My Experience Working Retail During a Pandemic
Working in retail as an essential worker during a pandemic is a really wild time. I can only speak for the place my coworkers and I were at since it may not be exactly the same everywhere- though I have a feeling it's extremely similar to what we and I have experienced.
Back towards the beginning of the pandemic, to April of 2020, I remember wanting to go back to working at my job early from LOA because I had been stuck at home for a month and a half without being able to do much of anything, much like the rest of the world. I was working in an elementary school at the time and also with their after school program but they didn't have much for me at the time I asked to go back so I started back at my retail job in mid April. I also was finally in a stable place to quit my school job and after school job and focus solely on my retail one. Oh boy did it turn into an adventure! And not the super fun kind.
When I started back at the retail job they were in desperate need of people to come work for them, especially in my department of deliveries/order fulfillment. The reason for this is because each day we were behind 200-300 orders- I kid you not. It was WILD. We were run ragged going around the store attempting to fill people's orders as quickly as possible. There was not enough space so we had to create more space, and then they also had created curbside which added a whole other level of stress. I'll get to that in a moment.
As all this craziness was happening, not long into June one of my coworkers wasn't paying attention and dropped a partial pallet of bricks on my feet injuring one of them and making it so I couldn't walk properly for over a month. I share this because my experience with workers compensation was wacky due to the pandemic. Yes, I had all the medical bills taken care of, though I was forced to come back to work the very next day despite needing some time to rest and take care of myself. Oh, and none of the time out of work was paid even though it wasn't my fault. They claimed it was because they were shorthanded due to the pandemic but they also forced me to sit all day and almost babied me, and I think it was because they were scared I was going to say something. In hindsight I would have.
Okay, so now to talk about curbside, before I go into other stories of people who came into the store during this time. First of all, in my opinion people who aren't actually in the store and on the floor seeing the insanity that's going down are not at all suited to make the rules about what associates on the floor can and cannot do. The whole standing there for 8 hours a day while watching curbside being forced to wait for a car to show up and getting yelled at if you dare to help a customer who is ACTUALLY there is BS. Corporate cared WAY too much about their "numbers" and not nearly enough about the actual humans standing there melting their brains out waiting. Not to mention the toll it takes on your knees to stand on concrete those 8 hours. Second, the people that came to curbside. In the spring and summer when we were behind hundreds of orders a day there were people who pulled up to curbside and were finishing putting in their orders and expected us to immediately have them ready. No, it doesn't work like that- it takes time to go get the product(s) and on top of that we are literally behind 2-3 business days. Those were often part of the entitled humans who thought we had to cater to just them- you know, the BS of "customer is king"/"customer is always right" BS. Many people were understanding and we were very grateful to them. Some who came to curbside even tipped us! For a while there were SO MANY cars who were there which is why I think initially we had a designated curbside person which made sense at the time but when it slowed way the heck down it made no freaking sense. I also want to make a note of some of the ridiculous orders- six order in a row of just a hex nut for the same person, an order of just one washer, one person ordered just one pencil and barely cracked their window open for us to push it through, others who ordered these massive sheds or cabinets for their small cars which were NOT going to fit somehow, and adventures strapping Christmas trees to the top of cars. Just to name a few.
Now for the customers who actually came into the stores. Last summer for quite a while we had lines up the wazoo and could only have a certain number of people inside at a time. I cannot count how many times people complained about the lines or tried to shove their way in through closed doors. It was almost comical! We even had a security guard stationed at the door just in case anyone tried something funny. The lines inside were also insane- long lines at the service desk of returns and super long lines at the check outs. I'd say about 2/3rds of the people, though that may be generous, were nice and understanding. The other 1/3 or so were absolutely not fun to deal with. Oh, and the phones were also constantly ringing with people who wanted to know when their orders were coming in, how dare we be out of stock, why was their order cancelled and refunded, etc. Did I mention we were behind hundreds of orders a day and didn't have enough people or space? Some of my coworkers played hooky and pretended to work, and there was one dude who punched in for work and then went to work at another store before coming back to punch in for lunch. I don't really know how we were still sane.
