and reduced hours. We came up with a concept of “pods” – kitchen employees who would only work with each other. Everyone in the pod would work an entire 11-hour shift together, every other day, thus reducing the number of individuals with whom they would be in contact. We also figured out how to distance staff members from each other – not an easy feat in a busy kitchen. The most important new concept for us will be line-cook buddies. Whereas normally there are between two and four line cooks at a time, depending on how busy we are, the new system will limit us to two line cooks at a time. (All positive cases thus far have been line cooks). Line cook pairing will be consistent; the same two line cooks will work together and only on alternate days. When it gets too busy we will just have to turn off the online store.
I also reached out to staff members yesterday to judge their level of comfort in returning. Their responses overwhelmed me. One wrote: “Honestly, of course I’m a little scared. I don’t want COVID, but I also want to help support the business in any way possible and I’m ready to get back to work. I feel good about this new plan.” Another wrote: “Whatever we have to do to keep going, I’m in. This is the best job I’ve ever had and I’m not giving it up without a fight.”
So now we try again. Hopefully our leaner, better, and wiser system will work. I worry that this virus may not be done with us. If it strikes again, it will be time to make more difficult choices. For now, we continue plugging holes and bailing out the ship.