From an “Essential Worker”
I am an “essential worker” working in a cooperative grocery store. I wrote most of this before George Floyd’s life was forcibly taken and the widespread uprising that has happened.
I’m a white mixed-heritage Queer Jewish female in my thirties from a mixed-class background—working class to academic, middle class to owning class. I grew up outside of Boston (Massachusetts, USA) and in New Hampshire (USA) and have lived in the state where I do now my entire adult life. Both my parents are mixed-heritage New York (USA) Jews. Both have working-class heritage and went between middle-class jobs, working-class jobs, and unemployment when I was young. My mixed-heritage Jewish grandfather grew up owning class. I also grew up with two stepmothers and four stepsiblings, all of whom have Catholic and Protestant working-class heritage.
MY WORK AT A COOPERATIVE GROCERY STORE
For nine years I have been a staff member of a collective at a cooperative grocery store in a smaller city. While my co-op grocery work is different than the majority of minimum-wage cashier grocery work, all grocery workers including myself have been on what has been called the “frontlines” of this pandemic, with high potential exposure to the virus. My own work at the store is mostly cashiering and coordinating customer service, stocking and processing produce deliveries (heavy work!), ordering and stocking meat products, and carrying out some administrative roles.
First, some good and hopeful things: My coworkers have all been working hard for long hours together to keep food and supplies on the shelves for our customers, and the camaraderie we have formed during the pandemic is indestructible. They have mostly been treating me and each other well, being supportive and kind and taking on lots of responsibilities to help each other, despite super-heightened work stress. Many customers are grateful, kind, and patient with the expectations we have of them. My friends have been reaching out to me a lot by phone during the quarantine time. My garden is productive and full of bees pollinating, and I enjoy the outdoors right around my house. Staying at home when I’m not at work has made me acutely aware of my immediate surroundings. I’m noticing neighbors, city wildlife, and each new leaf or shoot on my indoor and outdoor plants. I’m grateful for the Zoom and phone sessions I’ve been able to have when not working.
Now Some Harder Parts:
It’s been a very stressful time to help operate a grocery store!
While positive COVID-19 diagnoses in my county have been low compared to some large cities, the potential for spreading the virus is still a big risk. Our governor instituted a stay-at-home order in mid-March in our state due to the early exponential rise in the case count in one of our cities. I remember then when a customer asked if we would close, and it dawned on me [occurred to me] that no, grocery stores will not close, even and especially during a pandemic. (We did decide, however, to close both stores for a day to honor the national Black Lives Matter strike in early June.)
We instituted store protocols for social distancing much earlier than many other groceries. We came together quickly to respond to the situation as a team. Although my reactions came from “scared active,” over-helpful, urgent relying-on-my-thinking-to-save-people patterns, I am proud that I pushed for us to make changes quickly. I sent e-mails to everyone asking us to plan for a pandemic response as a collective, with a list of suggestions about sanitizing and social distance, as did many coworkers. I put up handwritten signs to remind people to wash hands and keep a distance from each other and from us workers, started a lot of surface sanitizing protocols before they were official, and helped coworkers remember to do these things.
As a collective of paid staff members, we had to invent everything by the “seat of our pants” (as fast as possible, using our best knowledge, with limited information). There was little clear guidance or leadership from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the government for grocery stores for what to do. The beginning of the pandemic was even more terrifying and stressful in the grocery than it is now because of the uncertainty, the rapid community spread of the virus, and our inability to order enough food and supplies to stock the shelves when “panic buying” kicked in [started].
I am so proud to work with a collective of people operating a grocery store. We all worked together on e-mail, on Zoom, and in the stores to come up with [figure out] the best possible protocols rather than relying on one store manager to make all the decisions. We appointed a small group of workers to make COVID-19-related decisions together, and everyone has figured out how to follow their lead—much in the style of how we follow the lead of an RC class or workshop leader.
At the beginning of March, little was known about the virus and it seemed to be popping up all over our state unpredictably. We installed plexiglass at cash stands and started sanitizing between customers. We limited customer counts to fifteen percent of our capacity at our two store locations and stationed a “door person” to enforce customer limits. We required handwashing, sanitized all carts and baskets, and reminded people to stay six feet (two meters) from others while inside. We put up camp-style handwashing sinks outside. We had signs up all over the store about keeping a distance and wearing gloves when shopping for bulk products. We learned over time that we needed to limit the use of the offices to fewer people. We reduced the number of cashier-stands so customers and cashiers could stand farther apart while waiting. Because automated online ordering systems are expensive for stores to implement, some of my coworkers invented a system for “curbside pick-up” orders and payment that included renting extra coolers, moving registers outside, and figuring out order-picking protocols—all in just one week. We limited our open hours to allow for more thorough sanitizing and stocking without customers in the stores.
Many of my coworkers with underlying health conditions—some who were older, and some who were just scared—decided to stay at home safe. Fortunately, we have robust health benefits and a good amount of sick pay, so they were able to do this with financial and job security. But fewer workers also meant that the increased work (door shifts, sanitizing, curbside orders, and shifts with more stress) was spread among fewer of us. And anytime a coworker or someone in their household got sick or got a COVID-19 test, that coworker would be away for the required two weeks. Many of us started having to work ten to fifteen more hours per week than we usually do.
