This is part of a series of personal essays we’re calling Stories from Seattle, contributed by our community and designed to show how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting the lives of Seattleites. Want to share your story, coping mechanisms, wildest ideas? We’d love to hear. Please email: chelsea.lin@tigeroak.com.

As told to Tricia Romano.

I work at a big grocery store in Ballard. I have three positions. I’m a cashier, courtesy clerk, and Starbucks barista. I’ve been working there for about five months. I had just received my health insurance at the end of February, which is with Kaiser.

We started to see people buying really big orders and, of course, stocking up on toilet paper in the middle of February. I feel like most of my coworkers didn’t think much of the coronavirus scare at first. The person in charge thought it was kind of funny. They’re definitely a person that hugs and is this fun social person and they just kept right on hugging everybody until a couple of weeks ago. I had one co-worker that insisted on bringing his reusable mug to Starbucks well after that was not allowed anymore. I’ve had co-workers that are insensitive. I had one co-worker that touched my phone while I was in the restroom. Like, don’t touch anything at all at this time, you know?

A lot of people seem like they’re just unaware and they expect normal. Personally, I’ve gone into panic mode for a couple of weeks now. I’ve had panic at work and left my shift early. My partner, Glenn is on oxygen and he has an interstitial lung disease with pulmonary fibrosis. He’s already agoraphobic and he doesn’t like to go out. So he isn’t being exposed, though obviously me being in a grocery store kind of negates that whole thing. We live together, we share a restroom and food. So I’ve been personally just really on edge, really panicking, knowing that I’m bringing contagions into the home. 

As for the public, it seems like a lot of people are on board and wearing masks. But a lot of people seem really upset. One guy came into the store yelling and screaming last night. They’re announcing that our store hours are till 10 p.m. instead of 1 a.m.. And this gentleman just started screaming and yelling. “No, that’s not gonna work for me!”  

There’s definitely more stringent food safety. In the Starbucks, they’ve removed the condiments bar. And we’re doling out condiments to each person so that nobody touches anything. The grocery store removed all its self-service items. There are no bulk bins for anything. There are no self-service pastries in the bakery. You have to buy a dozen donuts, you can’t just grab one anymore.

The companies are posting CDC guidelines around the store and they have markers on the floor every six feet along with each check stand, and they’ve tried to have the cashiers stationed at every other check stand whenever possible. But it has been so busy. They’ve hired so many more people and it’s just crazy. It’s been going on for six weeks but I think a lot of the general public has only seen maybe the last three or four weeks.

There are so many people that are new and they don’t know the job and they’re frustrated. And the procedures aren’t set for sanitizing the carts and basket. They’ve assigned the new people to stand at the door and sanitize. They’re all discussing what the procedure should be—where’re the dirty ones? Where’re the clean ones? Where are people returning things? And everybody’s frustrated and confused and we don’t really know how to instruct people.

I’ve been working eight-hour shifts the past month. I was supposed to be part-time, below 32 hours, but they ramped that up for me because they needed more people. I’ve been doing shifts where I go in, I work Starbucks, I close down the Starbucks, I go to break and I come back and I’m a clerk. And I do the sanitizing and then trash and stuff.

They’ve always had hand sanitizer at each register. Now they also have gloves at each register for the cashiers, so each time they change the gloves they can sanitize in between. The store itself posted that they would like the customers to handle their own bags. And they’ve instructed the cashiers not to touch anybody’s personal items. If someone insists on bringing their own bag and sets it down on the conveyor, we say, “Would you please take your bags? We’re not able to touch it at this time.”

Our “drive up and go system” just launched in the middle of February. And it was overwhelmed right away. I don’t know how many people they’ve hired just for that department. That’s a really good service for everyone at this point to have a handoff where only one person inside the grocery store has touched your items, and you don’t have to go inside at all.

The self-checkout stands have every single person that comes through there cross-contaminating everything. At this time they have the cashier running six self-checkout stands and they’re supposed to be sanitizing each area often and at least once an hour, but that just seems like nothing.

Currently, our companies are running the monopoly game. So we’re handing out game tickets to everybody who wants them, as well as handling cash. There are a few people that are refusing their receipt at this time. But we’re always handing things back and forth all day long. You become a little more aware of it. But there’s really not much more you can do that we aren’t already besides wear a mask. I believe we’re not allowed to wear a mask at our company. We are union members with UFCW 21. And I’ve read that they’ve won the right to wear a mask at some other companies, but not with ours.