“We’re just in pure survival mode,” says longtime friend of UPROXX, Jason Quinn — chef and founder of Playground DTSA in Santa Ana, CA. “We don’t want to fire or furlough people so we’re just… we’re making it happen however we can.”

Those words embody the painful truth facing our nation. No one is having an easy go of it right now. We’re all just muddling through. Especially people in the service industry. Grocery store employees, gig economy workers, food servers, chefs — they’re risking their health every day to keep a sliver of our society functioning while doctors on the frontline grapple with COVID-19.

In many cases, economic survival depends on staying operational. For Quinn and many small business owners like him, remaining open in some form is the only way to keep employees afloat.

“We were a day from shuttering,” Quinn continues. “But my staff has to eat and our guests have to eat. In the end, closing felt like the easy way out; trying to unlock how to stay open, that felt like the impossible challenge.”

On March 13th, Playground DTSA was assessing the severity of the outbreak in real-time and upping their sanitization practices, as well as relaxing their hours. By March 16th, faced with a state-wide stay-at-home directive, Quinn started going live on Instagram daily — asking his customer-base for feedback about how best to serve them. A few days later, he was floating to-go and delivery models, and selling wagyu beef and fresh fish to home cooks.

Almost immediately, Playground had to temporarily suspend protein sales because the response was so rabid. That facet is back up and running now — with steak, pork, and fish available through a new webstore. The restaurant has also launched take home ramen kits.

Quinn isn’t the only chef throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Head chef and founder of Los Angeles’ Guerrilla Tacos, Wesley Avila, has put together what he’s calling an Emergency Taco Kit — which includes five pounds of roasted chicken and carne asada, a quart of red and green salsa, tortillas, onion, cilantro, rice, beans, 30 eggs, and probably the most coveted of all goods: four rolls of toilet paper.

But for every ripple of success, there’s a tsunami of restaurants collapsing altogether or having to furlough their whole teams. According to the Los Angeles Times, Bon Temps, a popular LA Art’s District restaurant headed by Chef Lincoln Carson, closed its doors indefinitely on the evening of March 16th — just a few days into trying to make it as a take-out only establishment. Los Feliz eatery Kismet also closed after its take-out service and take-home broth and labneh didn’t pull in enough funds to cover expenses. Another Kind Cafe in Laguna Beach, which was featured in a previous UPROXX piece as an example of a restaurant succeeding with takeout business during the quarantine, has since halted operations indefinitely. And famed chef Danny Myer’s hospitality group laid off 2,000 employees just a few days into the shutdown.

Deborah VanTrece, the executive chef of Atlanta Georgia’s Twisted Soul, broke down some of the real-world struggles restaurants are facing to Bon Appétit, “Our insurance is doing nothing. Our landlords have offered no rent abatement, even though most of the retailers in this complex have been forced to close completely. And that stimulus package sounds cute on paper, but in real-time it don’t mean shit.”

The restaurant industry is used to adapting to the changing tastes of the dining public, but there isn’t a single independent restaurant on earth equipped to survive a global pandemic without sustaining major losses. The business model just isn’t built for it. The margins are far too thin and the costs never really stop.

Right now, living to fight another day is the name of the game. For some chefs that means crowdfunding for their teams. For others, it means “pay what you can” menus. For Quinn, it means going back on his famous policy of making absolutely no tweaks or adjustments to his dishes.

“We spent eight years only doing things our way,” he says. “If you had asked me what it would take to have me change that, I would have said ‘the end of the world.’ Well, here you go. Now someone calls and our staff says, ‘No peanuts? Steak well done? We got you!’ For us, that’s a huge change in operations, but we have to monetize any phone call that comes our way. My staff needs to eat. So whether you want dry-aged beef or rolls of paper towels, it’s all about ‘what can we do for you?’!”

A few weeks ago, we shared a doctor’s description of his hospital in Italy after the coronavirus had hit them hard. His words were sobering and his account harrowing—but at that point such dire circumstances were still half a world away.

We knew it was only a matter of time before a surge in cases and hospitalizations started hitting the U.S., and now we’re getting a taste of what that looks like from the people on the front line.

