Paula Murphy

Read more about the Covid-19 Oral History Project here on the Southern Foodways Alliance website. Find the full transcription of my interview with Paula Murphy of Patterson & Murphy Public Relations on the SFA archive.

TRANSCRIPT

Paula Murphy: In some ways, the first few weeks are an absolute and complete fog, because while the restaurants were maybe just—at this point in time, we’re talking about just finding out “Okay, we have to close, but we can do to-go.” There’s that part. The food bank’s now already going. They’re doing the quarantine boxes. Now we’re hearing other things, “This is what’s going on here, and people are going to need help.” And now that restaurants are closing and every other business is closing, that now means the people that the food bank serves is not just food-insecure people that they served prior to the pandemic, it now means guess what; you’re about to get an influx of people.

So for me, it was—and, again, what I said was some of my restaurants were not going to open for to-go. So everybody kind of closed—so at that moment, I lost some of my workload. Like, I wasn’t going to have to do messaging other than “This restaurant is closed.” That’s it. Others were “We’re closing dine-in, but we have to-go.” So there was continuing messaging there.

The messaging needs and the work for the food bank was absolutely nonstop, so it was like my work—how do I say it? My client load went down and my income went down, because I basically said to these restaurants, “I know you own four restaurants and only two are going to be open. In good conscience, I can’t have you pay me for those restaurants that aren’t open. I’m not charging you for that.” This other client, “Let’s go down to half my retainer fee.”

So, I mean, I was happy to do that because everybody was in a bad way, but now my pay had gone down to half and my workload went to more than double, and there was no 8:00-to-5:00 days. My days are really not 8:00 to 5:00 anyway. I’m an independent sole proprietor who every client has my cell phone number. They’re texting me photos all day long for social media because I asked them to. But there were no “work hours” any longer. It was just work, and it was stressful, and you were worried about people.

And then media would want you to meet them at the food bank to film, and I have autoimmune disease. I have a mother who has pretty severe lung disease. I care for her. I have to be careful what I do and where I go so I can take care of her and then worry about me and still do my job. So it was just a lot at once, and I’m not unique in that. I mean, the whole world was trying to figure out what was going on. “How am I going to function? What are we going to do?”