Hope everyone is having a wonderful pandemic and staying safe during these mad times of the 'rona virus. How's everyone handing being furloughed/made redundant/forced indoors? What've you been doing to pass the time?
I hate sharing personal information on a public forum, but whatever. Here we go!
It's the busiest time I've ever experienced in my professional career and I'm learning how to coop with that. I'm basically the CTO of a plastic packaging company in Europe. We've had more orders in the first four months of this year than we did in 2019 due to many countries locking all (plastic producing/packaging) companies. Also, a lot of companies order their plastic packaging from China which didn't ship plastic packaging for nearly two months. It's just insane. We had to adjust our technical side (which is my responsibility) of the company to be able to keep up with the huge amount of activity. Note: we develop our own software which is up for only a year. The software is extremely young and we were slowly "increasing the capacity it can hold" over time. Before I worked here, there were no developers and everything (orders, returns, stock info, customer management, etc) was managed and shipped by mail. I'm extremely proud of all my colleagues who gave 200% (and give) of themselves during this period and the technical side is running smoothly at this moment (
a lot of automation has been implemented). To make things worse, all IT related colleagues are working from home and so am I. Communication ain't going smooth. Besides that, we had to hire over 10 extra employees (temporarily) for order picking and shipping, customer service, etc. I'm still heading to the warehouse two or three times a week (afternoon) to assist. I got to make sure all appointments are met, orders are being shipped in time, need to make sure more trucks will pick up orders from our warehouse in case its needed, etc. We do have a warehouse manager who is supposed to do this, but he just got a child and is living 3 hours driving away, only 15 minutes for me. Things ar still going crazy. And guess what? We're officially "certified" in the Netherlands as one of those "important companies which have different rules than other companies". This means we're not affected by a lockdown, may that happen in the Netherlands. We're required to work (with appropriate distancing) because we're head suppliers (at this moment, usually it's only a few) of hospitals and drug stores over Europe.
Besides my work, I'm also helping charities and religious organisations with live streaming their activities. Three to four evenings a week I'm installing, maintaining and training people to make live streams and video calls happen. Many eldern are alone during these times and I've seen and heard how broken these innocent people can become due to isolation. I cannot visit these eldern people at location because of obvious reasons. I can only assist by advising nurses via mail or phone calls. Yes, there are many people who do not know how FaceTime or Google Duo works. It's such a small thing but it has an ENORMOUS impact on the quality of life during this pandemic for eldern/isolated people. I'm also meeting up with people in my home town to do grocery shopping for people who are afraid to or cannot exit their house. Not sure if it's going to happen, but I hope so.
Also, keep yourself informed about the stock of local food banks. There are many food banks having issues in this country and I'm pretty sure it's a world wide issue. Donate if you can. There are also many other charities you can donate to. 30 USD may be a little bit for you, but it could change and save someone's life.
Anyway, I'm not saying this to praise myself or gain attention and I am fully aware people will think that and I don't care. As I said, I do not like sharing personal information on a public forum. However, I do wish to motivate others to try and help others if you can and if you keep yourself safe.