Tom’s Tidbits- We are OPEN during this crisis.

Tom’s Tidbits- We are OPEN during this Crisis

Greetings,

Tom Dwyer Automotive Services is open to serve you during this unprecedented Coronavirus crisis.

There’s really nothing else more important to get across right now… Gas stations and auto repair shops are ‘essential businesses’ under the Oregon shutdown order because even a mostly-shuttered economy needs safe and reliable transportation. As long as it makes sense for the health and safety of our clients, staff, and community we will stay open to care for your vehicles. We are operating on slightly reduced hours (9a-6p M-F, 10a-1p Sat) and have ample non-contact options for service. You can click here for all the specific steps we’re taking to protect our clients and staff, and we’ll update our policies constantly as things change, but for now WE ARE OPEN.

That’s both a burden and a privilege. All our staff understand the critical need to slow the spread of the Coronavirus but we know ‘staying home’ and ‘staying working’ are both necessary. As an essential business we’re sharing the burden between our employees. Some have chosen to be temporarily laid off while others are working at vastly reduced hours in a meticulously semi-sterile shop. Though it’s nothing compared to the sacrifices being made by the thousands of CRITICALLY essential people in the medical field, I feel proud that our team is braving a real risk to keep our company together and bring safety and value to our clients. I understand and appreciate that our clients are braving that same risk to deal with us, or any company! We’d ALL rather be home with our families during this worrisome time. Yet I also realize the privilege of working at all when so many people have lost their jobs, when so many businesses are closing, when the economic foundation of our entire global society is threatened. I, along with everyone else, at every level, am trying to balance my obligations to family, business, and community. I hope I’m making the right choices. It’s not business as usual, but for now it’s business, and we’ll keep you posted as things change. Thank you.

The Tom Dwyer team gets together (at proper social distancing!) to make some big decisions.

We WILL get through this… we actually have no choice about it… but everything will be different afterward. The Coronavirus is shining a spotlight on fundamental faults in our system because it’s easy to understand and hard to ignore. It’s not the desperate children of a rigged economic system being sent to die overseas to support that same system; that’s happening ‘over there’ and it’s mostly those brown heathens dying anyway. It’s not the systematic transfer of our country’s wealth into the pockets of fraudulent billionaires; that’s easily finessed before it draws the attention of a confused public. No, Coronavirus can’t be lied away or pretended into irrelevancy. It WILL kill people, lots of people, and those corpses will be right here at home on the evening news. Along with the responses of our government.

Though FOX will tell you differently, no rational person blames Trump for the virus. However, his response has ranged from the cringeworthy to criminal and only the irrational absolve him of direct responsibility for his incompetence. But look past him to the systemic weaknesses on display. How will a plundered healthcare system find the resources to respond to a crisis of this magnitude? How will a job-based insurance system respond? How many medical bankruptcies will we see? How can our economy function again? How will the massive loss be spread between the rich, middle class, and poor? How will our economy be revived, and can it be made stable going forward? If this is our response to a direct threat like a virus, is humanity even capable of responding to a diffuse threat like Climate Change? How do we continue democracy if elections are too perilous to hold, or the vote isn’t held as important? How should we deal with people who profit, either excessively or fraudulently, from this or other crises?

The Coronavirus crisis will show both the best and worst in humanity. We’re all hunkered down and the daily noise of life has been abruptly and unequivocally put on hold. But this isolation is giving us all the unexpected opportunity to decide what matters at home and outside. Every choice we make, as individuals and as groups, will directly impact the way we and our children live both now and in the future we build. The attitude that will bring us through healthier, happier, and stronger is not ‘protect myself’, but ‘how can I help’. But that’s the way things ALWAYS are, the ways they always have been… our choices determine our future and helping makes us stronger. I’ll leave wishing the Coronavirus away to other, less reality-based minds. Instead, I’d hope that this period of isolation is more than just useless time in a deep freeze. I hope it can be a time in a cocoon… a time for all of us to reconsider, reevaluate, and burst out ready to attack challenges old and new with a new energy.

But in the meantime, we’re here for you.

Make a great day,

signature