Up until yesterday I worked and commuted into downtown Seattle for the past 8 months. The past three weeks have been an emotional nightmare, and I’d really like to tell my story. Sadly I know that I am not alone. 

I work for a hotel chain in the sales department. We contract meetings, events, and blocks of rooms for groups traveling to Seattle. A week ago, and with only a few cases reported of the virus, all of a sudden our groups and events started cancelling. My bosses made me fight these people saying that they still owed us cancellation fees. It was awful, and I hated every conversation I had because I didn’t believe they were wrong. That week was hell, as I had uncomfortable conversation after another about how this didn’t technically qualify for an exemption from cancellation, because the company was choosing to cancel, not forced to do so. 

As last week progressed almost all our groups for the next few months had cancelled and we sat stunned. Why are these people cancelling??? Everything is fine here, this is such an overreaction. One minute I thought I was going to hit my quota and bonus, and three days later I was in the negative. Suddenly hotels sat empty at 5% capacity. The tourists were gone, and the huge businesses like Amazon and Microsoft had shut down their campuses. Restaurants waited for the lunch rush in vain. 

I rode public transportation on the light rail every day, and every day watched the numbers dwindle. People started wearing masks. At first I scoffed at these people thinking how big of an overreaction it was. Then one day a man let out a raucous sneeze, and the lady next to me visibly jumped in her seat. The platform I stood on to get home was always so crowded I had to wait strategically where the doors would open so that I could elbow my way into the middle as it was “pressed-against-a-stranger” level standing room only, not to be left behind waiting for the next one. Now there were empty seats and drained, frightened faces. 

By the end of that week, the hotels in the area operating under my chain had laid off their hourly employees, operating on skeleton crews of managers, unsure of what to do next. By Friday, I heard rumors of the managers starting to get laid off or “furloughed”. We would check in with each other to hear the latest, they’ve cut hours here, laid off staff there. It felt like something was coming but we didn’t know what or why. 

On Monday my friend was told she had two weeks to help the hourly staff at her hotel to file for unemployment, and then she too would be furloughed. With the schools closed, she has to send her daughter up north to family so that she can work her last two weeks to make rent. 

Every day this past week there was another terrifying update; another hotel’s sales and events staff were getting furloughed. I’d never heard of what that was, but found out it’s a forced leave of absence up to 8 weeks, where you file for unemployment but are promised your job when you return. One by one, all my friends lost their jobs. Thursday, at 11:30am, my boss sent out a meeting request for 1:30pm, with our GM and director of HR included. We felt the doom set in, and for two hours I got to stew in my anxiety. Would they cut my hours or just lay me off? One hotel only laid off half the staff, and a couple people got to stay. 

Before my boss began her speech she started crying. We noticed that the director of HR had yellow packets, one for me and each of my coworkers. My legs were shaking uncontrollably and my coworker burst into tears. We had all been furloughed. 

They say it’s for four weeks, and if they need us we can come back, but in reality I don’t think this will pass that quickly. When four becomes eight, what happens after eight?  

I filed for standby unemployment in the waiting period, and it’s barely enough to cover my rent. Before I clicked off my office computer for good, as I’m no longer allowed to check my work email, there was a company wide memo saying that employees have to have their temperatures checked before they can come into the building. I hear this will soon be a Seattle wide mandate. 

Suddenly a stay at home mom to my dog and my cat, I’m fucking scared. I don’t know when I’ll be able to work again, and I’m not alone. An enormous chunk of Seattle lost their jobs this week, and we can’t apply elsewhere- no one is hiring. I don’t know how I’m going to make this unemployment check work, and the unemployment offices are so inundated right now that they’re saying they might not be able to process us until much later, and back pay us for the weeks they missed. 

Every time I see a post on Facebook about how stupid the virus is, or how everyone’s overreacting, I get irrationally angry and upset. This is not a joke. It all happened so fast. Every day something gets worse and we know it won’t get better for a long time. A lot of us have symptoms, but no one knows if it is or isn’t… This is my life, and right now it feels like it’s over. I feel like I’m in a dream I can’t wake up from.