CS

It’s horrendous. Let me just start from the beginning.

Before we had any confirmed cases in my building, I had pretty much foreseen what was going to happen. I’ve been with the company five years. I opened up every major building in the Tristate — in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. This is my third building over the course of those five years. I’ve been with this building since it opened almost two years ago.

So at or around the beginning of March, we had some managers that returned back from Seattle. Seattle is where Amazon has its headquarters, and it was one of the first hot spots in America for the coronavirus outbreak. One of the managers came back, and shortly after that she left because she was sick.

From that point forward, it was just a domino effect. Supervisors were calling out sick. My colleagues were calling out sick. I was sending associates home left and right because they were sick.

Three weeks ago, I took a stand and brought it up to leadership. Like, “Hey, there’s something wrong here. We need to shut this building down and quarantine everyone for two weeks with pay.” They didn’t listen. At that point, I walked out. I said, “I’m not gonna sit here and watch people get sick and y’all do nothing about it.”

I’ve been unpaid ever since, and I’ve been fighting behind scenes. I’ve been calling the health department and the CDC. I’ve sent out numerous emails to the press. I’m trying the best I can to build awareness of this situation.

So fast forward to this week, I decided to go back to work one day to see how things were shaping up, see if they made any safety changes. As soon I got there, around 8:30 in the morning, I ran into my colleague. She looked horrible. Bloodshot red eyes, all puffy. I said, “What are you doing here? You look sick.” She informed me that she went and got tested last night for the coronavirus.

I said, “Wait, you got tested for the coronavirus and they allowed you to come back in the building?” We all know you don’t get the test unless you’re showing severe symptoms. So I sent her home.

Less than an hour later, we had a small managers’ meeting and they informed us that we have one confirmed case. That wasn’t the person I’d run into, she was confirmed later. Instead it was a confirmed case of a person who had started to feel sick the week before. I found this out a little after eleven in the morning, and I was out the door by twelve. On my way out the door, I told as many people as I could to go home.

At this point, I’ve heard of at least seven people who have tested positive.