M

y Manhattanite wife and I have been house-poor since we bought a vacation home in the Hamptons in 2016.  We wanted to buy in the lively Southampton Village center but expensive village prices forced us out to Water Mill, a hamlet known for large private lots separated by farmland and woods.  As the corona crisis approached in late February, our profligate privacy purchase became a social distancing sanctuary for me, my wife and our two young kids.

Our Hamptons Hideout. Photo by Corcoran Real Estate

Leveraging my Agile Scrum project management expertise, I ran a two-week Scrum sprint with the goal of isolating our family in both safety and comfort.  I wrote down each Scrum story “ToDo” item on a Post-it note and stuck them all to our radiator.  Only I got the information radiator joke but it helped boost my spirits in a stressful time.

I acted as family product owner and wrote and prioritized story Post-its.  I grouped the stories into thematic Scrum epics.  I made an epic to order protective equipment such as masks, medicine, and Purell and another to stockpile paper towels and toilet paper.  I made an epic to order long shelf-life food such as Ramen, dried fruit, and cereal as well as protein bars, cookies, and shakes and another epic to address things that require human contact, e.g., going to the barber and the dentist.  Finally, I made epics to prepare two home offices and a home gym.  

My son at Choppin Charlie’s Barber Shop in Sag Harbor, NY

Every morning, my family team met for a fifteen-minute Scrum standup.  Each person reviewed what we accomplished since yesterday, e.g., I packed kids clothes for summer, what we would do today, and what blockers we faced, e.g., Amazon is out of Purell.  

By Saturday March 08, New York State had 105 reported corona cases¹ of which only one was in Southampton.²  So when my employer announced work from home plans on Thursday, March 12  we decided to evacuate that night.  Before leaving, I tried to order fresh food to the Hamptons but was too late–all delivery time slots were sold out.

Evacuating, my family skipped the elevator and carried bags fourteen flights downstairs. The garage attendant handed me our car key through a crack in his office door.  I wiped down the key and the steering wheel and drove out of the Big Apple feeling one thousand times safer leaving Manhattan’s population of 1.6 million for Water Mill’s 1,600.³

The Manhattan apartment we evacuated

On Friday, March 13, I reviewed our sprint progress and priorities calculating that our supplies would last a short month of the long-term crisis.  Moreover, we would suffer serial cereal dinners for a month.  So I put on my mask and nitrile gloves and went for another shopping iteration to perfect our sprint.

I returned home with swordfish, hamburgers, and pineapples for grilling.  The next day I went back for more but found the store stripped bare.  There was no chicken, no beef, and no eggs.  No napkins and no coffee nowhere.  The only bread was rye so I took the last three loaves telling myself that rye isn’t that bad.  

Our survival stockpile met our Definition of Done

There was plenty of cake though so I picked one up for my birthday coming on Sunday.  The frozen shrimp freezer remained untouched.  Apparently, prawns are not comfort food.  And not enough people like sardines to sell them out despite their long shelf life and super food status.

I shopped every aisle methodically scavenging.  Shoppers stayed six feet apart and if anyone got closer, they turned their heads and politely said, “excuse me” for entering my space.  

After shopping on that Saturday, March 14, we went birding at Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge.  We thought a walk through the forest to the beach would be a safe enjoyable exercise.  Others had the same idea.  Normally there are fifteen cars there on a weekend but we found the fifty-car lot overflowing out to the street.

 Several birders offered my kids sunflower seeds to feed the birds out of their palms.   I said, “Thank you, we have our own seeds and do love to feed the chickadees, just avoiding avian corona flu today.”  Later, I read ominous news that a Bronx Zoo tiger got coronavirus.