There is opportunity in every situation

[disneysteve]

I heard a report on the news this morning. They were interviewing a guy who was boarding up a business in the city. Turned out it wasn't his business. He runs a building maintenance company and was hired to board up this place. He said that his business has essentially been shut down for a couple of months due to COVID but since the rioting started his phone has been ringing non-stop. He's got 40 jobs lined up today and has done many others over the past 3 days. He said it's the busiest his company has ever been.

This really illustrates that even in the worst of times, there are ways to make a buck if you have the drive and know how. You can almost always find a way to put your skill sets to use even if it's doing something completely different than your normal job or career.

One of my techs at worked mentioned recently that she keeps getting job offers from places who now need people to do temperature screenings at their business. And they're paying pretty decently, like $20/hr or more. I told her to let me know if she sees any listings relatively close to us as my daughter might be interested. My daughter has zero medical training but the job consists solely of pointing an infrared thermometer at the foreheads of customers and employees to check their temp. She can handle that. So there's a job paying way over minimum wage that didn't even exist a couple of months ago.

If you're out of work, or just looking to boost your income, cast a wide net. There are all kinds of opportunities out there.

[Fishindude77]

Yep.
I have friends that own a small grocery / market / deli / garden center. Spring is normally a dead time for them and the grocery business barely makes any money. They don't start doing well until the garden center takes off in late Apil, early May or so but due to Covid situation this year they were able to do a better job of keeping their grocery stocked than the big chains in town and had bang up business for several traditionally slow months. Went right into their busy garden season going strong and will likely have one of their better years.

Also have a friend in the glass business. We've not had looting and rioting here so that's not been a factor, but they've been putting plastic screens alongside the counters and drive up windows at just about every place in town. Couldn't hardly keep up for a while.
You can also imagine the glazing business will be great in some of the heavily vandalized metro areas for a while too.

Our local lumber yard stationed people outdoors and set up a drive up business situation soon as Covid hit. You pull up, tell them what you want, somebody runs and gets it while another rings it up, they bring the bill out, you pay and are on your way. For stuff from the warehouse, you pulled up to the door, handed them your ticket and they loaded you up. They tell me their business didn't suffer at all.

Smaller, privately owned business can really shine in tough times because they can react quickly and change their business model to suite the environment.

[Singuy]

Unfortunately a lot of the opportunities are from scammers. My credit card was stolen after ordering some N95 masks off an online website. It ended up with 1500 dollars worth of N95 mask charges from random places. People always find a way to profit during a panic.

[disneysteve]

Unfortunately a lot of the opportunities are from scammers. My credit card was stolen after ordering some N95 masks off an online website. It ended up with 1500 dollars worth of N95 mask charges from random places. People always find a way to profit during a panic.

Yeah, there's always the opportunistic folks. I warned a few people not to order masks from just anyone. I bought mine on Amazon but I've gotten a ton of random emails from sellers I've never heard of before.

[sblatner]

We had a protest downtown last night. It was a peaceful protest but the flyer had been changed to invite people to a violent protest.

The town took it seriously and many, many stores boarded up the past couple days. I commented that I didn't think there was a piece of
plywood left in the area. Do you know that many times, they build a frame and then nail the plywood to the frame? I had never thought of
that before. Just thought everything got pounded in to the side of the building!

[rennigade]

Ive already talked about the opportunity of selling gym equipment/weights. It was on a much smaller scale but I was able to sell used equipment for 3x-4x what I paid for it. For lack of better words, it was a perfect storm of all gyms closed across the country and people looking to continue working out.

[~bs]

I heard a report on the news this morning. They were interviewing a guy who was boarding up a business in the city. Turned out it wasn't his business. He runs a building maintenance company and was hired to board up this place. He said that his business has essentially been shut down for a couple of months due to COVID but since the rioting started his phone has been ringing non-stop. He's got 40 jobs lined up today and has done many others over the past 3 days. He said it's the busiest his company has ever been.

This really illustrates that even in the worst of times, there are ways to make a buck if you have the drive and know how. You can almost always find a way to put your skill sets to use even if it's doing something completely different than your normal job or career.

One of my techs at worked mentioned recently that she keeps getting job offers from places who now need people to do temperature screenings at their business. And they're paying pretty decently, like $20/hr or more. I told her to let me know if she sees any listings relatively close to us as my daughter might be interested. My daughter has zero medical training but the job consists solely of pointing an infrared thermometer at the foreheads of customers and employees to check their temp. She can handle that. So there's a job paying way over minimum wage that didn't even exist a couple of months ago.

If you're out of work, or just looking to boost your income, cast a wide net. There are all kinds of opportunities out there.

I would just keep in mind that a customer facing job (versus an office job), puts her at far greater risk of catching the virus. Especially if the job involves getting close enough to scan with a temperature checker, then handling people who do have fever.

[disneysteve]

I would just keep in mind that a customer facing job (versus an office job), puts her at far greater risk of catching the virus. Especially if the job involves getting close enough to scan with a temperature checker, then handling people who do have fever.

Certainly true, though if both parties are masked (which is state law here) and the face to face time is only a few seconds, the transmission risk is minimal. And that was just one example of what could be out there.