I’ve been struggling trying to write this article for a while now. Somehow it plays perfectly in my head while I’m driving, and then I choke on it when I sit down to type. So, please bear with me.
I didn’t want to interrupt the wedding series (again) so that’s why I’m posting this outside my normal posting schedule. A few months back, I wrote Life During the Shut Down, and Twenty Something in Quarantine, to talk about the struggles of living in Orlando and working in hospitality during a pandemic, and now I’m going to talk about it some more.
The best way I can put it is that we’re drowning. I don’t know a hospitality worker that isn’t struggling right now.
Thousands of people are still furloughed or have been laid off. Thousands? Really, Chelsea, you’re exaggerating. No, I’m not. Walt Disney World is the largest single site employer in the United States, and they employ over 70,000 people last time I checked. It’s not an exaggeration. I have more friends that are still furloughed or have been laid off, than are back to work. It’s not just the theme parks either. I don’t work in a theme park, and I specifically do not talk about my job on this blog, or on social media, so the details I’m about to give are as close as I’ll ever get to saying where I work.
The plan was to bring us back in waves. I was in the second wave of people to return to work. I was also the last wave to return. More people were supposed to follow, but I’ve been back since the end of June, and everyone else is still on furlough or has been laid off.
I am so beyond grateful to have a job and income, but at the same time, I have so much guilt that I am working, and many of my friends are not. I also have so much anxiety that it’s hard to come to work some days. I used to work fourteen hours shifts on a regular basis, sometimes back to back, and now an eight-hour shift leaves me more exhausted than they ever did. My chest tightens every day as I drive to work.
Why so much anxiety?
Well, for starters, Jay’s lost five family members to this. He also lost a friend, and I lost a former coworker from my Disney days. Fiona, our husky, has a growth on her eye that we’ve had removed twice. It’s back for a third time. We tried a new vet and they referred us to a specialist. I’m terrified of what that will cost. I am no longer on speaking terms with some people who were previously very important to me. The same condition that makes Jay high risk is getting worse by the day. Take all of that away, and I’d still have anxiety.
I can now say I’ve been to Universal, SeaWorld and three of the Disney parks since they’ve reopened. I like to people watch. Guest behavior is the same roughly across the board in the parks, and where I work. For the most part, guests are good about trying to keep distance from each other. For the most part, people try to follow the rules. In five days at six different parks, I only had to tell three families they were too close to us, and that they needed to back up. I got eye rolls, but they moved away.
But we’ve all seen the videos of people screaming at theme park workers over the mask policy, and that’s not even the half of it. Guests stay six feet from each other, but they’ll walk right up to us and get in our face. They’ll take their masks off to talk to us. They’ll lean around the plexiglass barriers. We step back to make space, so they step right up and fill it in.
Guests, customers, whatever you want to call them, they don’t see hospitality workers as people. The social distancing rules don’t apply to us. When we ask them to step back, when we ask them to make sure their mask is covering their nose, we are met with rage and hostility, because how dare we ask them to respect our safety as much as their own. Of course, some interactions are normal and polite, and then others are openly hostile for no reason. I see so many people who think the rules don’t apply to them.
I was at work, minding my own business, and I had a maskless man shout from ten feet away, “It’s Florida and it’s July, why are you wearing a mask you millennial snowflake?”
Now that’s the first time I’ve actually been called a snowflake. I honestly thought that was just a thing annoying people said online.
Never mind that Orange County is under a mask mandate, or that my employer requires me to wear one, I’m wearing one because we all need to be wearing them, because my husband encounters thousands of people in a single day, and because it’s literally the easiest thing in the world to do to try to protect people.
At least I work indoors, and for the most part, wear my own clothes to work. My friends in the theme parks are wearing full costumes, masks, and face shields. Guests are always so quick to complain how hot it is with the mask, but they at least have the option of going indoors when they want to.
I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly, but the Jungle Cruise break room is a literal tent.
No air conditioning, no heat in the winter, and more than once, I had to chase a duck out of there. Another thing I’ve never said publicly, I was required to wear long sleeves, pants, a hat, and a scarf at all times when I worked at Islands of Adventure. At least it was better than the Wizarding World costumes that are made of wool.
WOOL. FOR A THEME PARK. IN FLORIDA.
Guest services levels have dropped immensely. You can tell people are trying their best, but they’re burnt out and they only have so much to give.
Chelsea, if it’s that bad, why are you going to the parks?
Well, if we’re going to risk our lives going to work, we might as well risk our lives having fun.
We’re also not doing things like we used to. Five park visits in a single month wasn’t unusual for me before all this started, only five in almost three months is unheard of. I also feel safer when I’m in a theme park than I do at the grocery store, because people are actually enforcing the social distancing and mask policies.
We have a fourteen-step sanitation process each and every time we come home. We call it protocol. Clothes go straight into the washer or a garbage bag lined hamper, our phones go into sanitation boxes that use UV lights, we wipe down everything we touch, and go straight for the shower, etc. It’s exhausting and I am so tired of it, but it has to be done. We haven’t had friends over since this began, and we don’t go to people’s houses. I’m still getting the bulk of our groceries through Instacart (use my link to sign up and we both get a $10 credit!) or curbside pickup. It’s expensive, and mildly annoying, but I’m of the opinion there’s no such thing as too careful. I’ve had to stop wearing my wedding ring and use a silicone band instead, because it started changing colors from how frequently I am washing my hands.
