Honestly, I mostly didn’t until recently. Being a lab worker means it’s essentially impossible to work from home. Especially when your work involves mice and you have a cat. Since I didn’t really want my research to get eaten, I was going in to work even as the city slowly started shutting down. My plan was to continue working until the last coffee stand shuttered its metaphorical doors.
A few weeks ago, all students received an email requesting volunteers to help with the corona testing in the virology unit of Hadassah Hospital. The country was opening up more testing centers including one in Hadassah Ein Kerem, and much more staff was required. Seeing as the tests are performed using real time PCR, a common laboratory method, they were recruiting grad and post grad students at the medical school to help them do it. I signed up to volunteer and a few days later got recruited (obviously this step required an absurd amount of paperwork, blood work and vaccinations, and a trip to the security dept. which was opened between the very specific hours of 9 and 11:30, to pick up a volunteer tag).
They began the first shifts about a week later. They signed me up for the Wednesday and Thursday morning shifts which I was informed were from 7am to 4pm. In the original email I had received, the shifts were supposed to start from 8 which is almost doable for me. Waking up at 5:45 in the morning is not really my idea of a good time. I am capable of dressing myself (as long as it doesn’t matter if both shoes are the same or not), eating (I have found that this is an instinctual act, as long as it doesn’t matter how much food gets on the sweatpants I am wearing because that was the best I could do about dressing myself at that hour), and getting to work (even if it takes a few attempts to get on the correct bus traveling in the correct direction). In fact, being faced with the options of getting up while it’s still dark out to test throat swab samples, and sleeping in, well...…... we had a good run humanity, it’s too bad it had to end so early.
But since I had already committed, I agreed to this torture session masked as an attempt to aid humanity. As I’m sure you can all guess, the first few shifts were mayhem. The volunteers mainly stood around waiting for instructions but since the actual staff had no idea what to do, we mostly loitered, blocking the hallways while the workers ran around trying to figure out which lab had run some specific batch of samples, or yelling at the lab workers for scanning all the forms upside down, etc. We didn’t know who to ask for instructions since no had bothered to introduce themselves and whoever was in charge had neglected to tells us. The person explaining to us what to do (i.e. move boxes from one place to another place, which we were subsequently told by other people who appeared to work there to move to another place a meter away because they were blocking the supply cupboards) didn’t really seem to know herself what to do. We later established that she does not in fact work there, but actually works in the microbiology lab next door and was temporarily reassigned to virology to work on the corona testing.
The first day I arrived 10 minutes early and was told by someone to just wait in the staff break room until they started the shift. By 8:00, all the volunteers were hanging out in the staff room wondering if they had forgotten about us and about the whole plague thing the entire world is currently experiencing. So we went looking for someone to give us directions with the assumption that SOMEONE was running the shift. Microbiology girl ended up instructing us to take the giant cardboard boxes of samples from MDA out of the fridge and put them on carts for the 3 different labs doing the testing. We spent 10 minutes loading up the first cart, 20 minutes looking for more carts to use until finally reappropriating carts we found lying around with other stuff on them, another 10 minutes loading up that cart too, and then another hour or so waiting outside the labs (all 12 of us volunteers) in case the lab workers needed something. After an hour of blocking the hallways and aggravating the other people who may or may not work there (who knows?) but were trying to get through, I asked someone who seemed to work there if I could go on a coffee break. She said yes, but that I couldn’t go out like that! I looked down at myself garbed in a disposable lab coat, shoe covers, hair net, cloves, and surgical mask, and said, “obviously.” When I got back, there seemed to be no change in status, so I asked her if there was anything to do. I said, “I would be happy to help if there’s something to do, but if not, I have my own work in my own lab to do.”
She apologized that there was nothing to do but informed me that the dept had been forced to take a specific number of volunteers, even though they told them (I don’t even know who the “them” is) that it was too many and they didn’t have enough work to warrant that many people. She said I was definitely free to go, no problem. I asked her who the person responsible for the volunteers is and happened to run into him the next day. Turns out, he’d never even been to the virology labs and had no idea what was happening there (which was not much besides a smidgen of chaos).
