DK:  Today is November 25, 2020.  This begins an oral history interview Andrea Shipman.  My name is Donald Koger and I am located in Piscataway, New Jersey.  Mrs. Shipman, if you wouldn’t mind, please introduce yourself.

AS:  My name is Andrea Shipman and I am in Raleigh, North Carolina.

DK:  The purpose of this interview is to discuss your experience, mostly in the early days, of the COVID-19 pandemic.  With your permission, I would like to record our conversation and use it in a class project.  It will be made public as part of the project and it will also be publicly available from the Rutgers University libraries. 

AS:  Yes, I am okay with that.

DK:  What do you remember about the first days when the pandemic hit the U.S.?

AS:  I was traveling, actually.  I was in Los Angeles kind of when it started to be like we’re going to have to wrap some stuff up and shut some stuff down.  I had a flight from L.A. back to Raleigh, which is not a short flight.  I remember thinking:  “This really isn’t that big of a deal, why is everyone freaking out?  I don’t really get it.”  I did sanitize my whole seat and my whole area.  I always would think of that, in general, anyway just because I think planes are kind of gross.  I came home, I worked one day in the office.  Then, that was it.  I think, starting March fourteenth or fifteenth, I work for a really large company, and they shut down their entire campus, and I have not back since.  It is currently November 25.  It was crazy, it still is.

DK:  What was that last day of work like?

AS:  I think everybody thought, “This seems like a little much, but maybe we’ll be back in by the summer, or after Easter.”  I think it was just a little bit surreal.  I have a locker at work that just holds stuff like a keyboard, or if you wanted to have snacks, because we have an open floorplan.  I remember thinking, “I’m not going to need anything from here, right?”  I think I brough home exactly what I needed and I was really stunned by the fact that I still haven’t been back.  I think it was jut a little surreal.  A lot of people where I work would come into the office and work three days a week, then work from home two days a week.  I’m a fairly social person so I really like being in an office, I like seeing people.  So it look a long time to realize that I’m not going to work with other people in the same space for a long time.  I still don’t see how we can possibly do that.

DK:  What do you think the breakroom fridge looks like, now?

AS:  [laughter].  They are really, I will say, they are really good about cleaning all that stuff out.  Every Friday, they’re like “it’s getting thrown away.”  Everything, you could have the nicest Tupperware, or the greatest glass case, they don’t care, they throw that stuff in the garbage.  So that probably looks okay, but I’m willing to bet some people’s lockers are kind of funky.  That’s my guess.

DK:  Did you have a space to work in your house before having to make this transition?

AS:  I did not.  I set up a desk in our bedroom because we had space for it.  I would work in a very cute but uncomfortable chair once or twice a week.  Fridays I would work from home and my Fridays were pretty easy so I could do a couple of meetings in the morning and then get up and do laundry, start dinner, you know, kind of do house stuff.  Then it very obviously became clear that I would be working in this space for an indeterminate amount of time for full days, and we had to do some shifting and rearranging so I currently sit in my new office.  Which, thank god I have.

DK:  What was that room before it became an office?

AS:  It was my daughter’s room before she took over a bigger room down the hall, so it was kid of a kid’s guest room.  So it was kind of random, unused space, which was dumb on our part.  I had always kind of wanted to make it into an office, but I didn’t really have time, and I’m terrible at painting, all that nonsense.  Then, look at all the time!  We suddenly had all this time to not leave the house and do things.  So, we still have a little guest bed because my husband thinks we need two guest rooms.  I’m like, “Who’s coming?  We’re in a pandemic.  We don’t really need two guestrooms.”  But I don’t really feel like taking apart the Ikea bed.

[Internet Connection Interrupted]

DK:  Sorry about that.  My internet dropped out for a bit.  So, you were talking about converting the guest kid bedroom into an office.  You did not want to dismantle the Ikea bed was the last thing that I head.

AS:  Correct.  I did not want to dismantle the Ikea bed so it still exists, just off-camera to my right.  [laughter].  It’s covered with a bunch of stuff.  I realized I need to put something behind me, too.  Because now it just looks like I’m sitting in a really empty room, but I’m not!  All my stuff is on one wall.

DK:  Was that intentional, to put everything on one wall, so it wouldn’t be in the background when you have meetings?

AS:  No, actually, it’s just because of the way my desk is.  I spread out, I’m a little messy.  So I needed shelves and stuff above my desk, so I have post-it notes and stuff right here.  I have a few shelves so when I’m standing or sitting, it’s easy for me to get to.  But no, I just don’t know what I’m going to put back there.  I also just considered, maybe I might get a treadmill because I run.  I had surgery recently, so I can’t really run on the road just yet, and I was like maybe I’ll go buy a treadmill.  And then I realized, that would be the background.  So maybe I won’t.  [laughter].

DK:  A lot of folks buy treadmills just to end up folding laundry on them.

