“Wow! Hold on! What’s this?“ I looked up and saw a cheerful man in a mask looking down at me, highly amused. I was expecting him to want a free sample. “You mean”, he continued, “that in the middle of a pandemic you are still managing to sample cheese??!” We both laughed. “Yes“, I said, “seems so! Crazy eh! But it is Christmas!”
He looked at the table. “We’ve taken all the advice and everything is sanitised. Would you like to try it?” I said. “Oh go on then”, he replied. So I supplied a small pot with cheese, a cracker and some chilli chutney with a lid on top. And proffered it with my blue gloves and mask on. He laughed again and rushed off.
I had been doing a few days of promotion work. Having worked from home all the way through the first lockdown, having been ill during some of March and then charmingly made redundant along with many others (no furlough offered!), I took a short break and then decided I had better get back to some work. Promotion work seemed the best way to start, having done it before. But how things had changed! I was in for some shocks!
“The Brief” – with an outline of the campaign – was double the length, with all kinds of new Covid rules: cleaning, sanitising, gloves, masks and social distancing being involved, signs for customers to follow, and instructions to clean everything every half hour or so! I also had a Covid written exam to complete …
Setting up was harder too, and communicating difficult with a mask on. And as for cutting cheese and putting lids on while wearing gloves …! I’m sure some cheese had blue rubber on it … Dropped cheese, a broken knife and a lacing of sanitiser, anyone? Crushed biscuits? A squirt of anti-bac spray? No?
I began to feel rather like Mrs Apron – Soup anyone?
Sir! Please don’t touch other pots! Customers do as they please of course, adults worse than kids, and would grab the samples before I had the lids on – pots all 10cm apart (anyone got a ruler? No?), and if they touched any other samples the whole lot had to go in the bin.
Add to that the usual allergy advice and information on pricing and products and I began to feel like a school teacher, trying to control naughty adults and children who gleefully grabbed at the samples. I love cheese but it seems so does everyone else. At least I didn’t need to buy lunch that day, after taking the instruction to first sample the products myself literally, to the extreme (ahem!).
I have to admit the excessive cleaning and sanitising routine while in mask and gloves became so restrictive I resorted to offering double size portions just to get the product out – everybody happy!
Did I mention the Santa hat and apron? Oh yes! But, do you know what: I loved wearing them as it made people smile.
By the end of the day I was quite heady with sanitiser and cheese and began serenading customers by singing Jingle Bells. It did frighten one or two whom I asked to join in. (This was not in ‘The Brief’). Sigh.
Of course, because of “Covid” half my promotional equipment hadn’t arrived, and my table had been requisitioned to be used as a “Sanitising Station”. I tried to rescue it but gave up eventually before a row broke out. And two thirds of the agency staff were on furlough or made redundant, so impossible to reach (even more than usual). I have to say, at times I felt very alone, trying to adjust to it all. But of course the customers cheered me up and by the end of the day I had done a good job … I even went back to do it again the next day!
Now to get paid I had to do a report – a section read – on how did the Covid rules affect this campaign …
Ok! Are you ready? How long have you got?
Yesterday on the Andrew Marr programme; Boris when he was quizzed on the 21 odd hurdles volunteers had to jump, described them as ABSURD and he was already doing something about it – a downright terminalogical inexactitude if ever there was one!
However Janice your lovely story, well well told anyway gives an example of a malaise, some defect in our national psyche that accepts such nonsense.
I put its onset down to when I first heard the cry ‘elf an safety and we learned to do the risk investigation first.
Thanks Janice you have portrayed the absurd.
A lovely, positive and insightful piece. I hope it persuades others to try similar and thus generate more competition and effort to create positivity. Surely a better way to start 2021.
Do you know what they do to you? They creep up on you! Then rule breakers can be targeted by rampaging Daleks shouting: “Exterminate, exterminate.” Well, it must be true. I saw it on voyeur-vision.