Around the world, night life is filled with social scenes that attract guests ready to enjoy festivities and celebration together. Concerts, movies, restaurants, and festivals are some of the most populated gathering places, usually in venues where population volume can cause close proximity between individuals. These settings, unthought of to be dangerous before the pandemic, attributed to the increased spread of the COVID-19 disease, and led to the lock-downs we experienced in 2020.

 Encouraged to stay home, concerts, festivals, restaurants, and movie theaters had to shut down, halt operations, and decrease contact with consumers who were ready to spend their money in their trusted establishments. Workers were told to stay home, businesses shut down, and the world seemingly came to a halt. 

Companies, initially shocked by this new obstacle, had to develop new ways to keep afloat. Encouraged to separate and quarantine, companies that wanted to stay in business had to be agile and market, as well as deliver, to consumers who could no longer come to their stores in the volumes previously experienced. Streaming service usage increased as those businesses certified their spots in our televisions, technologies like Zoom gained much recognition for keeping us connected during divided times, and delivery services were created and utilized to combat the pandemic’s effects in an attempt to keep business-consumer relationships throughout an unprecedented time. 

My account of the pandemic, when I worked at Topgolf in Atlanta,was highly invaluable in relation to experiencing a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. VUCA characterizes the uncertainty I felt as an employee in a restrained job market. 

Previously a popular entertainment space, Topgolf was emptied with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. For months, the devices that make a great entertainment establishment were rendered useless as the result of gathering being dangerous at the time. Ambiguously, the managers assured reopening without a date to mention and the volatility of job security had been revealed in this complex circumstance.

Although Topgolf shut down during this time, some businesses, those that did not call for heavily populated crowds, stayed open and only delivered, or were agile enough to simply space and pace guests in areas away from each other. Opening after some time with adherence to the CDCs rules, Topgolf’s previous gathering energy had been negatively affected by this VUCA happening. Overall, VUCA circumstances and the unsureness of our futures during these instances provide enough evidence to show that the agility of a company or organization will determine whether or not it will persevere or perish.