3 Years Later: Living Through a Pandemic as a Food Service Worker in a Nursing Home
Three years later, I look back on my experience of working in a nursing home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three months before the pandemic began, I had achieved a personal milestone. After juggling my part-time job with college for eight years, I had finally finished my bachelor’s degree.
With a huge weight being taken off my shoulders, I thought I would use 2020 as an opportunity to take it easy and become a full time worker at my regular job.
For the past 11 years, I’ve worked as a food service worker at a nursing home. Of all the aspects of my life that were affected by COVID-19, my job was the most impacted, and the effects are still felt today.
March 13, 2020
For me, the start of the pandemic was March 13, 2020, a day I’ll always remember, which was a Saturday.
When I went to work that day, I was told by my supervisor that the dining room was closed to the residents for the foreseeable future and that I would need to go to the nursing station to get my temperature checked.
From that point on, the following protocols went into effect:
