The Nextdoor site in my neighborhood is overflowing with grocery store complaints. Da’fuq?? They make diddly squat, they’re on their feet, they get crap bennies (most of the checkers I know as a customer) work 2 or 3 jobs, and I rage at those Nextdoor people. I buy candy bars from the checkout for my checker and bagger. It’s a teeny thing, but goddamn it, people, act fucking human, would you?? These people are probably your neighbors, and for the most part have been at that store for years, like Nora, who works 3 jobs, Tony, with health issues who works to keep his wife on dialysis, and the learning disabled and hearing-impaired baggers I’ve gotten to know.
I help run a busy grocery store register/customer service area. My wife works grocery in another store in the same town. The last few weeks have been difficult. Crowds. Lots of overtime. Upset scared customers. Upset scared coworkers. Misinformation. A new set of rules seemingly every day.
I posted in another thread that if I die helping people to get their food during a pandemic, that’s not such a bad way to go. If I die because people have to keep playing their lottery numbers despite coronavirus, that will really suck.
I want to wear a mask to protect my co-workers and our customers. The little cloth masks we got yesterday may help prevent spreading disease and I am glad the store finally received them. I am relatively sure these strips of cloth and rubber bands would not help much in a hospital. However, if they were needed for a medical setting I would of course give up mine.
Last week a customer came to the desk because she thought her receipt was wrong. I went over it with her and showed her how she was misreading it. I sold her some lottery tickets and she paid with cash. She thanked me and then said she hoped she did not have the virus, because she was not feeling well. She coughed. I would have liked to have had a mask then. I wish she had been wearing a mask. All I could do was smile, wash my hands and wipe down the counter again.
We wash our hands whenever possible. Hand sanitizer for the staff is sometimes available, sometimes not. We are trying to clean after each customer at every register. This slows things down. Most people understand. Some do not. I probably don’t have to tell you we have been cursed at by customers who do not like the new rules, the out-of-stocks, the delays and so forth. Yet we have had many many more folks say thank you.
We all pass and process hundreds of customers every day and have close one-on-one encounters with many. We are all aware that people in our area are sick, and while we are not in a worse hit zone, there has almost certainly been coronavirus through our store at some point. Probably several times
I am glad to be able to do a small part to help. I counsel my staff to be understanding and I try to be understanding towards them. Multiple people have quit because they do not want to risk getting sick. Many others continue to come to work. I am sure the reasons for people’s decisions are varied. One of my strongest co-workers is a young woman six months pregnant with her first child. She has not missed a shift yet and has a cheery wonderful attitude. I hope she does not get sick.
I appreciate the kind words. Regularly available simple masks would be a plus. But what would really be nice would be if people would limit their shopping trips and stock up fully when they do need to visit the grocery. If your family is bored at home don’t everyone come to the grocery store just to get out of the house. Make do with what you have until you need many things, then shop. What would be great is if those who are not high-risk would leave the massively overwhelmed pick-up and delivery services for those with special needs and risks. And it would be most appreciated if folks could reach down and find a level of understanding. We do not need meanness, snark, and ugliness right now. Leave that to our Government. Try kindness.
There is a lot of stress right now and nerves are frayed. Can we all just dial it back a bit?
Broomstick, you and I have had our differences, but I definitely appreciate what you and your fellow customer service workers are doing out there. Lord knows what assholes customers can be on a regular basis, and I can’t imagine how much worse it is now. My sister works at a bank, and they had a really hard time at first getting their supervisor to allow them to wear gloves.
So thank you.
Bricker-like.
I sincerely hope that there is a rash of unionizing at grocery stores when this ends.
I thought they mostly were?
Read biotp’s post above. Then read it again.
On my vacation days I whipped up a dozen masks for co-workers who wanted one but couldn’t get one and didn’t know how to/didn’t have the equipment to sew one for themselves. One of the things that pissed me off was that we got official recommendations by the CDC and local health authorities to wear masks but the company simply couldn’t get them to us immediately - having someone come along and say “fuck you, you don’t deserve a mask, just get sick and die” is salt in the wounds.
