We were never considered essential in my state,
I sold insurance, so was classified as ‘essential’ for some reason, lol.
I worked for an electric company in IT so while I was considered essential, I was also fully remote.
I work(ed) in a gas station convenience store. It seems that selling lottery, booze, and tobacco was “essential.” I often wondered how many of the old people, who came in daily for their loyttery fix, died.
One skinny weird lady, she squeezes cigarettes, did get Covid and told me she thought she wss going to die. Was she vaccinated? Why no, no she wasn’t.
When an Air Force aircraft had a failure, or crashed, the electronic parts came to me for analysis. So I was considered “essential.”
I was an “essential worker”, but I thought it was a bit scandalous. During the pandemic I was working as a charter pilot, and it was a very strange time to be traveling for a living. Now I would certainly consider airline pilots essential, but apart from some medevac operations I don’t see why basic charter (aka, flying rich people around in bizjets) was considered essential. But it did keep me employed.
Yes. I was working nights as a RA in a dorm at a Job Corps center and one day in March they went into a panic and sent all the students home or just somewhere else to stay, except for 3 foreign students who they kept, against instructions, but they had no where to go and weren’t capable of even being homeless on the street. To return them home they would have had to dump them somewhere in the Central African Republic, where they had escaped from.
So they kept the dorm open. Normal number of kids was about 150 in this dorm and I now I had 3. Three to watch every night in an empty building. 3 of the quietest guys you have ever met who could barely speak english. Other than checking on them every couple hours none of my normal duties applied.
So for about a year and half, I don’t even remember how long this event went on, I went to work, did nothing, I mean nothing, and got paid for it. no co-workers at all until the day person came in. Watched a lot of movies, YouTube, read books, and was generally bored out of my mind. Being in a coma would have been more exciting.
But I got paid! Didn’t miss a day.
My fellow lawyers and I were essential in our office, but given the size of the office, not everyone had to be in everyday. Someone had to check the mail, take personal service of documents, look at faxes (please, don’t go there 
), so it would be just two or three of us on the entire floor for two weeks. We took it in turns, being in office for two weeks, out of office for six weeks, etc.
Those times, I used to explain to friends that I was the skeleton in the skeleton staff.
We adapted pretty quickly to working from home. I had no idea about zoom or webex, but learnt quickly. That allowed me to keep in touch with clients and other lawyers. Plus most of my research and drafting is done online, and I already had a VPN connection, so it wasn’t hard to work from home.
I agreed with the comment up-thread about how quiet it was. We also saw a lot more wild animals on our streets. I live next to a large urban park, and the critters gradually discovered that there were no cars to worry about, and not many people. I saw deer, rabbits, geese, ducks, lots of squirrels, all quietly going about their business on what used to be busy streets.
It was a glorious commute. I do miss that.
I work as an engineer for a regional water and sewer utility. I was declared essential and my employer issued a letter for us to carry in case there were any lockdowns.
With that said, I could do most of my job remotely (basically all of my typical office work). I did have to go out in the field to inspect construction projects which did not stop. (And which were much more productive due to the lack of traffic control needed.)
They allowed us to work remotely for about two months, then made us all return to the office. Fortunately I had a private office at the time, so I mostly stayed in my office and wore a mask in the common areas.
Incidentally, I managed to avoid catching Covid for over two years—after I had received at least four shots—so it was pretty mild when I did get it.
I wondered if my job might have been considered essential. Didn’t matter, as it proved to be trivial for us (actuaries at a large insurance company) to work 100% remotely. The company helped employees with bad Internet and stuff, but in my case, they just gave me permission to use the home office I’d already built out for working from home once a week.