How I Learned I was Completely Immune to the Social Impact of COVID-19
In this letter to the editor, Matt, a millennial male living on his own, shares the secrets that have allowed him to remain unfazed amidst the social upheaval of COVID-19.
I’m Matt.
So what is the Coronavirus, you ask? I’ll explain: I don’t fucking know. 🤷♂️
Seriously.
You see, I’ve been practicing social distancing, skipping work and living on next-to-nothing for most of my adult(ish) life.
It all started with work. Three years ago, I started a new job, and about three months in, I went home on my lunch break, accidentally fell asleep on my couch, and didn’t wake up until the next day. As I nervously slunk into the office the next morning, it dawned on me; nobody seemed to notice that I’d never come back! So I did it again that same afternoon, but this time on purpose. And when I came in the following morning-same thing! Nobody cared.
I guess you could say I’ve been “working remotely” ever since. I realized that if I left for my lunch break and just never came back, no one really seemed to notice; everybody was too busy doing their own jobs to realize I wasn’t doing mine. When I realized I was totally, 100% expendable, that’s when my work life really opened up for me. I would come in to work for about three hours before excusing myself to go home so that I could (presumably) work from home after eating my lunch. Then I would eat a machaca burrito and take a nap on my couch for the remainder of the day.
Sometimes during these naps I would receive urgent texts. The first few times it happened, I would panic and call back immediately upon awakening. But after a while, I realized that most things that seem urgent really aren’t, and that if I just ignored them altogether, the problem usually resolved on its own or could be postponed until tomorrow’s machaca burrito.
The key to keeping up the ruse was to nap for the majority of the day, but then to send a flurry of email updates at the very end of the day, preferably at like 10pm…what a workaholic!
And so, as COVID-19 hit, and everyone around me fumblingly adjusted to the new norms of remote working, I glided seamlessly into the new world order, an old hand. My only real fear was that everyone would realize how enjoyable it was; that could lead to a shortage of machaca burritos 🌯🙍♂️. Luckily that didn’t happen, but it did get dicey for a second; after a few too many Zoom calls interrupted my naps, I was honestly worried I might have to go back into the office just to get away from everyone again…
When everyone started panicking and bitching about toilet paper shortages, I didn’t even flinch; I’d been out of toilet paper for the past three weeks. When it first started I figured I should prolly just go buy some, but then I found that when I just did nothing about it, my girlfriend would step in to solve the problem, bringing little packs of wet wipes with her and leaving them behind when she left (she’s THE BEST; I met her on Hinge one day while working from home). Granted, after a while of doing this, I did notice that she started to get agro and take the wet wipes with her when she left, choking off the lines of supply and finally forcing me to leave the couch to purchase my own.
🧻🚶
As I stared at the empty store shelves, I realized I had prepared for this very moment my entire life. We were all on a collective fake sick day. Now was my time to shine!
I immediately increased fake updates to thrice daily; once at 3pm (just post-nap), and again at 6pm and 10pm. I was determined that no one-absolutely NO ONE-was gonna out-not-work me.
When the new hygiene guidelines came out, I just looked around my apartment; to put it mildly, there were worse things than COVID there. If COVID ever did enter my apartment, I’m pretty sure it was putting on protective clothing, if you know what I mean.
When somebody told me what social distancing was, I was like, “ah, that’s exactly what every girl I’ve ever asked out on a date has been practicing for years.” I just understood it to mean that when somebody tries to talk to me I just look at them all weird until they move on, and if someone texts me, I pepper them with sporadic encouragement, before I stop responding after a while. [pizza-chewing] I mean, right?
Pretty soon after, everybody I knew in the service industry lost their jobs. All my friends kept asking me how I was doing so well. The answer is: I’m not! Never have been! I started driving Uber, like, two years ago, to make ends meet. I’ve been on paycheck-to-paycheck for 24 consecutive months, and let me tell you…I’m glad to see everyone else is finally catching up! Welcome to my world!
In the midst of the crisis, I paused to tune into Trump’s news conference, to see that the government would be directly issuing thousand dollar checks to every American. Finally, my hard stay at home work had paid off !!💆♂️
The real kicker is this: my productivity was so much greater than that of my coworkers while working remotely, that I was able to convince management to let me do it full time. What can I say? Some people have certain talents.
Mine is pretending to have certain talents. 💁♂️
Originally published at https://thepennypress.press on March 24, 2020.