Sure, when you go to the store the staff are working hard and are still polite - because being pleasant is part of our job. You don’t see us in the break room where there are heated arguments. You don’t see the people who quit out of fear. You don’t see who gets sick and quarantined. You don’t see the people who wind up on ventilators or die from a virus they picked up at work stocking shelves or checking out your eggs and bacon at a cash register. At least 40 grocery store workers have died of covid-19 (no one knows the exact number because I guess we’re not important enough to track separately, even if we’re “essential”). There will be more.
My co-workers and I are not coming to work because we’re too stupid to understand there’s a risk, or in denial there’s a risk - we’re coming to work despite being afraid. Because someone has to do this work, and we need to pay our bills.
I have been the target of an interesting variety of nouns and adjectives and invited to perform anatomically impossible obscene acts, yes.
MOST people are fine. We have had to escort a few out of the store.
Here’s a tip for the assholes: don’t fuck with the grocery employees in front of a police officer, they’ve gotten a bit protective of us now that we’re officially part of the “essential people”. Yes, the police shop at our store, too, they don’t really live on just donuts and coffee. And even those who do - the Starbucks around here are all closed so guess where some of them are getting their caffeine and sugar fix these days…
You’re welcome. And same to everyone else thanking me and my coworkers. Your appreciation is appreciated, truly.
There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that slogging through my shift is important to keeping the world running and what I do actually really does matter in this life.
Thank you.
Not universally.
At my company, some of the stores are union some aren’t. Most if not all of the ones in Michigan are union. None are in Indiana.
That said - for consistency’s sake a lot of stuff in the non-union states are the same as in the union states. Largely because it’s easier to have just one set of HR rules and procedures.
I’ll also mentioned that, unlike some companies, most people are making more than minimum wage - a few positions start that low, but even those, if you get past the initial 90 days probation you get a bump in pay and another bump about every 8 months. I started as a part-time stocker and even that started with more than just the minimum. Currently, I’m making more than double the minimum in my state, with a $2/hour raise on top of that for the duration of the pandemic. Even before this I was making enough to cover my bills and have a bit extra, with decent (for America) benefits on top of that. But that’s just my company. Other big box stores are far less generous.
Initially we got a LOT of overtime - at one point it was six days a week, ten hours a day. That was NOT fun. It was completely insane, actually. Now things have calmed down and most days I’m only working seven hours, and there is some talk about cutting back to just four days a week… which, to be honest, I’d be OK with at this time because I’d just as soon spend less time in the petri dish. Sure, it will pinch the budget but other than rent, utilities, and food it’s not like there’s anything to spend money on. Needless to say, some of my coworkers have different opinions. That’s fine, of course, but the breakroom in the back has had a LOT of heated arguments and complaints aired.
I was saying to someone at work that I always feel bad when I think to myself that I wish people wouldn’t use our pick up service opportunistically. That is, people that use it because we have it, not because they have any fear of walking into the store. And I feel bad thinking that because I know full well that even if a customer isn’t concerned about catching or spreading the virus doesn’t mean they’re not catching or spreading it and one less person in the building is one less person in the building.
What I do wish, however, is that when people call their orders in, that they would just rattle off their list and be done with it. I simply don’t have time for “How much are the small bottles of ketchup?”, “Where is the corn from?”, “Do you have light pink roses?” and one I got yesterday “Are your plums bigger than your peaches right now, I got some peaches and plums last week and the peaches were smaller than the plums and I didn’t like that”. Every single one of those questions requires me to put them on hold, run out into the store, run back, give them the answer just to have them ask me another question. And with that, just ask all your questions at once. Asking me how much the corn is, then when I get back to the phone asking me where it’s from, then when I get back to the phone asking me if it’s yellow or bi-color and don’t fucking laugh and say “I’m sorry” when you ask the third question about the same thing.