Since the number of guests have decreased so drastically, and there are so few employees currently working, our hours have reduced. For my job, there used to be a morning shift and a night shift, but now for the most part there’s just a day shift. Where I used to work 7 am – 3 pm or 3 pm – 10 pm, now I’m either 8 am – 1 pm or 8 am to 4 pm, depending on the day of the week. I realize most of the world operates on a 9 am – 5 pm schedule, but my body is not built for it. Since I moved to Orlando, my work schedule has never been consistent. I’d have two or three morning shifts a week, and then two or three night shifts, sometimes with a double in there to mix things up because we were short staffed. The point is, I didn’t have to set an alarm at least a couple days a week.
I realize it sounds ridiculous, but being at work every day at 8 am is killing me. I’ve always been a night owl, but after four months of actually sleeping on my own schedule instead of someone else’s, I am exhausted all the time. I rarely fall asleep before 1 am, and my alarm goes off at 6:50 am.
The nicest thing about quarantine was I didn’t have this urge to feel like I had to make every second I wasn’t at work count. I come home exhausted, crawl into bed, and spend the evening watching tv with the cat, and then I’m mad at myself I didn’t get anything done. Or I come home and I’m productive or playing my new video game obsession called Star Stable, and I look at the clock and I realize I need to get to bed and I didn’t get any downtime. (Yes, Star Stable is fun, but it involves sitting at a desktop computer, and I spend most of my work day at a desktop computer.)
To make matters worse, I make approximately 45% of my income on commission. So, in addition to shorter hours, less guest flow means less opportunities. I have been doing my best to make the most of every single one, but a year ago a $50 day was a slow day for me, and now $30 is an amazing day. I made the mistake of comparing my end of August paystubs year to year.
I am down over $16,000 compared to what I had made by the end of August 2019. That’s about the same amount of money I made my first year working at Disney.
I have a job. I am grateful to be working. I am grateful to have a paycheck at all. I said back in April that we were some of the lucky ones, and we still are, but that year over year pay difference makes me want to scream. I’ve been doing this for four years now, and this will be the first year I don’t make more money than I did the previous year. (And no, it’s not that I think I deserve to make more every year, or I expect raises). While my base pay has remained the same, I’ve gotten better at what I do and I’ve busted my butt to get to this point.
I’m pretty sure the busting my butt is also the reason I have a job right now, and then we’re right back to the guilt I feel, because my friends bust their butts as much as I do.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Last week, my friend Dana launched Magic for Magic Makers. It’s an initiative to raise money to support the numerous hospitality workers who have now been furloughed so long they’ve run out of unemployment benefits. I immediately jumped on helping out with it. While I haven’t been able to donate the way I’d like, I was able to put my graphic design skills to good use, and added four designs to my TeePublic store to support Magic for Magic Makers.
Chelsea, can’t you do more?
I’d love to, but right now, it’s taking everything we have to keep our heads above water.
I’ve never been good at monetizing this blog. I have enough of a hard time staying on top of regular content that Patreon has never been a good fit for me. I’ve avoided putting ads on the site, because I can’t stand it when I go to someone else’s site and I can’t read the content because there are too many ads, and I keep hitting them accidentally. My TeePublic masks are the most successful I’ve ever been with making money from Twenty Something in Orlando. (I sold twenty-one masks in the first month, which I guess is twenty something, ha!)
So, I put together a “Support Twenty Something in Orlando” page, which is mostly a bunch of referral links to stuff I recommend, that I get credit for if someone else signs up. I actually put it up, before I found out about Magic for Magic Makers, so I promise, my helping them out by trying to spread the word had nothing to do with getting people to go to that page instead. If you have money to spare, you should absolutely give it to Magic for Magic Makers. If you like saving money, you should sign up for Rakuten using my link so we can both make some money, or if you’re looking for a new credit card, you should check out the ones I use and why I like them. If you like the way I write, hire me and I’d love to write a piece for your website.
I already told you about the worst interaction I’ve had with a guest since I’ve been back. I’ve had plenty of unremarkable interactions, or ones that were perfectly fine, but then someone had to make a snide comment about the masks, or how ridiculous this all is. I have also had plenty of worse interactions in my life, that had nothing to do with masks or the pandemic. (The time another Skipper and I got threatened because Big Thunder Mountain wasn’t open for Extra Magic Hours comes to mind. Don’t worry, those people aren’t allowed at Disney anymore.) Now I’m going to end this with best interaction I’ve had since I came back to work.
I was finishing up with a gentleman and the tip screen came up on the credit card. He tipped and I said, “Thank you, you have no idea how much I appreciate that right now.”
“Has it been hard? Are you getting a lot of hours?”
“For the most part hours are okay, but I make a lot of my money on my commission, so it’s hard. We’re going to get through it, but it’s hard right now.”
We talked for another minute and he asked if I knew where the nearest type of a certain ATM was. I said I didn’t know, but I could look it up. He said not to worry about it. We finished and he left. I honestly didn’t think anything more of it.
He came back about ten minutes later, and handed me $20 in cash.
“I hope this helps.”
It took all of my self-control to get to the bathroom before I started crying.
Sir, I highly doubt you will ever see this, but yes, it helped. It helped more than I can tell you. The world needs more people like you. It wasn’t just the money, it was the gesture, and I will never forget you.
If you’re coming to Orlando right now, the absolute best thing you can do is be kind.