The next day was basically a repeat of the first day, although I lasted a few hours longer before I just took off (I had no idea who I was supposed to inform that I was leaving and figured no one was going to notice one less person idling around anyway).
Thankfully by my third shift, they had started getting their act together and we did more than just move boxes around, although our instructions on what to do seem to change every 6-24 hours. I still have no idea who most of the people who work there are and they have no idea who I am (they never take roll call or check off who’s there. I could be the gardener dressed in a lab coat and face mask for all they know.). Thankfully, they’ve started increasing the testing dramatically so there is actual work to do. Don’t get me wrong, things are still a complete mess, but they’re a predictable mess. We know that Hadassah Har Hatzofim is going to send half their samples without forms, and that a certain civilian sector of the army will send us samples on dry ice that consequently become jellified after they thaw, and hence almost impossible to pipette. I also know that half the staff is going to be late since the buses are running at only 25% frequency, and that we will run out of scrubs for everyone by 7:15. There is only a 15% chance of all scanners working properly, and a 10% chance that MDA will bring their samples within an hour of when they call to tell us they’re on the way.
The silver lining (well, maybe) is that they decided to make us actual workers instead of just volunteers, which is slightly more of an incentive to wake up even before all those nutty early morning runners would be out if the government hadn’t banned it. Unfortunately this means a truckload more paperwork (took me two attempts to successfully send in all 20 pages of paperwork, the contract, and pictures of my ID and diplomas), online safety, hygiene, and sexual harassment lectures and tests (took me two attempts to pass the hygiene test), opening up a Hadassah email account (5 days later and I still can’t log in due to a variety of different technical issues) in order to be able to fill out a 101 form (no, that was not in the first 20 pages of paperwork like you would think it would be), and then a return trip to the security dept. whose hours they have thankfully extended due to demand, to pick up a staff tag. Probably by the time I get this all straightened out, there will be a cure for SARS-CoV-2, and probably for HIV and cancer too.
As of late, I have not being going to work (the one I ACTUALLY get paid for) very often since all my cell cultures got infected with bacteria and I had to throw them out. This is why I’m a lab worker and not a doctor since I can’t even keep my cell cultures alive. Since all of my urgent work got thrown out, and the rest is in the freezer, I don’t have too much to do that can’t wait. So I too have been spending my time cleaning for Passover (not that my roommate left too much to do), listening to recorded power point presentations about mitochondria since classes have gone digital, and most importantly, serving as a lap for Oliver for as many hours of the day as physically possible (I had to explain to him that 24 was the max).
9:15- alarm goes off.
9:25- alarm goes off again.
9:35- alarm goes off again. I actually wake up this time, but spend the next half hour in bed checking the news and Facebook while Oliver sits on my lap.
10:05- I eat a small breakfast.
10:30- is it time for lunch yet? No? I guess I’ll go back to YouTube.
11:00- is it time for lunch now? Still no? Ok, guess I’ll do laundry/wash dishes/take a shower, etc.
11:30- is it time for lunch now? No? Well I guess I’ll heat up some Aroma coffee I’ve been hoarding in my fridge.
11:31- Open up a recorded lecture about mitochondria. Pretend to myself that I’m paying attention, while checking the clock every 5 minutes so I don’t miss lunch time.
12:00- lunch time!!! Defrost one of the hundred sandwiches I’ve got frozen in my freezer that I have to finish by Passover.
12:30- go back to the lecture. Actually pay attention this time for about 15 minutes.
12:31- remove Olive from laptop, move the laptop off my lap onto a different surface, return Oliver to newly vacant lap.
12:45-17:30- spend the rest of the day checking every half hour to see when it’s dinner time.
16:00- consider doing some sort of exercise. Remember running outside is banned, reject idea of exercise. Go back to watching the clock.
11:00- realize I have wasted the entire day doing absolutely nothing useful and that I have a 7:00 shift tomorrow morning so I better go to bed soon.
12:30- actually go to bed.
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