Healthcare workers have sounded the alarm on what COVID-19 looks like in the ICU, on their woeful lack of PPE (personal protective equipment), and on the fear and frustration they feel when they see people not adhering to social distancing rules. If you need an incentive to stay at home as much as possible and to avoid interacting in person with others, these nurses’ pleas ought to do it.

A nurse in Southeast Michigan shared her thoughts on video after coming off a 13-hour shift at the hospital where she treated COVID-19 patients on ventilators in the ICU.

“I don’t know what the f*ck just happened the past 13 hours,” she began. “Honestly, you guys, I felt like I was working in a war zone.”

After describing what it’s like to deal with a medical crisis with limited supplies and overwhelmed team members, she said, “I’m already breaking, so for f*ck’s sake, please take this seriously.”

Another nurse wrote a post on Facebook about her night at work last week, where her boss was crying, nurses were breaking down, and they all went to the hospital chapel together to pray. “I ask myself how are we going to survive this?” she wrote. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Another Michigan ER nurse shared a video on Instagram describing one night in her hospital when they were running out of everything—even Tylenol.

Mary MacDonald took a shift at the Southfield campus of Ascension Providence Hospital and was blown away by what she experienced. “If you would have asked me ten-plus days ago if I thought that this was going to get as bad as it was, I would have told you no. I mean, you heard the rumors and you saw the trends, but until you see it first hand you just have no idea…it’s truly frightening.”

The bottom-line message from all of these front line workers is “STAY HOME.” This virus is highly contagious, and It’s not worth the risk to make an extra trip to the store or let your kid see a friend because they’re bored or lonely. Stay at home, even if your area hasn’t been hit hard yet. Stay at home, even if you think it’s safe because your hospitals are still in the calm before the storm.

For the sake of our healthcare workers’ health and well-being, as well as everyone else’s, we all need to do our part to slow the spread, flatten the curve, and keep our hospitals from getting overrun with patients. People’s lives literally depend on it, and we owe it to these medical workers to heed their warnings.

In 2011, Adam Mansbach created perhaps the first children’s book written specifically for parents, called “Go the F*ck to Sleep.” The hilarious story, which chronicles a parent’s desperate desire to get a child to sleep, was made even greater when it was read aloud by world-class f-bomb dropper Samuel L. Jackson.

Now Mansbach and Jackson have collaborated on a new take on the book for the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a poem called “Stay the F*ck at Home,” and it’s perfect. It begins:

The ‘rona is spreading. This sh*t is no joke. It’s no time to work or roam.

The way you can fight it is simple my friends—just stay the f*ck at home.

Now technically, I’m not a doctor. But motherf*ckers listen when I read a poem.

So here I am, Sam F*ckin’ Jackson, imploring you—keep your ass at home.

This is exactly the entertaining admonition we all need right now. Enjoy:

Samuel L. Jackson Says Stay the F**k at Home

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“Jumanji” actor and Tenacious D singer Jack Black has captured all of our hearts with his improvisational “Quarantine Dance” he debuted on TikTok.

The dance incorporates bird-like arm flapping, some touches of Russian ballet, and an impressive karate kick. The dance is an expression of pure, unbridled joy mixed with the rage that comes with day upon day of self-isolation.

The video is also memorable because of Black’s wardrobe. He looks like a Texan flirting with the idea of becoming a nudist.

Vimeo user Cut to Black took quick clips from 108 TV shows, movies, and viral dance videos to explain what everyone is going through right now.

Set to the tune of “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, the video mashes up clips from totally random sources, including “The Office,” “Ed Wood,” “South Park,” “Seinfeld,” “The Big Lebowski,” and “Rick and Morty.”

Whoever made this must have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and a lot of time on their hands.

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“I have no intention on leaving.”

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I had no idea, Shia baby.

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Writing things down in a planner can make big leaps in helping you stick to a schedule that works for you, even right now.

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Eleven states plus the District of Columbia are allowing a special open-enrollment period that will allow people to sign up for insurance. The Trump administration is declining to do so nationally.

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