Item

Preparing for the Public Again: Supplies Needed for Reopening Oklahoma Business in Phase 3 During COVID-19

Title (Dublin Core)

Preparing for the Public Again: Supplies Needed for Reopening Oklahoma Business in Phase 3 During COVID-19

Description (Dublin Core)

Starting June 1st, Oklahoma Governor Stitt's Phase 3 of Oklahoma's reopening began. The Richey Insurance Agency of Blanchard, Oklahoma has still not opened partly due to the company's employees being in the vulnerable categories. One of the other reasons is the difficulty in obtaining much needed cleaning supplies and the creation of new office protocols to maintain CDC suggested safety measures. Being a small independent business in a rural area, we are not given strict corporate or state regulations to enact. Instead, we are reliant on state and CDC information as well as our own ingenuity of how to best observe these suggestions.

Some of the items that we've recently obtained include: plexiglass barriers for two desks, new easily cleanable office chairs, automated hand sanitizer stations, 70% isopropyl alcohol for spray bottles, bulk bottle of hand sanitizer, brightly colored tape for marking distancing locations on the floor, emergency masks, emergency gloves, and document exchange trays. All of these items are newly purchased and weren't necessary before COVID-19. The barriers will help maintain sanitary work spaces and create social distancing gaps. The chairs are especially important because they are replacing the previous cloth chairs. These new chairs' entire surface is either vinyl or metal, making it easier to clean after every customer. The social distancing rules will be a maximum of four customers in the office. This is approximately one third of its usual heavy customer points normally.

All of these changes are based on a downward progression of COVID-19 cases to prevent our employees from unnecessary risk. Right now, three of the employees work from home and will continue until the office is officially open. Currently the new COVID-19 cases are on an upward trend in Oklahoma, with 225 new cases on Saturday June 12th, the single largest day since the beginning of the outbreak. With numbers like these, Phase 3 seems to be more of risk than we had planned. Much of the ramp up to open will be stalled until Oklahoma numbers show a significant decline.

Personal story submitted for the #ruralvoices collection. Contributed by Clinton P. Roberts, curatorial intern for Arizona State University, HST 580.
#ruralvoices, #rural, #reopening, #Oklahoma, #office, #business, #socialdistancing, #disinfect, #cleaning

Date (Dublin Core)

June 14, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Clinton P. Roberts

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Clinton P. Roberts

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST580

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

photograph
text

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Business & Industry
English Social Distance

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

rural
reopening
Oklahoma
disinfect
office

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

#ruralvoices
cleaning
disinfect
social distancing
business
office
reopening
rural

Collection (Dublin Core)

Rural Voices

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

HST 580 Professional Experience/Archives course

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

06/14/2020

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

06/19/2020
11/13/2020
08/02/2022
10/11/2024

Item sets

Covid 19
Arizona State University

This item was submitted on June 14, 2020 by Clinton P. Roberts using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

New Tags

I recognize that my tagging suggestions may be rejected by site curators. I agree with terms of use and I accept to free my contribution under the licence CC BY-SA.