‘Working ourselves to exhaustion’: Local grocery store worker says sector stretched thin
Posted January 5, 2022 6:32 am.
Grocery store workers have been deemed essential since the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With word up to a third of the workforce could be out sick in the days and weeks ahead, some are speaking out, saying they’re already burnt out.
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry urged B.C. businesses on Tuesday to make contingency plans and anticipate the slew of absences due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.
“This is about activating all of those layers of protection available for your business in your situation, to keep you from having to shut down because you don’t have enough people to operate,” she said.
But ‘Sally’, who works at Save-On-Foods and who wants to remain anonymous, says she and many of her colleagues are stretched beyond their limits through staff shortages and overtime hours.
“The silent heroes, we don’t want to be the top news story. But we’ve been working ourselves to exhaustion, to whatever. Yet we still come in, we still sanitize our stores multiple times a day,” she told CityNews.
Sally isn’t asking for a “pat on the back,” adding she and her colleagues just want to be recognized as front-line workers who are also facing pressure and burn out.
She suggests many in similar positions may not be as high profile as nurses or teachers, but believes they deserve the same understanding and recognition.
“They wanted to bring out the 7 o’clock cheer again for the medical profession. Well, what about your local grocery people? If it weren’t for us you guys wouldn’t be fed. We’re there every day, we put the smiles on our faces, we answer the questions, we do our best, but I just feel so sad for all my brothers and sisters in the different grocery stores,” Sally said.
The pandemic isn’t the only crisis B.C. has faced in the last year. The extreme heat over the summer and the recent flooding this past fall both also hit those working at grocery stores, Sally notes.
Given how grocery stores are laid out, Sally admits it’s difficult to always keep your distance from others. She says grocery store workers are often put at risk.
“People just aren’t understanding,” she added.
Related articles:
-
B.C. businesses urged to have contingency plans to prevent Omicron spread
-
Grocery, retail workers in Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal regions moved to vaccine priority list
Employers and management are doing their best, Sally stresses. But she wants more compassion from the public and is urging people to do their part to help keep everyone safe.
When it comes to staffing at her store, she says there have been plenty of shortages.
“We get sick calls. And I’m talking front-end — the cashiers, the whatever. I think one day we had 11 sick calls and that’s because a child may have been exposed so they can’t come in, or their spouse, or grandma that lives with them, what have you,” Sally explained, adding she recently worked a 12-hour shift because her store was short staffed.
“For all the years that I’ve been at that store, it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it.”
-With files from Lasia Kretzel
