The sudden changes of normalcy people are coping with can be difficult and being an essential worker is not easy because we do indeed expose ourselves.

A lot of people have different jobs that some may be more exposed to COVID-19 than others. A student, Mariana Martinez, has two jobs she deals with that are essential. Martinez carries a difficult job where she exposes herself by working at a hospital. She faces difficulties with increasingly more people coming into the hospital. “The hospital is always busy and more patients have been coming in,” Martinez said.

Martinez faces the challenges of being afraid to have caught COVID-19 and exposing it to her family. Martinez, at the end of her day, is very exhausted but is keeping a positive mindset that soon this will be all be over. She is indeed grateful that she has a job and that is still able to support herself since many others have lost their jobs due to the crisis.

Many people do know how to cope with it but many others don’t and the way Gabriela Rojas copes is by keeping a positive mindset. She is working from home remotely since she is classified as an essential worker and can’t wait until she is able to step foot into work physically since working from home is very difficult due to not being able to go anywhere.

Rojas’ daily routine is having something to do to keep her mind focused, she started a better eating habit along with doing workouts. She mentions how being an essential worker can be difficult for many in fear of exposing others but for her, it is a blessing to be able to have a job. Rojas has then become more connected and focusing on improving herself.

Working in a fast food place or restaurant can be very difficult due to a lot of people coming to get food. A lot of them have changed their plans to only be open for carry-out.

Samantha Oregel faces the difficulties of working at a fast-food place. She mentions that they get more and more people which for her is very stressful since her job has become more fast-paced than usual. The fear of getting exposed by customers has become advanced. Oregel has dealt with a lot more difficult customers due to the fear of getting contaminated.

“She feels like fast food places should be closed because either way people should be home and food meals are always better,” said Oregel. The only benefit of this for Oregel is that she has a job to go to. In fact, there is hardly any traffic since it would require her about 30 mins to get to work.

Being an essential worker is scary for a lot of people and many of them wish to be able to stay home, but they have to support themselves. Many essential workers carry the fear of getting COVID-19 and spreading it to their families. Some of them actually received a lot of benefits with things such as a raise, but others have gotten their hours cut for being slow.