I’m a senior engineer for a company that makes AC compressors for automobiles. The big 3 are our main customers. When they shut down our orders came to an abrupt halt. Although we were deemed essential, we had no orders to fill. Fortunately, I work for an amazing company. They decided to initially pay all 1000 employees’ salaries. Once the extra money from the federal government was approved for unemployment they decided to only pay the salaries for the exempt employees.
I was told to work from home, but as an engineer my job has a lot of hands on activity. At first I had plenty of paperwork and document updating I could work on. But after about 4 weeks my responsibilities were diminishing. We were shut down from mid March to mid June. Sometime in April I had little to no work to do, but I was still being paid my full salary, full benefits, and 401k match. During this time I was able to spend extra time with my 3 year, 5 year old, and my wife who’s in her last semester of grad school. We have been on 1 income for 5 years now and my income is less than $150,000 so we received the full $3400 in stimulus money from the government. I was saving gas money due to not going to work, I received extra money from the government, and I was still getting paid while not working. My family was happier and our financial situation was better. Although we had to adapt like everyone else I would say it was a very positive summer, in regards to our family situation only. We were responsible when it came to social distancing, mask wearing, and not attending any family or friend events. We took every step we were told to take in regards to preventing the spread of COVID-19. My employer showed me a great deal of respect during these tough times, the least I could do is follow the simple orders that were requested of me.