I am going to work so that YOU can get your toilet paper, fancy coffee, fresh oranges, and whatever the fuck else you want and I’m exposed to not only YOU but all of your neighbors but random strangers from wherever. A non-zero number of those people are shedding this fucking virus and it is making my fellow grocery drones SICK and some of them have even DIED.
Just fuck us, right? Because you don’t consider us important, or worthy. You gotta have that toilet paper and if someone socially beneath you fucking DIES for that just too goddamned bad for them, they should have picked rich parents.
You don’t deserve to be allowed to go to a grocery store, or order groceries. Stay in your fucking shithole cesspit of a home until you run the fuck out of everything. You can wipe your ass with your hand after you shit and just fucking starve after you run out of food. Because that’s what would happen if everyone at the grocery store either got too sick to work or just fucking died of this shit. But even the undeserving get to shop for groceries, just like the undeserving get medical care, too. We’ll still let you shop for your shit even as you sneer at us and insist we be needlessly exposed to a virus that could kill us.
Go to hell you piece of shit. You’re a contemptible piece of slime for saying I don’t deserve to have some protection while working a job with real hazards.
I don’t do ‘me too’ posts often, but count me in on this one. The cashiers/stockers/etc. at my local grocery are working extremely hard under especially trying and dangerous circumstances for the sake of all of us who shop there. And remaining amazingly polite and even-tempered at the same time.
Incidentally, my pharmacy is also located in that grocery store. I wonder how many days, maybe a week?, I would remain alive and out of the hospital if they weren’t there to supply me with my drugs?
They deserve protection every bit as much as the medical workers.
I am depending on grocery workers, and truck drivers, and farmers, and delivery folks, and pharmacy works, and the gas stations, and on and on. If they do down, we are all so, so, so fucked. I am trying very hard to help those people when and how I can, and putting serious thought into something bigger, like a GoFundMe or even a foundation to help essential workers now, and ultimately work on the political side too - to ensure living wages, paid sick leave and time off, and healthcare.
Back to the pitting - These people are risking their lives and deserve as much protection as we can give them. Luci is being an entitled ass.
ETA: a sincere thank you from me, Broomstick. Please take care when and how you can.
Right on. And while we’re at it, why isn’t everyone wearing some kind of facial cover? They do realize it’s for the protection of others, right? I’m not talking about medical grade masks that need to go to the workers in the world; even a scarf that you can wear Frito Bandito stylel will keep your damn spittle from flying onto others. Jeez.
My daughter works frontline at Trader Joe’s–anyone who thinks she doesn’t deserve virus protection can fuck off with a quickness and I’ll throw in a steel toed cunt punt for free. Assholes.
I concur with the pitting. I’ve stayed out of all stores of any kind for at least the past month. My neighbor, on the other hand, goes nearly every day, which I find to be a fairly selfish thing to do and an unnecessary risk to cashiers and everyone else he goes near. We have groceries delivered, and I’m sure that the delivery people are exposed, though hopefully not as much as the in-store employees. We give them all the space they need, and thank them from a goodly distance, along with a 20% tip.
We should be learning a lesson from all this. Who are the essential people in our society, the ones who absolutely have to go to work or everything breaks down? It turns out that this includes grocery store workers, fast food workers, waste collectors, delivery people, not just people with societal prestige like doctors. I hope this results in a re-evaluation of minimum wages and protections and rights to sick leave and other benefits.
How many of us can say that society won’t work if we don’t show up at our workplace and risk deadly infection?
And how many high status people are willing to risk their lives to keep helping the world work? Granted, the motivation for many is “I would like to continue to eat and have a roof over my head” but nonetheless, the esprit de corps among essential workers on the front lines is pretty goddamned impressive.
Imagine not being able to stop at the grocery store for a month or so, or more. Let it sink in. Life suddenly becomes a thousand times shittier. Grocery store employees deserve every protecion and courtesy we can give them. I don’t enjoy sharing the breathing space I have with the few coworkers I have. I would certainly not want to be in a store all day with every Tom, Dick, Harry and their mothers all threatening my air. Thank you grocery store employees for allowing me some aspect of convenience in this most fucked up time. I’ll be wearing an N95 mask next time I go there. A few months ago that thought would have seemed crazy, but I’ll bet the grocery store employees appreciate the gesture.
I damn straight endorse this Pitting. Grocery store workers, and the workers at any other retail establishment that’s still open, fully deserve whatever protection we can give them against the coronavirus.
Plus hazard pay, dammit: the notion that they should keep on having to work for the dinky wages that retail workers normally get is even more abhorrent than usual under the current circumstances.
And I’m pissed as hell at our Democratic House leadership, because they’ve decided to extend their paid vacation until May rather than try to do anything about this, because, as Hoyer says at the link, there’s no emergency.
Fully endorse this pitting, I’m afraid. luci is usually bang on the mark. This time he missed the mark so badly that it’s like his shot curved around and hit him square in the back.
Food is an essential service. Who woulda thunk we have to say that, here on the Dope? The numerous people working retail are keeping us alive just as much as the medical professions.
Broomstick and her colleagues deserve our thanks and praise.
I’m an “essential” worker. I have to go into work to support people. I’m not interacting with a lot of people so I’m not at risk like many other essential workers (including needed store workers who deserve all our thanks) but I don’t have the luxury of doing all I need at home. (I work IT for state government so I have to go in and fix things, and I’m also the person making sure my coworkers can work from home successfully.)
I chatted very briefly with another person who was also essential, and he joked that the term should be “expendable”. For some workers that might not be that much of a joke.
I do wear a mask though, if I am interacting with people. It’s a cloth mask for motorcyclists, but it’s better than nothing, covers my mouth and nose fully, and it’s the best I could get.
This society – and many, maybe all others – tends to pay the least, both in money and in respect, to the people doing the jobs that are most essential.
