When the pandemic hit, I knew my day job doing customer service was going to be affected. And it was affected in stages. First, my hours were cut in half (same as my salary). That went on for a little while. And when that was happening, it was only me and my manager working. My manager did work a little more than I did, but we still pretty much were working together as a team.
Then, my manager had to take leave. I’m not going to go into why because that is her business, but she let me know that she wouldn’t be working and it was going to just be me. And when that happened, my hours and pay got cut even more. I was down to working only 3 hours a week (1 hour a day for 3 days a week) and my pay was cut even more. It was less than my hourly pay would be for 3 hours, but I also understood that the company wasn’t bringing in any money because all of our locations were closed down. So any payments that I could get was nice. And it wasn’t too hard because we also didn’t have a lot of customers. But even though my manager wasn’t working, she would still log in to our chat system to keep me company and to help me out when I needed an extra set of eyes to do some research.
And that’s what my life has been like for the past few months. Minimal work, but I also was collecting unemployment (you can collect to make up what you aren’t earning if you have reduced hours). It wasn’t ideal, but it was what it was and I was grateful to have some schedule and sense of normalcy.
Then things changed again.
Last week, I was put on hold from my customer service job. My manager was going to take over the hours that I was doing (which does make sense as she is the manager and there are some higher-level things they are going to try to work on now). And I was technically out of a job. I do still have my other job doing research, but that is limited hours to begin with. Fortunately, I’m not going to be losing money since I will get it in my unemployment now instead of my paycheck (although we did lose the $600 bump which is something I really needed). And I am going to log into the chat system for the hours I was working to be there for my manager the way that she was there for me. I’m technically not working when I’m logged in, but I’m there so she’s not alone and if she needs help looking something up in the ticketing system I can do so. And just like I was grateful for the limited hours I had to make things feel a bit normal, I’m grateful to be logging in so that I feel like I have a schedule and responsibility.
The owner of the company did tell me that the plan is to hire me back as soon as they can. But we don’t know when things will be back to normal again. It’s hard when our shows are large crowds in a room sitting at tables together. It’s exactly what you aren’t supposed to be doing right now. There are a few cities that are open and have shows because their case numbers are low enough, but it’s a fraction of what is normally open. But I do feel grateful that the owner said that he was planning on bringing me back. I don’t feel like I was fired. I’m just on hold until I can return to work. I still consider myself an employee of the company and there is no reason for me to think that when work starts up again that I won’t be coming back.
I’m really hoping that the unemployment bump returns because that will make me feel much more comfortable about my situation right now. I am much luckier than most people because I do have some money saved that I was hoping to use for something fun or for a future down payment on a condo, but I can use it for rent and bills if necessary. I also know I can ask my parents for help if I really need it. I’m so grateful for those options, but I hope that I don’t have to use them.
I did work on my resume and update it (and used a new template to make it look better) and I probably will look into other remote jobs that have openings right now. I don’t necessarily want to find a new job, but unless I know the unemployment bump is coming back I will need to figure out how to make money. Maybe I’ll luck out and find something that is remote and temporary and I can go back to my customer service job when that is back. I know there are jobs right now for grocery stores or delivery services because those are needed, but because I do have a higher risk of getting sick I don’t feel like taking one of those would be the best thing. So I’m only looking at openings for remote work.
I know I will get through this time. This is temporary. Things will be reopening again and my job will be coming back. I would love to know exactly when that would be happening or to have an idea of how long this will last, but we really don’t know. I doubt any of us expected to still be in this situation in August. Especially with it being worse than it was before. But eventually, it will be better. And I’ll be back to work and so will my co-workers. I do miss working with them and I can’t wait until we are virtually reunited and back to what we are used to.
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