Another Day

The bird on our roof definitely has a project he's working on. Jackhammers on our roof every day now. The lady who runs recreation at my Grandma's nursing home was great and reached out to me almost exactly when I started my lunch break. Unfortunately, they can only arrange FaceTime during regular business hours. So I made an appointment to visit with her on Thursday after my shift. Butch suggested I see if my team leader will let me leave my shift early so I can try and make it to the parents house and have grandma FaceTime with all of us at the same time. Hopefully, I can encourage mom and baby sister to make more FaceTime appointments since they are the ones who have the time when this opportunity is available. Also, our city's health department announced that Calgary has suffered its first fatality due to COVID-19 and it was a vulnerable 80 year old lady living in an assisted living facility. This fills me with so much fear and sadness. It validates all my concerns about not being able to see my grandma...and even though we are staying away and doing our best to keep her safe that it might not be enough due to the actions of others all around her. Something we cannot control. And obviously if her facility does experience a contamination then we still would not be able to see her because of the risk of infection to US. I really hope that everything works out well for all of us when all of this is over with. Local businesses and companies are doing their best to continue to try and drum up business. DoorDash has been promoting a handful of $5 deals with free delivery. I ended up buying a quarter chicken meal from Swiss Chalet and with a kind tip to the driver it still came well under 10 dollars for me. Well worth the money and avoiding cooking for one yet again. Obviously I cannot do that everyday but it felt good to do a little bit of economic stimulation for those around me. Today was also a heavy day for WestJet. I sent my flight attendant friend a text during lunch letting her know I was thinking of her. Luckily (is that inconsiderate to say?) there were many around her who took early retirement packages or offered voluntary leave for a few months so that she and other WestJetters could stay a little bit longer. Like she said, she feels like she's ok for this month but things are changing constantly so who knows if her job will be at risk a little later on. The company has been reduced to pretty much half of their staff. During my call with my team leader last night he offered a little pep talk and told me to just do my best each day, keep the confidentiality measures at the forefront of my mind and I should do fine. Obviously they will not be doing assessments in the near future although they will still be listening in on our calls but will only contact us if there is a serious issue with how we're handling the conversations. He does not see us getting back into the call centre for at least a couple of months which obviously extends our term. The little extension in job security is nice, but at the same time you always have to wonder where the money is going to come from to sustain this level of staffing. Thankfully (again, is that inconsiderate to say?) the callers really need us at this time, and with everything rolling out they will need us for quite a while to come so I cannot imagine them cutting down our hours too much as the demand is way too great at the moment. The callers are very grateful that we are taking their calls and even show genuine concern for how we are doing. These are scary and troubling times but the human interaction and care, even over the phone lines from strangers, makes me realize that with all the good we have in this world we're going to be ok. It's going to be a trial, undoubtedly, but in the end we will get through this and our global community (yes, cheesy) will be so much warmer and better for it.