In mid-March, “panic buying” was in full swing. We had the three biggest sales days ever, all in a row. On Friday, March 13, our sales were more than double the amount of sales we had ever had in a day. We were all stocking the shelves as fast as we could. For weeks afterward, the supply chain was completely destabilized. Most of our deliveries, except for produce and local items, were delayed by over a week. Some products have continued to be “out of stock” for the last two months. We didn’t have any beans, flour, rice, toilet paper, or many other staples for weeks. My coworkers who were scheduled to process truck deliveries the first week had to wake up at 5:00 a.m. each day, just to see if the truck might arrive, and wait until 3:00 p.m. just in case. Even now, although most items are back on the shelf, people are buying a week or two weeks of groceries at once, and often items are gone quickly and ordering is difficult.
Supplies like hand sanitizer, gloves, surface sanitizers, bulk food containers, and even paper bags for store use have been difficult to get as supplies run out around the country. Our supplies budget has tripled since the beginning of March to keep gloves, hand sanitizer, surface sanitizers, and everything else in stock. Our supplies buyers tried lots of different sanitizing solutions until we found one that was safe for workers, food-safe, affordable, and available in enough quantity. Bleach fumes were too strong to use throughout the day for workers to be healthy, so we went from bleach to peroxide (which damaged many surfaces) to a “quat” formula (a type of alcohol disinfectant) and hand sanitizer from local distilleries. It took a long time to find the best option. Our protocol is to try to sanitize every touch surface in the store every two hours. The cash-register belts, keypads, baskets, and carts are sanitized between every customer. This means that as workers we are handling disinfectant solutions constantly every day—for example, cashiers sanitize their hands between every transaction. We have found that wearing a pair of nitrile gloves, and sanitizing or washing the outside of them, is the best and most sanitary option. Without them, the skin on our hands and arms was cracking and irritated from all the sanitizing solutions.
The produce shifts I work have become much more challenging. Everyone has been buying loads of vegetables, and people are still trying to buy a week’s or two weeks’ supply at a time. I try to stay six feet away from people while working extra fast to keep the shelves full. Customers have a hard time respecting the six-foot distance. Some make a show of leaving space, and others dive right in to grab whatever I’m trying to stock, getting right up close to my face! I often wonder what might happen if they cough or sneeze when our faces are that close.
Most of us started to wear face coverings when volunteers began donating home-made cloth masks. But some coworkers did not wear them until it was required by the state at all workplaces at the beginning of June. There was ongoing conflict among my coworkers about whether to require face coverings at work, and I’m grateful for the state requirement.
It is different, and more difficult, to wear a face covering for eight or ten hours straight, forty or fifty hours a week, than it is to wear one for an hour or two. Some people have health conditions that limit their ability to wear a face covering for that long, and we have to accommodate them. This takes even more workers out of the store, which spreads the work among even fewer people.
As grocery workers, we are all being used by the state to enforce various rules of social distancing. As a result, we bear the brunt of our customers’ restimulations about the rules and their feelings about the pandemic in general. We have suddenly become counselors for the public, as well as for sanitation workers and unwilling police officers.
The majority of co-op shoppers have been gracious and kind and thankful. Many thank us profusely for being “essential workers” in a way that it is difficult to know how to respond to.
Customers also complain, roll their eyes, refuse to follow the rules, and lecture us about what they think should happen. Some complain constantly, act out their impatience (there are often long lines), “talk our ears off” (talk incessantly) because they are lonely at home, or even physically intimidate us by approaching past the six feet or yelling when we politely ask that they wash their hands or wear one of the masks we have available. I’ve noticed that almost all the people who get visibly agitated and act entitled are white men and women.
When I encounter people who think the virus is a hoax or don’t understand asymptomatic transmission, I just nod and listen to their “sessions” about it, gently repeat scientific information I know, and do extra work sanitizing and social distancing. Social distancing takes everyone’s participation, and it is exhausting to continuously be the ones who are trying to maintain it on others’ behalf.
There have been many reports of actual violence at other grocery stores when door workers ask people to wash their hands or wear masks. We did get one threatened lawsuit but have had no physical violence yet. At this point in the pandemic, we offer cheap poly (non-medical) gloves, hand sanitizer, and paper masks at the entrance, and customers are encouraged to consider all three. But we do not enforce mask wearing, to keep us safe from retaliation.
OPPRESSOR DISTRESSES
Since everyone is restimulated by the pandemic, everyone’s oppressor distress (including my own) is showing itself.
Black coworkers have experienced an enormous number of unaware racist microaggressions, from customers and coworkers alike, as well as blatant intentionally racist comments and behavior, especially in this current moment with the widespread coverage of George Floyd’s murder and the protests. They have also been targeted for needing medical accommodations, brushed off (ignored or condescended to) when asking for help with racist customers, or left alone to deal with racist behaviors from coworkers.
Jewish coworkers have been singled out for blame for racist or abrasive behaviors that are shared by white Gentiles. Jewish and Black coworkers have been set up against each other.
Queer people, women, and others of us who’ve been pushed historically into service roles are running into [encountering] customer entitlement at levels we’ve never before experienced. In a service job like grocery work, entitlement is common, but it has been heightened by people’s fear and stress.
IMPROVEMENTS AND PRIDE
It has been such a relief as a grocery worker to have new social distancing laws come into effect in our state with the partial reopening at the end of May. Now there are clear guidelines for workplaces and clear protocols the public must follow in order to shop. Before this phase of reopening, guidelines were not as clear, and it was easy for people to avoid doing the safest possible practice based on their restimulations. Things have slowly gotten more relaxed as people get more and more used to the reality of the pandemic and the care that must be taken. However, our exhaustion level as workers is enormous and ongoing.
We are all so tired. We want to go home, but we are also proud to be providing food to everyone. So please, be kind to your grocery workers.
“I am a worker, proud to be a worker, and the future is in my hands!” [from the RC commitment for working-class people]
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion lists for leaders of Jews and for leaders of women
(Present Time 201, October 2020)