It’d be great if people would stop being mad that we don’t have laptops. Specifically, mad at me, like I have anything to do with it, and not mad at the people like them who’ve caused this shortage in the first place. I only work in the electronics department of Wal-Mart. I don’t control the stock.
“What do you mean you have none?”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I don’t have any in my lockup cages.”
“You don’t have any out back?” the woman asks snobbishly, like that’ll make them appear magically. What really happens is it makes me want to scream.
“No,” I try to say patiently, “If we did, they’d be out here.”
“Wal-Mart sucks!” the woman proclaims loudly, and I privately agree with her, though for wildly different reasons.
I don’t want to be that guy, but I’ve been daydreaming about cussing out customers more than usual lately. Every single interaction with a customer since states have revealed tentative plans to reopen or, in my case (Maine), extend the quarantine time with only small allowances for openings, has been terrible.
I read an article about an ice cream shop opening for mother’s day in Massachusetts after their quarantine rules lifted slightly and a 17-year-old was called names for not getting ice-cream out quickly enough. The 17-year-old quit after her shift.
“Now I open the doors to a whole new world, with gloves and masks and we’re running around like chickens, and people are like where’s my ice cream? I’m not a trauma center, it’s ice cream!” Polar Cave Ice Cream Parlour owner Mark Lawrence proclaimed to WFXT, an affiliate of CNN.
Service workers have been taking the brunt of the public’s anger. Like being mad at a teenager in checkout will allow them to buy one more package of toilet paper.
“Honestly, I wish the consumers would stop yelling at service workers when stores run out of things or can’t give an answer when the store will the item back in stock,” Nerissa Richardson, a Wal-Mart associate, says.
“[It’s] uncalled for. Just because we don’t have the product right now doesn’t mean we won’t get it in. The trucks are still making deliveries so we are still getting the products.”
As if service workers weren’t disrespected enough in normal circumstances, (I’ve been yelled at for everything before this crisis), now we have to be in literal danger too.
Most of us aren’t even getting paid more for it. The most Wal-Mart as a corporation has really done is “given” us a $300 bonus if we’re full-time workers. And if you’re part-time, like me and the majority of the people who actually work for them, you get half of that.
I’m “lucky” in some aspects, as my store specifically gave us a $1 dollar raise for the crisis. Though originally, it was only scheduled to be for a single month.
It’s insane.
So many people have started using Wal-Mart’s online ordering system to avoid coming in the store that most of our store associates have to leave their normal areas to work the 2000+ picking orders coming in per day.
And this is when people are really starting to swarm stores in person again. After 10 am, there’s a line 50 people strong outside our doors consistently until closing (Maine has set a limit of only 100 customers inside a store at a time).
So by the time the customers get inside, they’re cold (though it’s May, we recieved snow this last week) and P-I-S-S-E-D.
“Keep in mind that associates in the store do not make the rules and do not make the limits for these items they are trying to hoard,” says Samantha Mariluise St. John, Wal-Mart associate. “Hollering and getting angry is not going to get them more of the stuff they want, especially if it is limited.”
So for me, it truly boggles the mind that people are calling for full reopenings just as the U.S. has topped 80,000 deaths from COVID-19. Just hitting those 80,000 shows that we haven’t even hit the peak yet, and people are protesting because they think their rights are being violated (spoiler alert: they’re not). It’s hilarious to me that people are getting sick because they’re protesting. Hmm. I wonder if that is a sign of something.
For Kimberly Larabee, an employee of Four Points Hotel in Tallahassee, Florida, the pandemic has been hitting really close to home.
“I started showing signs of what seemed like a cold and or flu,” she says. “Of course, COVID-19 was going through my mind, so I called my doctor’s office right after I called out [of work] just to make sure I didn’t have anything.”
“I had to walk over to the lab to get tested for strep and the flu, which are never fun. Especially when you have the easiest gag reflex in the world. It makes getting the strep test very hard. Once the tests where done I was told to go home and stay home. About an hour or two later I got a call saying that I was negative for both and that I needed to go to the testing area for COVID-19.”
“I was told instructions on what to do, which were that I was gonna stay in my car and roll down the windows when prompted and that I also needed my ID on me. Once there, I followed the instructions my doctor’s office told me and the people in the testing zone also told me. I drove through and waited my turn to be nasally tested.”
Which, understandably, wasn’t a great experience. “They told me after that I would have to stay quarantined for 4-5 days until I get the results. During that time I was worried and so was my family.”
Thankfully, the test was negative.
“The fact that states are currently opening up now is in my mind, very premature,” Derek Lupo, a Cumberland Farms employee, says. “The amount of active cases in Maine is significantly lower in most of the country, but that is also a major problem, as we cannot force people coming from out of state to properly quarantine. To me, it looks like we will have a large resurgence of cases over the next few months, inevitably leading to what would have been avoidable deaths.”
He adds, “Maine’s economy, especially in the south of the state, is very heavily dependent on tourism. This makes the lockdown especially crippling on the economy. But sacrificing lives to reopen does not sit well with me. Especially since with the economic power of the United States, we do have other options.”
Tourists from other states have already started coming to Maine, even with the 14-day quarantine law for visitors. Maine’s Governor Janet Mills’ executive order is difficult to police.
Because while all lodging operations including hotels, motels, campgrounds, bed-and-breakfasts, etc. have had operations forcefully suspended, it doesn’t prevent people from coming to the state.
And that means more angry customers for the businesses that are open.
So what should we be doing? I think, as annoying and depressing as it is (and don’t get me wrong, I hate the quarantine too), we need to remember that we’re doing this to protect people. We can’t think in the individualistic sense right now. We have to remind ourselves that there is nothing we can do to make the virus immediately go away. The best thing we can do right now is to follow the CDC guidelines and social distance. It’s the right thing to do, and the necessary thing to do.
While we’re doing that, here are some reminders from service workers.
“Have patience,” Lupo says. “Currently, we have a larger workload and less staff. We are putting our own health at risk to do our jobs.”
“Keep the social distancing in mind when you are in the stores,” St. John says.
“Keep in mind that right now is a very trying time and we are all exhausted and are trying to do everything we can,” says Richardson.
“Stay home if you can,” Larabee says. “It is what it is. Nothing anyone can do about it.”
And lastly, from me:
I’m not actually working in a service job so I can be shit on by customers frustrated about the state of the world. Be frustrated in your own 6-foot zone. I’m working because I need the money.
If you feel the need to snap at me about the lack of webcams, don’t. I promise you that my dearest wish is to throw one in your face so you’ll leave me alone.
Go home. Follow CDC guidelines. This crisis is real. It won’t go away because you want it to. It won’t go away because you’re bored with it. It won’t go away when we (inevitably) return to “normal” way too soon.
Maybe I’ll get lucky then. Maybe it won’t be me who’s sacrificed.
Meagan Jones is a writer and artist from Southern Maine. She graduated in 2019 from the University of Maine at Farmington with a Creative Writing BFA and a Spanish minor. Check out her personal website at https://meaganljones.wordpress.com/ Follow her on Twitter @supernarra