Forgotten Essential Workers
For many of us, life is currently on pause. We are stuck at home, often without jobs, or friends, or sometimes even family. But there is a group of people whose lives have been pushed into overdrive. You’re probably thinking of healthcare workers. But that section of the workforce has been getting plenty of positive feedback, with neighborhoods coming outdoors to bang on pots and pans once a week. The more overlooked laborers are those working in the only place most of us still leave our houses for nowadays: grocery stores.
Grocery chains like Tops, Price Chopper, and Stop & Shop have experienced huge surges of people panic buying food to stock up throughout the stay-at-home orders put into place by nearly every state and nation on Earth. Shelves of many needed goods such as eggs, butter, and the heavily memed toilet paper, have either been completely emptied or restricted to only a certain amount per person. According to Evle Llu from Barron’s Financial, a business newspaper following the markets since 1921, grocery store chains have been some of the few businesses to actually gain in stock value while the rest of the market has crashed by 20% or more. As many companies lose money hand over fist, Walmart, Krogers, and Price Chopper are still making steady and growing profits. This increased demand has been felt most by the employees inside of these stores. Chains that were previously open 24/7 now close at an earlier hour, but there are still workers inside busily restocking shelves with orders that come in every night.
A busy grocery store in New York after Gov. Cuomo’s mandatory mask law. Photo by Takura Sophia-Blaise
A proud Amy in her one bedroom apartment. She plans to get cats and more furniture soon. Photo by Takura Sophia-Blaise
One of those employees is a young woman named Amelia Roth. Known to her friends as Amy, she is 22, and has been working at a Tops in New Paltz for almost a year now. The job started as a part-time gig to pay for renting a room with her brother in a house miles from her parents. The freedom from home is what allowed them to start expressing more of their true selves. Amy used to be known as Zach, and has been transitioning slowly over the past six months. After briefly working part time, Amy was offered a full-time position. The hours would be during the overnight shifts, eight hours a day, six days a week.
Many people might avoid working the graveyard shift, but for Amy it was perfect. “I’m an anxious person in general.,” says Amy. “In the overnight shifts I could just chat with coworkers and restock without too much pressure.” The 48 hour work week also gave her enough financial stability to rent a single bedroom apartment and move into it while still paying the final month of her room-share house. The new home and the job with late shifts allowed her to transition at her own pace without too many critical eyes. “It was great to be able to really be alone and independent for the first time in my life. I could learn who I really am.”
But this perfect equilibrium didn’t last long. After working the full overnight work week for a month there was a sudden change in the number of shoppers at all hours. “Normally after midnight there would only be a handful of customers until 6 a.m. Suddenly the store was full of panic buyers at all hours of the night.” COVID-19 had finally reached the United States. For some, like Amy, who don’t pay much attention to the news, this was a surprise. But there were a few people who knew that things were likely going to be bad.
Another grocery store laborer, who will go by the name Jane in this article to secure their anonymity, has also been feeling the pressure of working during a pandemic. They have been employed at a grocery store since graduating from UAlbany in 2018. Because Jane’s sister is a nurse, she learned that the spread of the virus was getting serious quickly from firsthand accounts. According to a recent New York Times piece, the virus may have been spreading in major cities undetected for an entire month. In the cities of Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston, there is assumed to have been as many as 28,000 cases by March 1, 2020. The official count of confirmed cases by then was only 23.
Some of Jane’s family members were begging them to quit their job, but they had the obligation of paying student loans. To make matters worse, Jane believed management in their store was downplaying the severity of the upcoming virus surge. “When it came to safety precautions, like a plastic wall between cashiers and customers and free gloves, management really dragged their heels. If it wasn’t for the union my store has, we might never have gotten those things.”
Jeannette Meade’s EV is hardly a Tesla. Photo by Michael Frank.
The COVID-19pandemic has caused many of us to re-evaluate the position of grocery store workers in society. What was once thought of as only a dead-end job for the high school and college age demographic, has now fallen under the category of “essential” job in society. According to the Economic Policy Institute, unemployment has risen to a whopping 15% from its pre-COVID-19 levels of 3.5%. But unlike other businesses, it was impossible for grocery stores to either have employees work from home or close. For Amy, the new reverence that came with being labelled essential was mostly amusing. “People come up to me now and will just say ‘thank you’ out of nowhere. I think it’s funny. I'm just happy to have a job at all.”
But for Jane the change in tone is a bit mixed. “Some people just say thank you as lip service. Like management now plays a clip of the CEO calling us ‘heroes’ for working through the pandemic. But they didn't want to provide us extra protective equipment until forced to.” Even the customer’s kindness can feel forced. “Some of the customers make an extra effort to stay away from us. Almost as if they think we’re dirty. Just because we’re still out working.”
“Some of the customers make an extra effort to stay away from us. Almost as if they think we’re dirty. Just because we’re still out working.”
There are many grocery store workers who aren’t in a union of any kind. Places like Walmart and Amazon fulfillment centers have actively tried to hinder unions forming in their businesses. A recently leaked memo published by Vox, shows Amazon executives planning a smear campaign against a worker trying to organize worker protests due to unsafe working conditions. In the memo, Amazon called the organizer “not smart, or articulate” and that they already explained “for the umpteenth time” that they are trying to protect workers.
It is unclear if the new positive and thankful tone that grocery workers are starting to receive from customers and management during this epidemic will stick. “There are still people that act like everything is normal. I think those people are real jerks.”
Amy and Jane aren't counting on any large changes going forward. They plan to keep doing what they've always done: keep their heads up and work. As many of us have discovered at one point or more in our lives, dreams are not free. And in today's world, they aren’t cheap either. “Personally, I’m trying to save up to get my own cats,” says Amy. “Gotta pay for shots and a pet fee my apartment charges. And I don’t think I’ll be able to stop at one cat!
