It’s Impossible

Here’s how I think it could happen.

Covid-free Arby employees show up for work. The doors to the restaurant are locked from the inside and no customers enter. Only the drive-thru window is open.

The Covid-free employees go about their jobs, cooking and handing out orders through the window. The manager is a hard ass and he’s making sure everyone is keeping their hands clean and wearing gloves. But at some point a customer who is not aware that he is infected pulls up to the window and hands his debit card in.

The employee manning the drive-thru window takes the card, runs it through the machine, puts the card down on the counter, presses some buttons on the machine, and then hands the card back out to the customer. The employee hands the customer his order and the customer drives away.

From there, the virus spreads to every employee in the restaurant, including whoever put my roast beef & cheddar and turkey sandwiches together, and whoever filled my drink and packed my order into the bag. Then DoorDasher Steven B. arrives in his racecar and picks up my order. Now Steven B. has the virus too, and it’s in his car.

Steven B. gets to my house in about ten minutes. He leaves the order on my porch, snaps a picture, jumps in his racecar, sends the picture and drives off.

Here is my recollection of what happened after that.

My phone has an extra loud chime so I’m sure to hear it. I picked up my phone and saw the picture from Steven B. My first thought was the dogs that I sometimes see roaming the neighborhood and I didn’t want them to get my supper. I quickly went to the door and brought my order in. I took the order into the kitchen and put it on the counter.

I was impressed with how quickly Steven B. delivered my food. There are many times when I order through DoorDash and it takes them more than 45 minutes to get my order to me. Steven B. had me my order in under twenty minutes. I decided to type a reply to him and let him know how fast he was.

I type slow on my phone because my vision is terrible and my fingers are big. While typing, I came to realize that I’m repeatedly moving my hand from my phone to my face, mainly to rub my palm over my eye, because my eyes tend to irritate me and I have a habit of touching my face. It occurred to me that I had just handled this stuff from Arby’s and I had not washed my hands yet.

I sent my message, and then I got everything out of the bag and threw the bag in the garbage. Then I washed my hands. I came back to transfer my roast beef sandwich from the cardboard container it came in to a plate from my cupboard. But, in order to do that, I needed to touch the cardboard container. So, if Covid-19 was on the cardboard container, then it got on my sandwich, which then ended up on the plate.

I wasn’t going to wipe down my sandwich and plate with Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. I did, however, wipe down the outside of the cup. The straw was in a wrapper, but I didn’t wash my hands after taking the wrapper off the straw and inserting it in the cup. Besides, I’m not sure I could have taken the wrapper off the straw without touching the straw at the same time, and I wasn’t going to use Clorox wipes on the straw before putting it in my cup.

I ate my sandwich and drank my Coke, and used my phone. At some point, I realized that I never wiped down my phone after sending Steven B. that text. 😟