Exactly.
I love equivalency. :rolleyes:
I wish to explain something a bit further, this day upon which I learned that the other store owned by my company in this county just had its entire customer service department and several cashiers put into quarantine, and another the next county over has not one but several newly diagnosed and confirmed covid-19 cases:
The medical people understood, from the very start of their careers, that in the event of something of this sort they would be frontline “troops”. It comes with the profession.
First responders like police, fire, and EMTs, also know that risks comes with their jobs.
People who are volunteering places like food pantries these days CHOOSE to take that risk, and they are free to leave those positions at any time without any penalty.
Those of us in grocery stores, however, did NOT volunteer. We did NOT choose. This whole thing blew up and we were suddenly told our jobs were essential and we had to run these risks. We can’t quit - well, we can, but at a steep penalty. We lose our jobs, when there are no other jobs without these risks to take. We lose our health insurance. And if we quit voluntarily we do not get unemployment. Not the base rate. Not the extra $600/month.
Our choices are either keep working and run the risk of getting sick or even dead, or be homeless, penniless, and starving.
Now, maybe I would have volunteered anyway - but we’ll never know. ALL the people you see in grocery stores were DRAFTED. We did not volunteer for this and unlike post-lockdown volunteers we aren’t allowed to walk away without being penalized. We didn’t have a choice, we still don’t have a choice.
So yes, we get pissed off. We get stressed. We get angry. Fuck anyone who doesn’t understand why, or insists we be forced to smile and be calm so THEY aren’t made uncomfortable.
Brilliant post on your part, as usual. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Huh, how about that? Yep, that’s me all right; I stand corrected.
At this point I’m not sure how much longer we can keep the store open - we’re getting more and more attrition. I am getting fucking tired of people bitching “why can’t you open more cash registers?” Because we do not have enough healthy staff left to do so.
We’re getting whittle down to a skeleton crew.
Seriously, what the fuck, do people think we’re magically immune? Do they think we have a grocery clerk dispensing machine in the back?
And let anyone think it’s just me whining: here is a link
Not that I don’t respect grocery/retail workers for being on the firing line so to speak, but if you’re going to wear masks, wear them in a way that protects you and your customers.
Unless you’ve figured out a way to respire only through your neck.*
*yes, two out of three clerks I saw today had their masks resting down below their chins. I know what a pain in the ass it is to breathe through masks for long periods of time, but it’s not a good look.
The customers are even worse.
Honest to god I think maybe going to strictly curbside pickup would be the only way to really reduce risk but there’s no way to make the logistics work. The current delivery/curbside system is completely overloaded.
So… we’re just cannon fodder. Keep replacing us as we fall over all so people can continue to get their groceries.
To be fair, at many stores (not saying yours) in normal times with plenty of staff, there’d often not be enough check lines open, so I think some of this is reflex thinking as if times were still normal. Obviously they’re not, and thanks for being on the front lines.
Nevermind the check lines… if this pace keeps up the store will be close by end the of the month because we simply will not have enough healthy staff to open it up every morning. Despite all the new hires.
Experts say it may be time for grocery stores to ban customers from coming inside because of Covid-19:
That would only work if they added more pickup points to the parking lot, because 6 an hour is not going to be enough in most areas. I did my first pickup on Saturday, and I had to reserve the slot 2 weeks beforehand. I made sure to give the shopper a large-ish tip, too. I hope it was enough.
Has your store put in the self-checkout stations? Seems like a good way to minimize contact between customers and staff.
The process needs to be greatly simplified. Much less variety. Orders packing and pickup need to go quickly. Stores can be converted to warehouses.
No substitutions. No add-ons. Pay online. No returns unless an item is damaged.
To reiterate, I think we’re all glad people such as yourself are doing this. I know you’d probably rather not be in this situation of feeling as though you’ve got little choice.
Indeed, the modern industrialized food production and distribution process, which evolved over decades, has never experienced this kind of disruption. We’re still trying to see how this is impacting logistics, but it’s clearly being strained. We’re losing front-line supermarket employees, industrial production facility employees, distribution truck drivers. Not good.
Over the last few weeks, I have observed how a few different supermarkets in my district handle their online orders. The setup is quite impressive and is essentially the same at all of the stores.
The customer orders through the store’s website or its dedicated “mini program” on WeChat or Alipay or a delivery app such as Meitou. I did notice a coupel of logos I have not seen before, so my guess is those are other social media services popular enough in China for the stores to make it worth their wile to have a mini program with those services or they’re delivery services’ dedicated apps.
The shoppers go to the store shopper’s office to get their order sent to the store-provided phone with the shopper app on it, and they use one of those magnetic keys to release a bag, sometimes more than one, and go through the store picking up the stuff the customer ordered. The cool part about this is the shopper app provides a shopping path on a floor plan of the store for the shopper and has the desired items highlighted at the appropriate points on the path, with the most perishable items (refrigerator and frozen) last.
If any item is not available as specified by the customer, the shopper sends a message to their supervisor who then contacts the customer, sometimes even calling the customer instead of just sending a message. The customer then tells the supervisor to nix the item or substitute it and the supervisor relays that via message to the shopper.
The shopper gets all the stuff on the final order, seals the bag and hangs it on a trolley chain system which hangs off the ceiling.
The trolley chain carries the bag(s) to the delivery section where a delivery person grabs all of the assigned bags (the bags have prominent serial numbers), hops on his scooter or motorcycle and he’s off to the gate of the customers’ communities as shown on the delivery person app on their phone.
This last part I’ve observed at my community. The delivery person arrives at the community gate and calls the customer to pick up their order. They wait for the customer, so apparently there is no “leave the bag at the gate” policy. There is no delivering the order inside the community as all communities in the city, maybe even the country, are strictly residents only now thanks to the pandemic.
At some point in this whole shebang, the purchase is charged against the customer’s payment app.
I’m unclear as to how they deal with the bags. It looks like some people have a spare bag to give the delivery person, so I’m guessing that setting up the account might include getting a bag. Or you just return the bag when your next order arrives.
All of this, except for the restricted access, has already been in place long before the pandemic began. It’s just become incredibly popular.
I observed this stuff while I was doing my own shopping at these supermarkets. I have not used any of the delivery services myself yet, but assuming they’re set up for payment like DiDi is, there’s likely a choice to toss a tip to the shopper and/or the delivery person. For in person pickups, I’ve only seen those for really large orders, those which would require an automobile to deliver otherwise.
Not as much as you think, since they need a clerk to monitor those stations and help people who get stuck. My wife works at a grocery store and she says it’s* even harder* to maintain social distancing at the self checkout.
They cant enforce pay online. Many seniors still write checks. Other have to pay by cash, they dont have a banking account.
Most places around here are doing no returns unless defective. In other words, no returns will be re-stocked.
I’d wondered about that. Personally, I avoid self-checkout just because I prefer human interaction and the fact that I often buy booze and have to get someone to come over to check me out anyway kinda defeats the purpose. But every time I’ve used self-checkout at peak times there’s invariably someone that slows the system down, either not knowing how to use the interface or buying truck-loads of shit and holding everyone up behind them.
Yes, we’ve had self-check out for years.
But you still need a human being to ride herd on the machines because they are far from perfect.
There is no way to ALL the checkout to self-serve, though - never mind the cost, the amount of time it would require to hire the contractors, run the required wiring, rip out the old style lanes, install the new check-outs… MAYBE they could get it done by winter? Next year?
We need to keep the grocery stores running NOW.
We are actually prohibited from allowing returns whatsoever at this point. Absolutely no returns of anything, indefinitely.