Heavy Metal: Coronavirus edition, plus the work of working from home

This edition of Heavy Metal is about, what else … the coronavirus. Surprise!

I'm sure Heavy Metal is not alone in feeling a sense of anxiety. Who will get COVID-19? Who will die? How widespread will the economic damage become — and how many people will lose their jobs?

Heavy Metal has been thinking about the pandemic and talking it through with my two college-age kids, work colleagues and longtime sources in the plastics industry. We came to this conclusion: Fear is taking over. Fear of the unknown.

Yes, we all have to take precautions of washing our hands, not touching our faces and avoiding big crowds. But conquering fear and anxiety about what could happen, about how terrible it could get? That's not so easy.

Still, we've got to try, for our own mental health. In these strange times, try to think about living one day at a time. When the sun comes up tomorrow, focus on that day, and then do it again. It's the projecting that can cause fear and even a mild sense of panic.

From talking it through, Heavy Metal sees some parallels to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. All Americans went to bed that night wondering what would happen next. More attacks? A "dirty bomb" exploded in Times Square? The sense of fear took months to finally ease. COVID-19 is similar: Something really bad and unprecedented has happened and we have trouble processing it. It seems unbelievable, liked you're watching a movie — Heavy Metal has been hearing that a lot lately — and it's true.

The only way forward is to live your life. Look at each day you're alive as a gift and focus just on that day. That's Heavy Metal's advice, even for normal times.

This applies to people as individuals. Of course, businesses must do projections and forecasts. Manufacturers need to figure out different scenarios and prepare for the worst of this Black Swan event of 2020. Every company is doing that.

But no, not in our personal lives. Certainly, there are major disruptions. Most of the people who can work at home will work at home. We'll all follow the CDC guidelines.

And layoffs are a real possibility, but Heavy Metal has always taken this stance: There's nothing you, as an employee, can do about it. Most of the time it's about a financial decision — money — and nothing personal. The same with COVID-19. All you can do is work hard and do the best job you can every day, but if you have no control over it, prepare for it but don't obsess.

We've all seen movies where society fights some kind of evil mass outbreak. "Night of the Living Dead" is one of Heavy Metal's all-time favorites.

But now that's it's real, Heavy Metal is binge-watching "Outlander" instead of "The Walking Dead."

It wouldn't be Heavy Metal without some funny stuff, so now the Metallic One will share some personal stories.

Metal has been working at home for several years now, after Plastics News moved to Detroit. Now that many more people will be working from home (at least the white-collar workers), here are some insights from the front lines of the Home Worker.

When Heavy Metal learned he would work from home, he called longtime home worker colleague Jim Johnson. He said: "Bill, my advice is to take a shower in the morning and get dressed like you're going to the office." My response: "Nah." I went to Sears and bought five pairs of pajama pants — one for each day of the week. Oh yeah!

And I usually showered around 4:30 each afternoon. This was between my two marriages and I had a girlfriend, so it worked out perfectly. I was fresh as a daisy when she came over after work!

But really, the worst thing about working by yourself is that on Monday morning, you can't engage in small talk about your weekend. You will miss that. Heavy Metal's dogs pretend to be interested, but it's just not the same.

Story No. 2 involves working remotely at McDonald's. It can get pretty lonely working at home alone all day in your PJs. So Heavy Metal started going to the local McDonald's which, as most of you know, has great Wi-Fi. During the day, it's mostly retired people doing crosswords, reading library books or gathering in groups to engage in mundane talk about all of society's pressing matters — you know, welfare, gun control, the muscle cars of their youth, liberals. They only buy senior coffees and spend hours. They're sitting there right now as I write this talking about the coronavirus.

Heavy Metal always bought breakfast and lunch, and liked to spread my papers out, and use a keyboard to bang out stories on a laptop. Metal can talk kind of loud on the phone.

One day, a guy came over and asked what I was doing. I told him writing stories for Plastics News. It turned out that he had an advanced degree in polymer science. Wow! I showed him an issue with some macromolecular-type stories and asked the fellow what he did for a living. "I own this McDonald's," he said.

Message: The hell with this polymer science thing. The big money is in owning a McDonald's!

One day he sat down and asked me not to work at the McDonald's anymore. He wouldn't say why. I pointed to the old-guy group with their now-cold senior coffees, but he didn't want to discuss it. Always the gentleman, Heavy Metal shook his hand and said OK, goodbye.

I was putting my computer away and gathering up my papers when the senior citizens McDonald's worker swung by. Now, I knew this woman's entire life story from going there all the time. I whispered to her, what's going on? Was I being too loud or what? She said no, and in a quiet voice said that the other few daytime diners were asking, "What is he doing there? Why is he doing that?"

Can you believe this? Here was Heavy Metal, a contributing member of society, writing stories for the premier plastics publication in America, and these freeloading old people are confounded by this? Can't they mind their own business and work on their Word Search? What's wrong with people?

Heavy Metal walked out of that McDonald's forever and went across the street to Burger King.