Chapter Twenty: Written by Sandy Yang

Name: Sandy Yang
Age: 27
Ethnicity: Chinese American
Occupation: E-Commerce Operations Manager
Location: New York City

It-That-We-Will-Not-Name-19 dropped into 2020 like a tornado that we all never expected. I remember the majority of my friends started to work from home, but my role as a manager at Amazon required me to be physically available. My role was to ensure my team sent out food deliveries on time to the New York region. Orders increased, which meant my team headcount increased. We were adding hundreds and hundreds of people, going up in the thousands of direct reports. I remember staying at work for over 16 hours a day.

ITWWNN-19 hit me one day. I thought it was food poisoning from the shrimp I had earlier, but not my luck! 102 degree fever days and body aches came on. I was bedridden for 2 weeks, sleeping for 20 hours a day and having Pho for comfort food. Friends were so kind to drop off food or offer to send supplies. 2 weeks later, I lost my sense of taste and smell for three more weeks. I understood from that month of being home-ridden, I enjoy work a little too much.

After getting tested negative and antibody positive, I was SO HAPPY TO BE MOVING AGAIN. While being safe and wearing a mask, I wanted to get out and interact with the community (safely). There was a volunteer opportunity to send out food to the Chinatown community in need. It was so sweet to wake up on my days off to give out food to the sweet grandmas, grandpas, aunties and uncles who needed food. Luckily, knowing 5 languages and 3 dialects in Chinese helped with communicating with everyone. 2020 showed me how kind, strong and giving everyone can be when things get tough. Happy to have my smell back, and hopefully 2021 will be better!