I left my job last week.
I was a deliveryman for the nation’s premier provider of cut fruit bouquets. You know the one. For the last few years, if you were in a specific part of upstate New York, you might have seen me delivering fruit bouquets to people’s homes, workplaces, weddings, schools—at all times of the year, for all kinds of occasions. And of course, recently, that meant delivering fruit bouquets during a pandemic.
If you’re like any of the sensible people I’ve mentioned this to, that might have made you pause. Maybe you’re wondering something like: didn’t New York close all non-essential businesses? How the hell are Consumable Presentations an essential service? You’d be right in asking, if you are. I was wondering the same thing when I was informed that we would, in fact, be staying open, only about twelve hours before the shelter-in-place order went into effect. I still have a hard time digesting it. The things I’d spent years delivering weren’t groceries. They weren’t meals. They were chocolate-covered, overpriced novelties, bought for the recipient’s sake less often than for the customer placing the delivery order, so they could feel content knowing they’d spent enough money to show they care.
But hell, you could eat them. Apparently, that’s essential enough.
