plague journaling

I sat on the couch during my break, as I often do, and a coworker eventually came and sat down next to me. We had several feet between us, because it's a large couch, not a goddamn armchair we've decided to cram ourselves into. Within a minute, one of the people from HR, who had been wandering through, told us we needed to move "to practice social distancing."

And I would be fine with that, in and of itself. Sure, six feet is a long way, more than the couch, okay, cool. I think it's officious, pompous, and the sort of tedious rules-lawyering that HR seems to specialize in. But whatever. Also, since I was there first, I'm sort of just meh about the whole thing. I practically teleport to another planet whenever I'm on break, I socialize so little. I ain't taking responsibility for someone else deciding to exist in my orbit.

But the reason I'm still wound up about it is that these rules are only being enforced while we're on break. As soon as we hit the production floor, we may be told to train with someone (me last week, someone else at the machine next to me yesterday), which means sitting shoulder to shoulder to see the parts and the machine. Or we might be assigned to a job that requires a two-person team, either seated side by side or across from each other at a table about two feet wide. There has been ZERO talk of stopping these practices or doing anything to mitigate our exposure to each other when working this way.

Because, of course, that would cut into our productivity. It would limit which jobs could be run and how quickly. And while we are an "infrastructure critical industry," I still call bullshit on that.

If the jobs running matter that much, get us masks. Arrange the work spaces differently. Defer training right now, even if that means you can't throw any new bodies at a job to free up someone else. None of those things are happening.

But by god, I can't sit on opposite ends of a couch with someone and talk gardening for three minutes until my break ends. That will put me at an unacceptable risk of illness. What I do on my personal time will be policed. Production time, though, will continue as usual.

What a steaming pile of crap. And an excellent reminder that, while my employer is a pretty good one in the context of our current economic system, it is still a company that cares exclusively about its own profits. Anything else is negotiable.

Goddamn, plague brings out the radical in me.

Lake Lewisia #507

Guiding newcomers toward the town was somewhere between a hobby and a calling for her, and she had gotten rather creative in her use of breadcrumbs. Her favorite was slipping cookbooks, gathered from club collections and local small presses and family shelves, into libraries and bookstores in the wider world. Anyone attracted to the promise of supernatural ingredients and fae recipes probably belonged in the town, and the demands of the meandering path to Lewisia that followed would winnow out the few who didn’t.

---

LL#507

Hobbit thoughts

I listened to this virus-inspired episode of the Tolkien Road podcast whilst driving home from work. It was something of a coincidence that they put a new episode out just after I had decided I would listen to the audiobook of The Hobbit next while at work. Which is what I'm actually going to talk about.

(I've begun listening to audiobooks books in the last couple weeks, partly as an anxiety management strategy. I've previously only listened to music, as there can be frequent and unexpected interruptions by people as I work. I had thought missing what was being read would annoy me too much; to be sure, I'm still only listening to books I've read before for that very reason.)

I was struck during much of the initial meeting at Bag End by the sadness of the dwarves. The description of their fall from master smiths with even outsider apprentices, to blacksmiths and coal miners living without a home breaks my heart. Particularly poignant were the moments when Bilbo looks off into the distance and sights where The Shire and his home are, and he thinks of how he longs to return to them and to his comfortable routines.

Because of course, the dwarves have no such home, and if they do think of anywhere longingly, it's dragon-held Erebor. It's several generations since its heyday, at least as reckoned by Thorin's line (excessively long lifespans notwithstanding). What memories of comfort and routine are there to soothe or encourage them now? Unsurprising, then, that they risk so much for recovery and revenge.

I shall have to seek out some meta or fic dealing with dwarves-as-diaspora. If I recall--I've not rewatched it in some time--the first Jackson movie hit these notes quite hard. I'm sure there's been plenty of exploration of the topic.

Not being diaspora myself, my personal feeling was more centered on the petty indignity of it. The references to them mining coal--it put me in mind of the chronic underemployment of my generation. "I have a master's degree in communication and the only work I can get is on a telemarketing call bank." That sort of thing. Vastly overqualified and working for people with no understanding or respect for your skills.