Essential workers are expected to show up for work each and every day while risking their health. Before COVID-19, I was juggling being a full-time student athlete and working full-time. Now I’m working 70-plus hours a week, increasing my exposure to others.
With many Americans out of work for the foreseeable future, many must find alternative income. I have a similar yet different situation involving unemployment. When I quit my old job before the pandemic, I had another job lined up. Due to the new job postponing my start date, I’m basically out of work, like most of us. I didn’t know how I’d survive if I didn't qualify for unemployment. I looked into the grocery delivery service Shipt and decided to try it out.
I lost my job as a waiter and moved back to the Napa Valley, where I got a job at my family's winery. Shortly after, the winery shut down, and I had no way of paying rent for my San Francisco apartment, where I wasn’t sure when I would live again. A week later, the winery opened up for bottling, and now I’ve had 24 hours of work a week. My family has had their own issues as well. My uncle is the president of Schramsberg Vineyards, the winery I am working at, which is one of the hundreds of wineries in the Napa Valley coping with the impact of this pandemic. He details some of the issues affecting the region’s wine industry in this video.
I worked at a car rental agency near Oakland airport while going to college full time. My job cut my hours, and eventually I was laid off, forcing me and my girlfriend, Meli, a teacher's assistant who was affected by school closures, to leave the Bay Area and head back home to family.
