My job is considered “essential” but they are letting me work at home and take extra train for a couple weeks, just to reduce the chances. Nice.
Broomstick and others, you are keeping this country from degenerating into some kind of Mad Max-like survival of the most brutal hellscape. Our leaders aren’t doing this, you are.
Thank you.
Fuck those quoted comments. Fuck them with Trump’s penis.
I agree with this pitting. And even if you don’t think people like my brother, who is a grocery store assistant manager and working his ass of to ensure people in the area get to eat, “deserve” masks, why doesn’t elucidator realize that masks on grocery store employees helps the precious doctors and nurses?
I mean, Jesus, think about how many people have contact with employees at grocery stores, especially now when grocery stores are one of the few places people are going these days. If fewer grocery store employees get sick, and if fewer sick grocery store employees* make fewer customers sick*, then the doctors and nurses have fewer people to look after!
Yes, grocery store workers deserve masks. But the problem is, health care workers deserve them, too. And we still don’t have enough masks for everyone who deserves them. And so we’re forced to decide who doesn’t get a mask even though they deserve it.
Can you really argue that health care workers should have to do without masks to supply the grocery store workers?
I think luci may have become too caught up in the dated message that absolutely all masks must be saved for the front-line medical workers because they don’t have nearly enough PPEs. That older message impressed upon us that you’d better not be wearing a mask unless you work in a hospital or other medical treatment center because you’d be forcing a medical worker to go without.
Things have changed since then and luci was behind the curve. To me it looks like his heart was in the right place–he was arguing for the medical workers. Sometimes we Dopers find ourselves stuck defending a position that we never would want to be in and yet we put ourselves there.
Literally nobody is arguing this. Grocery workers do not have nor do they need the N95 masks that are in direly short supply for healthcare workers. Healthcare workers do not need nor use the mainly cloth and often home made masks the grocery store workers wear. And I argue that NOBODY should have to be without proper PPE in the middle of a fucking pandemic regardless of where they work or how often they interact with the public. Because THERE SHOULD BE A STOCKPILE OF NECESSARY EQUIPMENT AROUND TO BE ABLE TO COVER A FUCKING PANDEMIC BUT THERE ISN’T. Because rich assholes decided that rather than make those stockpiles they would pocket the funds instead and just cross their fucking fingers that this would be okay. And when it became not okay these same rich fucks decided that they would like to make even MORE money by profiteering off a scarce resource. Assholes in the government are pitting states against each other in bidding wars over medical supplies and chortling all the way to the bank. Hanging is literally too good for them so I’m hoping the punishment fits the crime and they end their miserable existences choking on their own lungs. Preferably for weeks, hooked up to a jerry rigged ventilator and without so much as a fucking aspirin to cut the pain of having a tube down their throats. WEEKS.
Chronos, aren’t you the same person who was arguing everyone was overreacting just a couple weeks ago?
Great, now we have troll mods. Awesome.
If his heart is in the right place, he’ll post to this thread or the other and thank folks for schooling him. After all, he requested that we convince him to be in favor of PPE for front line workers. Which we have done.
I liked what I read elsewhere. After lots of ‘this is our Pearl Harbor’ comments, George Takei tweeted “Sorry. This isn’t our “Pearl Harbor” moment. That was a surprise, dastardly attack by an enemy nation. This is our “Chernobyl” moment: a preventable catastrophe that was denied, downplayed and mismanaged until tens of thousands were dead”.
As for working in a grocery store, which I also do, when I see the hero comments I think to myself “I’m not a hero, I just need to make my rent/mortgage/lease payment this month”.
It’s a little different for me since I’m part of the family business, but if I was just a standard stocker or cashier and had 6 or 12 months of living expenses in my savings account, I’d seriously consider taking a few months off, or at the very least cutting my hours way back by offering to work after closing time to help prep for the next day.
As a grocery store worker, I’d rather health care workers (not just doctors and nurses, but anyone who works inside the building) got first dibs.
I might have more people in my building every day, but they’re, on average, healthy. The people walking into a medical facility, on average, not so healthy.
And, keep in mind, if I can train a new employee here a whole lot faster than hospital can replace part of the medical staff.
Not fair. He wasn’t posting as a Mod.
Nah, they got me. Did two years working in a grocery collective coop, my hatred of grocery workers is limited only by my imagination. If I could concoct a hybrid of plague and leprosy to visit upon them, I would, and rub my hands in glee.
First off, I think we have a semantic problem, between “mask” and “facial shield”. Its the difference between an air filtering device and a rough and ready barrier to particles and, especially, liquids. The sneezing nitwit of doom. I made my own out of t-shirts, being advised that cotton is the best. I don’t have the least confidence that it will filter out viruses. But it is at least something I can do.
And also states a solidarity. It says “us”, it says “we”, the most important words of my political philosophy.
And if a worker is to be classed “essential”, and expected to take risks for the common good, then their employer should either share those risks or protect against them. No one should be compelled to take the risk of public contact without at least a facial shield. Not for a paycheck, godammit!
Anyone who can read what I said and can manage to believe the worst of what has been said here is cordially invited to ignore my posts. Or paint your butt blue and move to the country.
And some of you I have held in fond and cordial regard, and presumed a return. And you can say this to me? Shake my head and walk away…
It smells like butthurt all of a sudden.
Why did you even bother to come in here?
You are wishing sickness and death on me, my coworkers, and millions of other people. Please re-read what I said about you in the OP of this thread and multiple by at least 100.
You are evil.
I wholeheartedly support this pitting. These things need to be said.
I may be wrong but I think that first paragraph was sarcasm, and/or a summary of the wickedness that is being assumed. Because the rest of the post contradicts it.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. If it was sarcasm it was in poor taste and should have been clearly stated as such. As is, it just confirms the other two posts. Eludicator doesn’t give a fuck about grocery workers or any of the other peons holding civilization together, as shown by his own words.
I hope so. Because I can’t understand how the first half and the second half could be reconciled otherwise, or reconciled with the posts elucidator made.
Maybe I’m just too tired to understand.
Is he saying that because medical system employees don’t have enough PPE, that grocery store employees shouldn’t have any at all? 
Next time borrow some of yer Mom’s bacon grease and lube up.