Buenos dias!
It's 5 am on an October day in California. The pandemic still rages on and on. The fight against covid has been arduous and never ending, yet we still persevere in the sector of work retail. Why? Because we have to. Because to persevere means to get the job done and do it well. Here I'd like to go into the inner details of what retail work at the grocery store has been like at this current stage of the pandemic.
a) So the work itself has become more intense and faster paced. There are more customers going out and shopping for their own groceries now that the vaccines are out and people feel a lot more comfortable about being back out in public. Our staff has dwindled in the last couple months, due to young people quitting and older people retiring. And on top of that our staff we do have is limited to part time hours (20-25) a week because management doesn't want to give them the extra hours. Leading us full time workers to have to work that much harder. The lines build up and when I turn around to see who's also cashiering alongside me, there's oftentimes only one or two people.
b) Some of the staff are still getting sick with covid here and there. It goes unreported at our store because of confidentiality and all that. But isn't that something that we, as workers, deserve to know? Instead, oftentimes, the affected person takes a few days off randomly and then suddenly they're back perhaps 3 or 4 days later. When asked about if they had covid, they often say, "I had a cold." Again, most of these covid infections go unreported but it's at least partially known because the infected person is known to be sick and known to be out for a few days. Obvious troll is obvious.
c) The actual work day itself has become more normalized and streamlined for me in particular because my work schedule was shifted from all night shifts to all morning shifts. Getting up in the morning was always my nemesis but now that I'm used to it I've realized that waking up in the morning and working throughout the early day is actually better for my body. "Oh, that sweet circadian rhythm."
d) At the store we still deal with a lot of anti-maskers who refuse to wear a facemask inside our store. At this point we sort of just have to accept it and move on. Our store doesn't have security throughout the day and only sometimes at night. It's just not worth it to confront these people as oftentimes, they are aggressive Trump types that cannot listen to reason due to their pea-sized brains. Upper management sometimes tries to get involved but even they themselves are scared of these people. Trump types love to use intimidation and oftentimes it works.
e) The cleaning situation at the store is for the most part pretty good. As workers, we strive to make sure the place doesn't look or smell like a pigsty. The cleaning is more important in the departments (produce, deli, meat, etc) but even on the front end we oftentimes spend a lot of time washing down the registers. Squeaky clean!
f) Lastly, the morale of the retail work world has always been extraordinarily low. Right now in October there's a small movement of workers trying to rise up, fight the man, and demand better wages and benefits. It's called Striketober, but will it really amount to anything? The biggest workers strike was the teachers strike back in 2018, and that went well, right?
Well, the retail world is full of people who just don't want to be there or are stuck there because of whatever reasons. Right now, morale is at a historic low. The workers are hurting badly: they're not getting the hours they want (either number of hours or the time they want), their pay isn't increasing for years and years, and on top of that the company took away our $20/hour increased pay, which only lastly 5 months. Its no wonder these people are down in the dumps.
With companies like this life is very stressful. Most of these people have children and have to provide for themselves as well as their families. These are mostly hard working Hispanic people and occasional young white, middle eastern, and Asian employees. The fight against covid while working retail has never been harder. And the scary thing is that for most of these workers, their struggle is invisible to the public. Sometimes the stress there can be overbearing and frightening, a scanner darkly during Halloween.
The public is still much in love with nurses, cops, and fire fighters fighting the pandemic than with the people who are providing them food to cook for their families. That is the reality. It was never going to be easy.
Keep the faith.
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