The Way We Work Now
Instead of Teaching Summer School, I’ll Be Working at an Amazon Warehouse
The pandemic is changing life plans and career paths in unexpected ways
I’d heard the horror stories about the harsh working conditions inside Amazon warehouses, but by the time I sat down to apply for the job last week, I had other worries on my mind. During most of the year, I work as a special education English teacher in Baltimore. And while I typically have a side gig to supplement my income — most recently as a driver for Uber and Lyft — the combined threats of a deadly global pandemic and economic downturn changed everything this year.
With so much uncertainty in our day-to-day lives, it’s hard to predict what the next few months of my life will look like. The middle school where I worked recently closed down, so in the fall, I will be teaching at a high school two miles away. It’s still unclear whether we will return to physical classrooms or continue with online learning. Everyone has a guess, but no one knows. Education across the country has never seen a more uncertain moment.
We are living through a time of heavy transition. Our nation is not only reckoning with a deadly pandemic but also police brutality and systemic racism. These issues have had a…