AS:  I have a lot of those spaces, too.  So, yeah there’s a reason why I haven’t.  You can’t go a, well I mean you can go to a gym right now, I just don’t want to go to a gym right now.  I’m just trying to justify ridiculous money that I want to spend, is really what I’m saying.

DK:  Did you have any issues finding equipment for setting the office up?

AS:  I work for [a large computer company], which makes things a little bit easier.  I already had a secondary monitor and I have my laptop, which I’m really lucky to have.  I was also the resident printer of things in our home because [my husband] Craig has always worked from home.  So there was a lot of emails with “Print this, print this.”  So, now we actually had to purchase a printer.  I would say, what’s hard, the printer we got, printer ink was very difficult to find.  The specific ink that we need for our printer, was on backorder for a really long time and we didn’t have it, which I thought was very strange.  But now he has a printer, so now I get to send him things and say “Please print this.  Please copy this.”  It’s very soothing to my soul.

DK:  Did you already have the desk in that room?

AS:  I bought one from Wayfair.  I like to do a sit/stand, like I said, I had surgery on my hip so I can’t sit all day all the time.  I need to have moments where I can kind of stand and do work.  So, I have a two-level desk but from before, I still have that desk in the bedroom that I probably need to sell because it just doesn’t work in a sit/stand way, even if I had gotten one of the little shelf things that like pop-up.  Just the way it’s set up, it would not have worked.  No, but I will say the Facebook marketplace has gotten quite a few of our things in trying to rearrange things and get things out of the way.

DK:  Did you have any issues with any supply shortages?  Did you have a hard time finding anything such as paper as well or just the ink?

AS:  Just the ink.  I think it was specific to our printer.  We don’t really print a ton, we don’t have a ton of stuff on paper.  I think what changed really early in the beginning was when our kids’ school, which is now virtual, we had to do a lot of printing and copying.  A lot of taking pictures of stuff and printing it out, which was just strange, but there we things we had to do because there was no other choice.  From a supply perspective, I don’t think it was too bad.  I know, obviously, for work, our supply chain is still struggling a little bit.  But personal, thankfully, with the exception of that printer ink, it wasn’t too bad.  But that’s just for work stuff.  We won’t talk about paper towels, and toilet paper, and wipes. [laughter].

DK:  Up here in New Jersey, we had toilet paper shortages at the stores.  Did your stores have the same kinds of issues?

AS:  YES.  I remember, shortly after I think I had gotten back from L.A., I had done a Target run.  It was really full, there was a lot of people there, and I remember thinking:  “This is a lot of people for a Wednesday or Thursday night.”  EVERYONE, and I mean every single person had the extra large thing of Charmin paper towels.  I was like, “You know, it doesn’t go bad.  So, I should grab some.”  When I grabbed those, there was probably only four or five left on the shelves.  Even now, they don’t allow you to buy more than one, you can only buy one at a time.  Even if they’re fully stocked.  So yes, we had that.  I went to Costco the other day, there were no paper towels to be seen, at all.  I don’t know if it’s starting again, but I have seen, in my mom groups pop up:  “Hey, if anybody finds or sees the big thing of paper towels or toilet paper, let me know.”  I had gone to Home Depot the other day and I was like:  “Home Depot has toilet paper!  People forget!  Run to your closest Home Depot, or Lowes.”

DK:  Did you see any shortages on grocery items?

AS:  [inaudible].  Sorry, my headphones try to connect to other things while I’m mid-sentence.  Which is always really fun.  I feel like the paper products were the most; bleach, cleaning supplies were obviously and ironically at a loss, which made me think:  “Did you guys not clean before?  We were not washing our hands before?”  I just want to know, that part.  You saw a shortage of canned goods, canned fruit.  For whatever reason, I think I bought a couple canned things too, which we never eat canned fruit.  I also noticed too, which we did as well, because of the concern for local businesses, we signed up for a produce box from local farmers.  Which is a great option, in fact, we just got one today.  I think, of the heartier vegetables like the things that don’t go bad so quickly.  Like squashes and gourds and all that stuff.  I do remember seeing flour was very difficult to come by during the bread making phase of quarantine.  Yeast was very difficult to come by, also during the breadmaking phase of quarantine.  [laughter].  A lot of random baking items.  I don’t know if everyone was just, at the same time, “I guess I’m going to bake more stuff.”  I feel like those were the biggest ones that you would see missing.  I’m sure there are others.  Flour, yeast, canned goods, and the paper products.  And cleaning products, I’d say were the ones that we missed the most.

DK:  Did you join in on the breadmaking?

AS:  Fun story.  Before we had a kid, Craig used to make a lot of bread, like a lot.  By hand.  It was delicious.  I can’t eat a lot of bread anymore because I’m old and my stomach doesn’t like it, but I did make, and I can still make, a very mean banana bread.  Banana bread was my jam.  I made a lot of chocolate chip cookies.  And then I made my pants.  Smaller.  [laughter].  Too small, from the making of the banana bread and the cookies.  So no, we didn’t make any of the new bread; I guess sourdough was the thing and people would make a starter and stuff.  We still, thankfully [knocks on table twice], very luckily, had jobs and we still needed to work all day.  So we weren’t in the middle of the day like, “let’s just make some bread.”  But, have Craig Shipman make you bread, because he is a very good bread maker.