Anyway…just give me your list. We’ll have what we have, it’ll cost what it costs, we’ll do our best, but you really have to work with us. It’s all that BS that, almost from day 1, made our policy to cut off curbside at 2pm. Once it gets later than that we don’t have enough people here to have someone tied up on the phone for 20 minutes at a time.
I’ve always been amazed at that one. Over the years, I’ve called the police to come deal with an unruly customer more times that I can remember. Nearly every single customer, upon me saying ‘sir/ma’am, you need to leave or I’m going to call the police’ responds with ‘go ahead, call them’. Even after I explain that they can’t win this. Once I ask the police to remove someone, the only choice they have is to leave peacefully or to leave in handcuffs, that’s it. I don’t even need a reason. And yet, every.single.time. they’ll go plant themselves somewhere, sometimes still making a scene and wait for the cops. I get that they’re making a scene because they’re worked up about one thing or another, but they always seem to be convinced that once the police show up, they can explain their side of the story and somehow I’ll be the one getting arrested.
I’d love to see this come into play. I’d dress it up with some commas, but yeah.
I’m essential. I’m wearing a mask, but less than a third of my clients walking through the door are masked. When I minimally interact with the unmasked, I’m thinking, “yeah, fuck you too” because that’s what you are saying when you are out and about unmasked.
Broomstick, stay safe. Thank you for your service.
Yes, I agreed with the CDC, and continue to agree, that we’re overreacting. People are dying and having their lives ruined because of how we’re reacting to this disease, and nobody seems to care.
And no, I never said that a fake vaccine should be distributed.
The CDC says we’re overreacting? The CDC currently has directions on their website showing how to make your own cloth face masks.
I agree that SOME people are over-reacting. Some are also UNDER-reacting.
We do have a global pandemic and because we squandered decades in which the danger was known and our governments did jackshit to get ready yes, people are dying who, with preparation, would have lived. Because not only the general public but also our so-called leaders are not well educated about what’s going on we have people killing themselves by drinking aquarium cleaner. Because medical systems are overwhelmed there are people who die not only from the new virus but because we lack the resources to properly treat all the other medical hazards. We have people dying at home not just of covid but also things like heart attacks and strokes because they’re afraid to go to overwhelmed hospitals.
Guess what:
These are things that have happened in EVERY pandemic, ever.
No one is every truly prepared. The medical systems are overwhelmed. There is fear. There is denial. There are rumors and falsehoods mixed in with the truth and some of those falsehoods kill people.
That doesn’t make any of it OK, and yes, the preparation and response could have been better, but it was never going to be perfect.
Yeah, that I don’t get - the CDC and everyone else is telling people how to jury-rig a mask, but grocery store workers (and others) who would like these supplied by their employer as part of safety equipment are over-reacting?
Stop for a minute and think what the past month would have been like if all the grocery store workers decided to think of their own safety first, and sheltered in place. Would we have The National Guard stocking shelves? Rioting?
That statement really only makes sense if you’re not keeping up with what they’re currently saying. A few weeks ago, what we’re doing today would be considered overreacting. Today, the CDC would prefer you didn’t leave your house (at least not to go to a place with other people) without a mask.
Since we are veering into sane and reasoned discussion, lets go there.
Hypothetical: we got one million doses of magic vaccine, immediate immunity to corona virus. Got to wait two more weeks for more. Who gets them? Somebody is going to say “medical workers”, starting with doctors and nurses directly treating sick people and isolated, exposed people. Because that is a tactical necessity, because that makes sense.
“Deserve” does not enter into it, got nothing to do with moral quality, or anything like that.
Broomstick, you gonna hate that person? Don’t know you all that well, but kinda doubt it. How would you justify it? You gonna tell them they are evil? Seriously?
Lets say** Broomstick** is vaccine decider. So, decide. Who’s gonna get the vaccine, based on their “deserving”? And if your answer is similar to mine, well, where are we, exactly?