Working for a Grocery Store During a Pandemic

By Katherine Culp

Senior, English major, IUPUI

We are living in the age of COVID-19. This is a time of rampant uncertainty surrounding nearly all aspects of our daily lives. Through the uncertainty, there is one thing everyone knows to be true--there is no hand sanitizer in any grocery store. Why, you ask? It sold out within a week of COVID-19 being confirmed in the U.S. and I haven’t seen any on grocery store shelves since.

I’m going to tell you a secret. There is hand sanitizer, but the grocery stores are holding back on its stock for employees. How do I know this? I am one of those grocery store employees, a cashier to be exact. I’ve been a cashier at a Meijer in Zionsville, just northwest of Indianapolis, for the past two years while attending IUPUI and working toward my degree in English. I love my job and the company I work for, but never have I experienced anything like this. In fact, working Christmas Eve all by myself at the grocery self-scans was easier than working during this virus, which has thrown my entire workplace off-kilter.

Whenever panic is in the air, such as in response to a looming snowstorm (gotta love Indiana winters!), grocery stores are the first to feel it; some of our items get wiped out completely. Milk, eggs, toilet paper, and beer are always the first to go. But never have I seen the shelves as bare as they were for as long as they were with this pandemic. My store had an entire week, near the beginning of the chaos in early March, where nothing was left in our frozen section. I didn’t even know my store had enough customers to buy that much! Turns out we do.

The first hint that something was brewing began two weeks before the shelter-in-place order went out in most states; this was the third week of March. People were buying extra medication, stocking up on canned and frozen foods, but the panic hadn’t really set in yet; only occasionally would someone come through my line with a packed cart. Then I silently judged them for what I viewed as an extreme reaction; I don’t judge anyone anymore. I didn't take this seriously. Oh, how wrong I was…

The “craziness,” as we refer to it in my store, began once news was released that a person in Indiana had a confirmed case of COVID-19. Once the word got around the store was madness. Cashiers who worked told me about the chaos; I was off that day. There were so many people buying such a high quantity of items that customers had to wait in line for hours to check out. Poor 80-year-old Norma, my coworker, couldn’t keep up.

That weekend, when I did work, I saw a family buy no fewer than 20 bottles of hand sanitizer, completely decimating our stock. At the time we didn’t have any limits on items, or I would have said something. The stores were this hectic for a month. Every time new information came out or something else shut down due to state mandates from the governor, we would be bombarded with another wave of chaos.

Luckily, my employer was not as naive as I. When my store/ company realized that this situation was not the same as a snowstorm, they began enacting new health and safety protocols. First, we began implementing new “fairness rules,” as I call them, but my company was not the only one. All grocery stores I know of began placing limits on certain items (milk, eggs, bread, cleaning products, wipes, toilet paper). I am not sure what it was with some people and hoarding toilet paper. Where were they putting all of it?

Limiting items was not the only new protocol. My store also began hiring more people to help offset the influx of customers and in case an employee caught COVID-19, we would have coverage. My store said it was going to hire 75 new employees and based on the number of new faces there I think we hit that number. I think it’s fantastic we hired so many new people because it gave jobs to people who had lost theirs when the shelter-in-place order began and only certain essential jobs remained.

Third, we implemented health measures. In addition to providing every employee with gloves, disposable masks, and personal hand sanitizer, my company implemented health screenings. That is, every employee is checked for COVID-19 contamination before they start their shift (this is still happening as of the date this is posted). Checking for this is done using a tympanic thermometer (so the people can maintain social distancing) to check for a fever; confirming the employee doesn’t have other symptoms associated with COVID-19, and verifying that the employee has not been exposed to anyone with a confirmed case of the virus. This gives everyone in the store greater peace of mind that they aren’t interacting with an employee who has the virus.

And fourth, we had to reduce the hours we were open to the public so we could spend more time cleaning. Grocery stores, not just mine, made a massive effort to be as clean as possible. I have a friend who works for a Walmart and another friend who works for a Target, and they both said their stores are taking as many precautions as mine. My company even contracted a cleaning company to come in during store hours and continuously clean everything. Many stores have also reduced hours to make sure shelves get stocked overnight. Because as hard as we try, there are some items we cannot physically stock faster than they’re bought out (I think we know what I’m referring to-- the infamous toilet paper). Honestly, I think the amount of effort stores are putting in to protect our health and the health of our customers is admirable.

Amid all the changes the one thing that has changed the most is customers’ attitudes toward grocery store employees. Before the virus hit, most customers were blasé and dismissive of us. I can’t tell you how many times I have asked a customer a question only to receive no answer because they were not paying attention. These days, most of the customers are incredibly nice and thankful towards us. Never have I had so many people thank me for doing my job. I’m not going to lie; it is a nice change.

And some, albeit a minority of customers, are gremlins. While far fewer than the nice ones, they’re more memorable—you don't forget someone threatening to fight you over a carton of eggs. I understand that these people are stressed out and scared, but we all are. Stores have limits for a reason – so we can disperse items to as many customers as possible. We want everyone to get what they need. That’s why we are essential.

I, and many other grocery store workers, have the same mindset towards this pandemic as the Christmas shopping season: eventually this will end, but for now, for lack of a better phrase, it sucks. We all must do what we have to do to keep chugging along and things will get better—my store even has toilet paper now.