Rapidly Changing Events

Leading up to the COVID-19 lock down in NYC, companies were already instructing their employees to work from home.

This is at about 2 weeks before the NY governor Andrew Cuomo declared a lockdown and required "non-essential" employees to stay home.

I remember members of my running group already being told a week before my company instructed us, they are required to stay home. One friend didn't have a desk setup and had to order one right away.

Affect On My Company

About a week before lockdown occurred, my company was already feeling the pain of decreased website sales. The company catered mostly to the event space and the biggest part of their business was coming up with Prom and Wedding season.

As soon as schools started closing...I right away knew this would affect them greatly. It didn't take long for use to have some layoffs, which I was sparred from. 

Then a week later, my boss told us to start taking whatever we need to work home. It was a Thursday, so I grabbed a sweet MacBook (which I'm typing on now). 

I still went into the office Friday, albeit I was one of a handful in, and by mid-day, the company made the decision to have everyone work from home starting that Monday.

One of my coworkers started giving us shipping labels and boxes, so if the office ended up not opening again, they could ship whatever was needed to us.

Although I took some of my personal belongs home the day before, I still had some items I had to leave behind, including a wobble board and ice skates.

Otherwise, I joked to friends, that I carried half my desk home on the train that day. Which wasn't far from the truth, I had 2 book bags full of belongs, plus a monitor I carried in a reusable shopping bag. 

Since the trains were mostly empty by then, it was easy finding a seat to fit me.

Working From Home

That next week, whoever was remaining of us, continued to work from home. There was a company meeting scheduled, that was delayed a few times, mainly because news events were changing so rapidly.

It wasn't until Thursday that the meeting took place. I'll probably always remember seeing my coworkers on Google Hangouts sitting at home. One of them had their cat on their lap and was continuously petting it.

As suspected, event cancellations severely affected revenue and it was decided to put the majority of the staff on a Temporary Layoff Furlough status, starting that Monday. 

First Time Unemployed

So, for the first time in 24 years, I was out of work and about to collect unemployment. I didn't feel too bad about it. I was looking for an excuse to move on with my career and as the next fews weeks went on I went into training mode, starting with building this version of my blog using React.js and node.js.