DK:  Looking back, what would you say was the biggest shock, or the biggest surprise?

AS:  I think the biggest shock and the biggest surprise, myself included, was our arrogance in thinking: “This is just going to go away.”  Which, now, eight months?  Are we eight months into this?  Does that sound about right?

DK:  Almost nine now.

AS:  Right, almost nine.  IT’S BEEN TWENTY YEARS! [laughter].  That’s what it feels like.  I think, that for me, it was the arrogance.  We all did, it, we all thought:  “It will just go away.  This isn’t a big deal.”  Then, the subsequent refusal to believe in just science.  Which, I don’t think has ever been a thing?  Then, I think the hardest thing, really was not even for me so much – or no it probably is for me more than it is for my kid, is the school’s closing.  I think that’s when I was like, “Oh we’re serious.  We’re closing schools.”  Now we’re really starting to realize how important having schools open is.  How important childcare, you know, the stuff that we’ve always kind of done and just assumed would always be there and that change.  I think that really has been the most eye opening, for a lot of people, not just me.  I don’t even know if I answered your question because I feel like I went off on a tangent.  [laughter].

DK:  You’re doing great!  What’s been the biggest change between working in your office and now working from home?

AS:  I’m probably more efficient, I think.  Working from home, just because it’s much easier for me to get stuff done, because I don’t get as distracted by talking to people or someone walking by.  I also think that I do miss out on opportunities either elevator conversations, or walking by conversations, that kind of stuff.  You can’t recreate that.  You can’t just pop into somebody’s Zoom call, like “Hey!  Just popping in!”  Which would be strange and probably illegal.  I think that was one of the harder parts, I think, of changing.  My job is world wide, so I talk to people in Europe, and Japan, and Asia-Pacific, all the time.  So we are always on calls, and thank the sweet lord that nobody expects us to be on camera.  So it’s very rare for us all to have cameras on, I think that for a lot of people, you can hear like “man, I have to do Zoom meetings.”  And now, what used to be regular phone calls for a lot of people, everybody now wants to do it on Zoom or on Teams with cameras on and whatnot.  So I’ve had a lot of friends say, “God, this was always a phone call, why can’t it just be a phone call?  Can’t we just?  We’re not used to looking in each other’s faces.  Do we have look in each other’s faces now, really?”  So, I think, that for myself, that was probably the thing that changed the least.

I did have an outdoor, socially distanced lunch with my old colleagues.  I also went to a new business unit with my company in May, so I’m also working with a whole team that I’ve never met in person, ever.  That is really strange.  I think I’ve met one of my colleagues outside of work, just if they live close by, and we are able to grab an outdoor lunch or something, that’s been really nice.  But otherwise, I only know people by their photos.  I don’t know what anybody actually looks like in person.  Nor do they know what I look like in person.  So that’s, I think been the strangest.  I don’t know what you look like in person and that’s weird.  You always look at somebody’s photo, and everyone’s going to use their best photo.  I look great because it’s a professional family photo that we did.  I don’t normally look like that.  That’s also like four dozen cookies and like three loaves of banana bread, pre all that, so it’s different.  I don’t look that way now.

DK:  If you could reach back, what advice would give yourself back in March?

AS:  Buy stock in Zoom, and Microsoft.  Immediately.  Right now.  Repurpose all your storage area for paper products.  Do your physical therapy because you are stuck in the house and you can’t really do anything.  When you can’t move, which I haven’t.  I had surgery in June.  You will need that later, that is very important.  I think the biggest thing, though, is:  One of my favorite influencers, a science influencer on Instagram says:  “Be good to each other.  Wash your hands.  Cover your face.”  Because that’s the only thing that’s going to get us through.  Be good to each other, wash your hands, cover your face.  And I think it’s amazing how much kids can get used to.  I think that’s kind of one of the big things.  Kids just kind of roll with it much better than we do.  That stock part is really important too.  [laughter].

DK:  Is there anything else that you want to add, or we might have missed that you’d like to have included?

AS:  I would just say that my experience overall is probably one of the easiest ones.  I think there are so many people that have either lost jobs or really saw a decline in whatever business they were doing and needed to pivot and needed to figure out how to make stuff work.  I do think that coming out of this, and now history may prove me wrong, but I do think that coming out of this we will see a kind of renaissance of new businesses, new small businesses, and new ideas.  Things to, I don’t want to say alleviate, maybe the word I’m looking for is, how to kind of work within these parameters, making it a little bit easier to either work from home.  I really hope we see a change in how childcare is done.  I feel like this time we will result in a lot of different policy changes, just because of the nature of the things that you don’t realize, the systems that in place that are either not working or are barely held together. 

DK:  Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me.

AS:  Any time.  You picked a good day.

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