For Victoria, confined to a house in the Paris region with her spouse and her baby, the confinement is going relatively calmly. Partially unemployed, she is taking advantage of this very special period to initiate a change in her mode of consumption.
During this period of confinement, Why doctor collected testimonials from French people about their experience. Today, Victoria, 31, sales manager in a luxury hotel, tells us about her daily life, confined to a house in the Paris region with her spouse and their baby.
“As of March 17, we made the decision to close the hotel. Everyone was put on partial unemployment. This closure was planned until the end of the month but now we are in the dark. We are waiting to know more. The first part of March, we still had events planned and reservations, but since mid-March, it’s been a free fall. We receive cancellations after cancellations and we have to deal with them. So I continue to work, to respond to customer requests.
Even though I’m supposed to be on partial unemployment, it’s inevitable. You have to keep a link with the customer and find deferral solutions to conserve cash as much as possible. As for events, we are fortunately starting to receive requests for June, July and September. They must also be treated in order to be able to bounce back effectively when we can reopen. This is essential. So I continue to work a little bit, even if my days are not very intense. On average, I have five emails a day to deal with. It’s quite simple to manage but, besides that, I continue to reflect with the teams on how to restart the activity after this crisis.
On the private side, my spouse and I have a 14-month-old baby who is still looked after by his childminder. When the government announcement fell, as there were no particular restrictions with regard to childcare, we decided to continue to leave him at home. We have full confidence in her, we are not basic anxious people, and it allows my husband to concentrate, because he is currently telecommuting full time. He works in the bank and has to manage a lot of big files remotely. It’s very complicated for him to concentrate in these conditions and with the little one at home it would have been even more difficult.
This paralysis leaves no one indifferent
We pick up our baby around 6 p.m., so earlier than before, which gives us more time to enjoy him. At first, we felt a little guilty about continuing to leave it to the childminder, but as things are going well, we continue. The nanny sends us photos of him every day: when he eats his meal or when he makes an effort to stand up, for example.
For the moment, I live things in a rather serene way. We are lucky to have a small house with a garden so it allows us to get some fresh air while staying at home. I do a bit of sport and basics, I enjoy being alone in peace, so this isolation doesn’t bother me that much. I also take advantage of this extra time to try to change my way of consuming. Regarding food, I try to buy only from local producers. I didn’t take the time to do that before. For cleaning, I threw away everything industrial and I try to use only natural products. However, I think that I am not the only one to start this change and to take more interest in ecology. With the usual pace of work, no one has time to sit down to think about all this. I am convinced that this paralysis leaves no one indifferent and that this world event will change everyone a little.
I hope to continue on this path when the confinement is over, but I don’t think that the return to ‘normal life’ will happen all of a sudden in two weeks. It will no doubt be slow and gradual.”
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