Chapter 1: Masks (2/25/20)

And So It Begins

“Hello and thanks for calling Economy Hardware. This is Dave, how can I help you today? …  yes yes, uh-huh…  yes, we have masks.”

It was late February and I was looking forward to the St. Patrick's Day parade in two weeks. It would be my first Sunday off in a few months, at least 8 months. We always stocked masks for tasks like: demolition, cleaning up something really disgusting, or spray painting or painting or things of that nature. Needless to say our mask section wasn't entirely well kept.

The tool aisle

But today was a different Sunday, as today marked the beginning of the Apocalypse. Translated from the Greek, Apocalypse means the great unveiling. What was about to unveil itself in the year 2020: to myself, my customers, my community, and my nation—almost the entire globe itself—would be an exploration of what makes us human.

What was about to happen would challenge everyone, individually, to find their way through our shared reality, one by one.

(I am not a hardware store manager by trade. I got my degree(s) in journalism and creative writing. I made a career being an incredibly passionate lover of music and people…)

What follows is a week-by-week account of The Inventory within a hardware store at the end of the world.

Where our story takes place.

To protect the innocent the names have been changed, but by and large these accounts are true. (Any anecdotes are as best as I can remember them.)

I’ve also rooted around my image archive to find the memes I would collect that week.

Chapter 1: Masks

One by one, the phone kept ringing. At the shop we had caller ID and so I could see the names of those calling: Shing, Yang, Han, Lu, etc. An hour or two later as just another normal day was commencing at the store, cars would pull up, ride-shares and taxis and the like, and Chinese people (honestly, that was just what it was) sprung from each car and would buy a set of masks.

In stock we probably had 200 to 300, mostly dust masks, some more industrial ones (10 or 20), and a few full-strength industrial gas-mask-looking aerators with high capacity filtration systems.

And as I was selling the remaining box of 20 paper masks I thought to myself that I should take them out of the box, and package them individually, so that I could get more bang for my buck. A few days later I said this to my boss who laughed and said:

“We don't need to know to do that David, there's no need to take advantage of people."

Over the next few months the world would show him just how wrong he was.

Next week we will run out of sanitizing wipes.

Chapter 2: Disinfectant Wipes (3/3)