Shall we all just throw mud at each other on the playground, now?
Sunday, April 12th, 2020 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelI am quite pissed off at the governor. Extending the stay-home order, okay, yeah, we all kinda knew that was coming. But the new restrictions with the extension include things like big hardware stores having to rope off any areas that might be used for home improvement projects instead of "essential" items. Apparently somebody saw someone else buying DIY supplies and had a meltdown about it -- because the way to cope with hardship is to Sister-Bertha-police how other people are coping with it.
If I have to risk my life and the lives of others* so I can sell someone a toilet plunger, I damn well want the store to be doing enough business to still be in business when all this is over. If I'm going to risk my life and the lives of others* to keep essential-servicing, I sure don't want to end up out of a job when things start getting better because the store couldn't make enough money to keep the lights on.
It just comes across as such a petty "Oh, no, people are finding ways to cope with staying home instead of being frustrated and terrified!" You have to wonder, who does keeping people terrified benefit?
I was moderately supportive of the governor when the stay-home was first declared. Arguably, we should have done it sooner. But the political maneuvering and the sheer "You didn't do what I said the way I wanted so I'm going to punish you" is frankly infuriating.
Grocery stores now have to limit customers to an arbitrary number per square footage. Clue phone, governor: people weren't breaking social distancing because there were too many customers in the store. The vast majority were keeping their six-foot distance even in the popular aisles; the violations were because of the few self-absorbed jerks who couldn't be bothered. And guess what, making it harder to get into the store isn't going to make those jerks behave any better. And what, exactly, were the stores supposed to do about that? Some minimum-wage shelf-jockey has neither the authority nor the ability to force someone to be a good citizen.
Gun stores are closed, despite federal guidance to the contrary. But churches are considered "essential". Yeah, because that doesn't align with anybody's political agenda.
Libraries, however, are closed. Even though ours for example had a plan in place for curbside pick-up. (They worked it out, announced it, and I think got to operate with it for all of two days before the governor shut down libraries statewide.) And even though all this "do everything online!" push ignores the fact that for a lot of people, the library was their only way to access the internet. But an educated, informed populace is evidently not "essential".
There's been a big push to let landscapers go back to work, because they're generally not touching surfaces other people touch and keeping six feet apart would be SOP for them. The governor refuses to hear this because... landscapers use gas-powered equipment and that would lead to more people going to gas stations more often. Oh, FFS.
And of course the police have been set to enforce the new restrictions, but with no more guidance or clarity of communication than the rest of us are getting. So you get things like some Sister Bertha reporting their neighbor for mowing their own lawn, and the police, operating on supposition and rumor, issuing a citation even though mowing your own lawn is specifically allowed.
Or at least, as far as I can tell it's allowed. Perhaps the most aggravating thing in all this is that the state's website, which the governor keeps telling us we should check for all the latest regulations, is completely, spectacularly unhelpful in finding out what actually is or isn't allowed. I have to hope that the news sources I've googled have got their facts right, because I sure can't check for myself. What's supposed to be the governor's main method of communication to the average citizen is entirely lacking in a simple, clear, organized list of what you can do and what you can't.
And so on, and so on.
I'm not sure what effect the new rules will have on my workplace; they're specifically aimed at large stores, and we are manifestly not a large store. I'll find out when next I go to work, I guess. (No point checking now; the rules are changing so fast that what you confirm one day may be irrelevant the next.) But I damn sure hope that since we have to be open anyway, we can sell people supplies for projects to keep them from going completely insane while they're stuck at home.
*I don't think of it this way, but the governor evidently wants me to.
If I have to risk my life and the lives of others* so I can sell someone a toilet plunger, I damn well want the store to be doing enough business to still be in business when all this is over. If I'm going to risk my life and the lives of others* to keep essential-servicing, I sure don't want to end up out of a job when things start getting better because the store couldn't make enough money to keep the lights on.
It just comes across as such a petty "Oh, no, people are finding ways to cope with staying home instead of being frustrated and terrified!" You have to wonder, who does keeping people terrified benefit?
I was moderately supportive of the governor when the stay-home was first declared. Arguably, we should have done it sooner. But the political maneuvering and the sheer "You didn't do what I said the way I wanted so I'm going to punish you" is frankly infuriating.
Grocery stores now have to limit customers to an arbitrary number per square footage. Clue phone, governor: people weren't breaking social distancing because there were too many customers in the store. The vast majority were keeping their six-foot distance even in the popular aisles; the violations were because of the few self-absorbed jerks who couldn't be bothered. And guess what, making it harder to get into the store isn't going to make those jerks behave any better. And what, exactly, were the stores supposed to do about that? Some minimum-wage shelf-jockey has neither the authority nor the ability to force someone to be a good citizen.
Gun stores are closed, despite federal guidance to the contrary. But churches are considered "essential". Yeah, because that doesn't align with anybody's political agenda.
Libraries, however, are closed. Even though ours for example had a plan in place for curbside pick-up. (They worked it out, announced it, and I think got to operate with it for all of two days before the governor shut down libraries statewide.) And even though all this "do everything online!" push ignores the fact that for a lot of people, the library was their only way to access the internet. But an educated, informed populace is evidently not "essential".
There's been a big push to let landscapers go back to work, because they're generally not touching surfaces other people touch and keeping six feet apart would be SOP for them. The governor refuses to hear this because... landscapers use gas-powered equipment and that would lead to more people going to gas stations more often. Oh, FFS.
And of course the police have been set to enforce the new restrictions, but with no more guidance or clarity of communication than the rest of us are getting. So you get things like some Sister Bertha reporting their neighbor for mowing their own lawn, and the police, operating on supposition and rumor, issuing a citation even though mowing your own lawn is specifically allowed.
Or at least, as far as I can tell it's allowed. Perhaps the most aggravating thing in all this is that the state's website, which the governor keeps telling us we should check for all the latest regulations, is completely, spectacularly unhelpful in finding out what actually is or isn't allowed. I have to hope that the news sources I've googled have got their facts right, because I sure can't check for myself. What's supposed to be the governor's main method of communication to the average citizen is entirely lacking in a simple, clear, organized list of what you can do and what you can't.
And so on, and so on.
I'm not sure what effect the new rules will have on my workplace; they're specifically aimed at large stores, and we are manifestly not a large store. I'll find out when next I go to work, I guess. (No point checking now; the rules are changing so fast that what you confirm one day may be irrelevant the next.) But I damn sure hope that since we have to be open anyway, we can sell people supplies for projects to keep them from going completely insane while they're stuck at home.
*I don't think of it this way, but the governor evidently wants me to.
