Hi, I’m a portable sneeze guard. You can call me Gary. Gary Sinisegard. How am I, an inanimate object, typing this, you ask?

… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay fine, if you absolutely can’t sleep without an answer, let the site administrator know, and maybe Cutplex will make the next blog post title be “How Our Sneeze Guards Are Able To Think Thoughts And Then Type Them And Then Post Them On The Internet,” and all will be revealed. Until then, kindly read on. Now, I want to talk to you today about the fact that I, and my many esteemed colleagues that are collectively known as “safety partitions” are helping to make the world a better place. First of all, let’s be clear, it isn’t the prettiest job. Some might even call it a dirty job, like that TV show with the guy from Deadliest Catch. Is that show still on? (Google, google, google, wiki, wiki, wiki)…uh, looks like they made a Season 9 that aired this year. After an eight-year hiatus. So yes, it is 100% back on. Full throttle. Almost like my acrylic brainwaves thinking about this brought it back into existence or something. I mean, this so called “new season” is just Mike Rowe and his crew in an RV, driving around and reminiscing about old episodes. Sounds like a dream I had once. What else are you going to watch though it is 2020 and I really ca-okay, this has to stop, this isn’t a blog post about a TV show. To return to the point at hand, we’re out there, doing the dirty work. Out there with the trash collectors, the sewer inspectors, the bug detectors, the lightning rod installers. We are out there, standing resolute in the face of the pandemic, taking all your airborne pathogens, right in the face. Literally. The face. Oh, you never thought about that did you? I’ve been sneezed on more times this week than you’ve brushed your teeth in your life. Your whole life. My brother Jeff is known in partition circles as the “Manhattan Cough King,” and his friend Denise holds the record for food/spit combinations in both parts per million and overall volume. Last night I was trying to sleep, and this restaurant patron laughed at the same time as she tried to take a bite of a BLT and when she sharply inhaled, a piece of sandwich went down her windpipe (totally a small piece, she was fine), which triggered her coughing reflex, spewing bacon bits everywhere (and I do not mean the salad kind); the only thing standing between her and the unwitting patrons at the next table over was, you guessed it: me. In such uncertain times, those folks were rightfully terrified when the woman began hacking up a lung right then and there while they sipped their post-meal espresso. The terror instantly turned to relief when they saw that I was there, with the spittle all over me, and not all over them. It’s a dirty job, but the look on their faces made it all worthwhile when they realized that they had a protector between themselves and the coughing, the particles, the pathogens, the gross: I was their hero. HERO. In a more sanitary aspect of how we make the world a better place, we help you all to see each other’s faces. One of the pillars of animal kingdom communication, as well as human behavioral psychology, is facial expression recognition. You humans have the most diverse facial features in the known world (I’m not implying that aliens are real I DIDN’T SAY THAT ALIENS EXIST YOU GUYS C’MON), and as an unfortunate byproduct of current necessity, you’re all having to wear masks around each other. No other mammal, avian, reptile, fish, or pareidolia has as much variance in facial characteristics. Half of your amazingly unique faces are obscured, and I’m guessing somewhere in the back of your subconsciousness’s there are little tiny carbonated baby bubbles in the synapses of your brains effervescing out of misunderstood inferences, missed implications, unseen smiles or those knowing half smiles, the smirks, the sarcastic straight faces, clenched teeth cringes…and all the many non-verbal cues you all concoct for each other.

We partitions understand that there needs to be something between you all right now, a barrier. It’s up to us, and we are up to the task. What if Jenny sneezes? We got you. What if Craig coughs, like, a lot? We got you. They say that the stork brings the babies, well, CutPlex brings the partitions. Partitions got that COVID Safety Style and we can’t stop, won’t stop. There’s a whole “hug a tree” slogan out there, and I’m all for that, but how about a “hug a partition” one too? “Hug a Partition, Why Not?” No, that’s not it. “Hug a Partition, It’s Already Weird Out There and Someone Seeing You Hug Some Plastic And Metal Thing Isn’t Going To Matter.” We’re getting there. It’s close, I can feel it. I’ll keep at it and let you know when I come up with the right one. Gary out.