BJ Homayouni, director of festivals in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, has never before had to stage a virtual strawberry celebration. Robin Moore, a Milwaukee wine consultant, hasn’t ever had to flog Merlot via virtual wine tastings. Ashley McIlwee, contact tracer for a small city outside Chicago, has never before had to play flu sleuth, interrogating Covid-19 patients about others they may have infected.
Life in the coronavirus era is like that: some of us are doing jobs that never existed before, and others will never do the same jobs again. “New roles are being created, like contact tracing,” says Becky Frankiewicz, president of ManpowerGroup North America, a staffing firm. “We’ve never used those two words together but in the past few weeks we’ve seen 2,000 to 3,000 requests in the US for a job that never existed before.” The role of security guard is morphing into temperature checker. And big cities are putting people in new jobs such as “social distancing ambassador”.
As we celebrate rites of passage in a time of pandemic — marrying, dying, graduating, giving birth, dating and celebrating our 40th or 65th or 100th birthdays online — there are new job descriptions for those who help us do those things differently. I will soon need a new kind of personal assistant: someone to help me re-dye all the clothes I’ve ruined using bleach-based disinfectants, plus a virtual dog whisperer for my pandemic puppies.