COVID-19 Pandemic: Saudi Students & Employees Share Their Lifestyle Changes

An office worker at a retail company, Noura Mohammad said that she was proud of her company for immediately doing the right thing for their employees: “From the moment the coronavirus appeared in the Gulf, they had our backs. We were told to stay home unless it was absolutely necessary to come into the office, and we quickly established a system of (working remotely). Management brought in hand sanitizer and facemasks, and sent out emails with detailed and thorough instructions about what to do, who to contact if we were worried, and details of the symptoms, so we all knew what we were facing.”

Similar precautionary measures have been taken at a law firm where Salma Alsaleh works. The lawyer said: “Our fingerprint machine was removed even before that was required by the government. My manager personally came to each of us with a care package containing masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer, and let us know that they were currently working on a system through which we could work from home. Some of the interns are already doing so,”

Hassan Al-Haddad, who works for a small Saudi startup with less than 50 employees, is on indefinite leave without pay. “As bad as I feel for myself, I feel worse for our CEO. He was obviously devastated when he gave us the news. He has been working on this venture for two years now, and this virus killed all his hard work in just a couple of months,” he said.

“People are dying, new cases are appearing all the time, and they still expect us to come in every day like nothing is wrong. It needs to be mandatory for all companies that people should work from home. What if we become the next Italy? It just feels like they don’t care about our safety,” said Khadija Sulayman, who works for a large international company.

Graphic design student, Bayan Sayf, at a private university in Jeddah, shared her learning experience: “As a graphic design student in my freshmen year, our educational experience is more than theoretical lessons. We do a lot of manual work that needs direct one-to-one guidance from our professors; this situation is making it impossible. Major assignments were dropped because of this condition, which will have an impact on my educational attainment. We are missing many things that we actually paid for.”

“I like distance learning, it saves two hours of my time spent daily in transportation, it allows me to repeat the lecture and even ignore the instructors who don’t know how to teach, moreover, I can attend lectures in my pajamas while eating or having a cup of coffee,” tweeted Zainab Al-Noori.