The lockdown baby
After what felt like an eternity, I found myself dusting off the trusty traveling case and wading through a pile of emails about safety protocols when flying in a time of COVID.
To add to this excitement and trepidation, I was heading into a face-to-face pow-wow with a group of about twenty people, in a traditional conference venue. Flying and real-life meetings; things which in February of this year were as normal to me as getting dressed for a day of paying work. Yet, now in September 2020, these simple acts were stirring in me the kind of fear and anxiety previously reserved for having to go into a shopping mall in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
Having worked out how many days of official work, I proceeded to plonk the usual bits into the travel case — and then I paused, the regulation no-crease shirt in hand mid-roll. Maybe I should try this shirt on? Given that I’ve grown what I am now referring to as my ‘lockdown baby’. A soft, jiggly, bouncing 8kg bundle hanging mostly around the midriff.
The shirt I’ve appeared in for the opening session of the typical 3-day workshop for the last few years, barely got around my newly sprouted moobs. Ditto the following two collared shirts. Which prompted me to try on the regulation work pants — only to find my lower body had grown proportionally to the midriff.
With growing panic and being a default kanjoos about spending money while on a COVID slashed income; I took a deep breath and hauled out a trusty pair of utility pants that could just about pass muster for a workshop with a forest of public sector senior managers and c-suite officials.
I managed to get into the pants, hauled them the whole way up and buttoned them before I gently and slowly let out my breath. Tense seconds followed while the double-stitched waistband and my double cheeseburger waistline fought a battle — thankfully, the pants won and I was able to turn my attention to finding solutions for upper-body coverings that did their best to camouflage my post-natal status. Thank you Woolies for the ego-saving cut of your long sleeved t-shirts, the baby and I are eternally grateful.
Having completed the (humbling) packing process, I proceeded to focus all my anxiety on the actual airport experience but I need not have worried. King Shaka International was a breeze, all neatly labelled and with slick service the whole way through until boarding — even the coffee places were fully health and safety compliant.
The on-board experience was only slightly soured by being seated next to a fascist that missed his true calling and instead became a Franciscan priest, cassock and all. For the rest, it was uneventful and I ended up with the privilege of disembarking onto real ground — making the traditional dip to acknowledge the earth on landing, so much easier.
But I had relaxed too early.
Officials at ORT are clearly nowhere near as concerned (or interested) with COVID-19 safety regulations as their colleagues in the east coast fishing village. The specified exit domestic arrivals at ORT is via a mezzanine level into a parking lot. This is in itself not a problem, despite my confusion as to why officials would choose an exit space where the ceiling is low and there is limited fresh air flow.
Maybe the senior managers at ORT recently bought Netcare shares and are doing their best to increase risk for their customers and therefore win on their investments. That aside, the real issue with the domestic arrivals exit is the bottleneck that arises as you try to exit. There is an army of taxi operators and their touts clustered tightly around the exit, many sans masks and full of their usual vocal bravado to try to haul you into an overpriced taxi or ride-share. Nobody at ORT has any idea about droplet spread it seems. All the more a pity — even a muppet like myself can find this information on a quick search.
So having followed and implemented COVID-19 safety regulations from home, through the departure airport, all through the flight and disembarking — I found myself walking right into a risk maelstrom of oral droplets (and noise) at the end of the process. If I contract COVID and die, please can someone sue ACSA for being dumb-ass clowns that are making a deliberate effort to kill their clients.
I really hope this does not reflect the idiosyncrasies of being South African. While we make so much effort around so many aspects of the personal safety requirements for COVID-19 from distancing, sanitising, preventing crowding and general hygiene; we sometimes fall flat on our faces at the final stages of a process that would otherwise be world-class. And as I slowly emerge from a self-imposed lockdown into a slightly more regular life (and more road pounding time to deal with my postnatal weight gain) I am deeply aware of my own choices over the past six months of being cloistered away.
For one thing, my ideas about what constitutes a good life have crystallised and my patience with practitioners and supporters of rabid consumerism and it’s grandpa (rabid capitalism) is at the lowest it’s ever been.
My patience for herd mentality, business as usual and conventional wisdom (especially) in management and operations leadership roles is even lower.
Now is not the time to blindly follow the herd — it is time to stop and truly apply some thought to all processes. It is the time to strip down and re-look every single aspect of our work, and stretch our minds, imaginations and intellect — much like the waistband on my utility pants. Except, in this instance, we should aim to burst free of the confines of the stale thinking and actions that have brought us to this point of dubious human development.
