Wednesday, March 25, 2020

A knife and part of a lemon usually rest on a cutting board in the office kitchen. We drink a lot of tea at work, so people slice off bits of the communal lemon, finishing one every day. I haven’t seen a lemon there at all this week. We’ve had fewer people in the office, and I suspect that, due to worries about the virus, people haven’t wanted to share. It hasn’t affected me, though I usually have a cup of tea after lunch. The salad that I tend to get contains a wedge of lemon that I never use, so I take it out, wipe the tuna off of it, and use it for my tea. Downstairs, the cafe is open for takeout again, though it may not be tomorrow. Strict rules as of tonight allow restaurants only to do deliveries. At the supermarket, the workers now wear vests of fashionable black and yellow. Large letters on the back say “We are staying at work on your behalf.” When I go there in mid-afternoon, people enter freely. By evening, after the new rules hit, a line forms outside. When one customer leaves, they let another in. I get produce for tonight in a small market that I’ve passed twice a day but never entered. It’s clean, the produce and prices seem good, and the cashier is reasonably friendly. I’ll be back.