So rampant was coronavirus, it even infected accounting systems.

Day 1: Today the authorities announced local shelter-in-place restrictions. All employees of nonessential businesses must stay home or be subject to fines if caught at the workplace. What to do? Set priorities: define whether we are essential and be prepared to back it up if we are. There is no Essential Business Department in California, like the DMV, to which one can apply and get a Certification of Essentiality. No tests one takes. It depends on one’s OEM customers and flows down to their suppliers. For those of us not named Elon Musk, we are not a law unto ourselves.

Day 2: Met with the crew. Game plan time. Henceforth, the old guys (the “over 60s”) will stay home. That includes (gulp) me. Aging and mortality in one poignant bite. A small crew will remain at our facility, handling day-to-day essential business. (In the preceding 24 hours, we established our corporate essential bonafides.) Headcount will fluctuate daily, depending on happenings. Some will stay home today; others will do likewise tomorrow. I stay home every day pondering the Darwinian way of the world, and my humbling new lot in life as a high medical risk individual. Regardless of work site, all employees will continue to be paid for the foreseeable future. As if we can foresee it. No one will burn PTO if they must stay home. Engineering work will be conducted from home to the extent possible. No onsite customer visits will be allowed until further notice. Living a paradox: keeping it all together, while dispersed. Here we are.

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Can a head in the sand avoid a corpse in the water?

“We’re line down.”

Sorry to hear that. (Not really, but fake empathy makes them feel better.) They got the job as the low bidder. You reap what you sow.

“We’ve been building this product for five years. That’s 22,846 units manufactured successfully and counting.”

Congratulations. You just confirmed the adage that one “oh s--t” equals one million “attaboys.”

“Not a single electrocuted hot-tubber in that time.”

How reassuring. It is of such integral services as these that our gross national product is composed.

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“Customer” status comes with a catch: payments.

Another morning in America. Mornings bring trouble. In various guises, but always in simple declarative sentences.

“Trouble here. Line down. Big problem. Management screaming. We need your immediate help.”

Like clockwork.

No matter. Trouble is my business. (Cue breathy melancholic saxophone solo.)

This fine day’s episode comes in the form of defective batteries. The call, invariably frantic, continues thus with the symptoms:

“We have six defective batteries that need to be CT scanned. Field failures. Possible cracked electrodes. Very upset and belligerent customer, threatening litigation. You come well recommended for speed and precision. We need time on your machine now. Our entire production is halted until we identify the root cause of this field failure. Quarterly results hang in the balance. When can we come in? Today, hopefully?”

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