There were multiple times when I nearly passed out from heat exhaustion because of how many heavy things I was carting across the store multiple times a day on pallet jacks. The masks did not help in that regard- in fact it was worse and also made us more thirsty, though we understood why we wear them. We were pulling and picking SO much lumber, flooring, mulch, soil, concrete, and bricks. None of that stuff is light, and there was tons of it! Literally. During this time I also got my various lift licenses such as for driving a forklift and something called a reach. Because of that and being one of the few people in the store who could drive them I got called around a ton to help which made pulling orders harder. Many customers were frustrated at why things were taking so long and I got so dang tired explaining it was because we were shorthanded, because we had to wait for an available machine, because it takes time to pull product off the racking and drive it over to them due to so many customers in the store. It was super stressful.
Meanwhile, while all this was going down at this job and we were all subjected to verbal and emotional abuse day in and day out, and being always exposed to the virus, people were seemingly forgetting about us. There were so many news stories about healthcare workers, grocery store workers, police and postal workers, and teachers, that they never mentioned those of us working the frontline essential worker jobs we were doing in retail. It's like we didn't exist. They would even talk about the hardships of working from home and the fear people had but didn't acknowledge the BS we dealt with on a daily basis- they took us for granted. I'd love to see what they would have done if their favorite corporate stores were closed during last year. It really felt like we were forgotten and that nobody cared about us except those of us working there with each other. We had so many conversations! So many.
Something else I want to bring up is how adamant people were about us all being six feet apart but let me tell you- there was no way in heck we were going to ever manage that even with pool noodles strapped to our heads! It would actually be impossible to get anything done. Not nearly enough space. When people outside of work would talk about their bubbles they were exclusively spending time with to avoid the virus it felt frustrating because we had no way to do that with how many people came in and out of the store. When people would talk about being scared to go outside or go into a store because of the virus we felt frustrated because we were always getting exposed. I'm pretty sure most everyone in the store was sick with COVID at least once if not more than once. And you know what? Even if you were in the same department and were in close proximity with the person who was sick you still had to be there. Only a few times did one or two people around another person get to quarantine and isolate. And they were also really weird and secretive about it when someone was sick and we didn't find out until at least a week later. Always claimed the person was "on vacation". But we all knew what really was going on. So who knows how many people I've accidentally infected because I just didn't know and thought I was safe. I've probably even had it multiple times but am one of those who doesn't show symptoms. Who knows really, and the same is true for all of my coworkers.
One of the last things I want to mention is the sick time and time off. Prior to COVID we only got one hour of sick time per week worked, which is now again what it is even though we're still not done with the pandemic. A previous injury I had led to me getting occurrences and being written up because I didn't have sick/personal time available yet to take care of me. For a while, about a year starting from summer 2020 to summer 2021 we had emergency sick time. Depending on if you were part time or full time you got 40-80 hours of emergency sick leave which translates to one week of paid time for part timers and two weeks of paid time for full timers. Our personal time was also lumped in there so when they took all of the emergency time back they also took the personal time too. Sure we got it all paid out but I would have rather kept it for when I actually needed it, because I got sick with a nasty cold after they took it all away and got occurrences and a write up because of that. They also don't give us any mental health time or days so all of the accumulated stresses and traumas of working during a pandemic aren't able to actually be addressed. Bottom line is we couldn't take care of ourselves even if we wanted to for fear of being fired, if that's something you didn't want to happen.
Now to the "anti-maskers" who frequently came into the store when masks were mandated all the time everywhere. I'd say 97% of people who came there to shop wore masks but the 3% who didn't were generally *interesting* people. There was this one dude who came into the store dressed in cowboy boots, cowboy hat, a black leather jacket, and had a Jesus shirt on, who refused to put a mask on when requested. Instead, he claimed he didn't need one because God would protect him from the virus and he would protect us too. Which is some complete BS- science says otherwise, and my own experiences thus far to that point also dictated otherwise. God doesn't work like that. But that's a topic for a different time. The other thing to note about the people who refused to wear masks was that for the most part they were men who complained about having to wear them. Sure, there were nice people who didn't wear masks, but unfortunately the not nice ones were far more common. I thought it was interesting that men were making such a fuss about having to wear a mask and have their bodies "policed" and their reactions about it when those very same men (in general, not specifically) are always trying to police women's bodies. Not fun, is it, men? Also, wear the damn mask because that's being a decent human being who cares about others and not just your own damn self. Again, commentary for a different time.
Hopefully this snapshot into what it's been like working retail during a pandemic has given some insight into it all. It's been wild reliving this while writing it. Bottom line is, show compassion to others because you never know what their day has been like or what they've been dealing with or going through.
Comments
Post a Comment