Beyond the Pandemic a Bit

 A customer wished to redeem a handful of cans. I told him we cannot accept those of his that we don’t sell. He asked with dismay, “When will things be normal again?” I replied perhaps too vigouroudly: “Normal doesn’t exist anymore.” Seven months into the pandemic and we are still working on that.

The customer assumed this change in our procedure owed to the pandemic, as so much has these past months. In fact, beverage distributors have simply become more rigorous about what they’ll receive from us. Blaming the pandemic for the change proves easy enough, tho. A persistent narrative concerns how much we all have lost because of the virus.

I need not catalog that loss. Everyone has felt it. The narrative need not solely focus on the losses we have endured. We are learning along the way.

The lament about lost normalcy will remain a commonplace. Normal has changed yet we all still have things to do. A sales rep remarked recently that nearly 800 restaurants appear on the alcohol commission’s list of accounts in arrears for more than ninety days. I think twenty or less would be the typical number. A hotel association a while ago stated that ALL of Boston’s hotels face the risk of closure. One can add a touch of salt to the statement, the association wants to make a case, but obviously the pandemic offers no boon to the industry. Dominos tip in multiple directions at this time. Perhaps we can reset.

The forces unleashed by the pandemic, and I am okay with the drama of the verb, have revealed drastic weaknesses in our normal. world. We see many people and many businesses in straitened circumstances after just weeks of disruption. The economy is NOT GOOD, whatever the Wall Street soothsayers claim. Few back ups exist when things go pear-shaped. Public education, i.e. school as daycare, seems in mid-flub right now. Healthcare for this interconnected population clearly, clearly ignores the poor. The poor, according to any abacus, represent the vast majority of the population. Like such a majority could be ignored. Maybe the luxury of ignoring the problem has disappeared. 

I just today read that the University of Michigan issued a stay at home order to combat the spread of the virus. Student athletes, the money earners for the esteemed institute, stand exempt from the order. You have to believe the bottom line defines the mission to make that acception. I know some believe that we must keep the economy’s rockets firing. I get the thinking but not how such action meshes with the reality of doing so during a pandemic. The pandemic wants to win so badly.

While I believe some people really don’t accept the pandemic as serious, most do. Boredom and resistance to change seem like strong motivating factors for treating the situation as normal. We think the enemy is the virus but it is not. We have been treed by a culture of disintegration. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. Humans are not isolatoes, however. We are all creatures of the same light. As such, we are empowered by our connections, not our divisions. Tear down the walls!