The Front Lines: Working at the Grocery Store During a Pandemic

School Project, March 27, 2020

There hasn’t been any hand sanitizer in weeks. The cleaning supplies are nearly wiped out. And any paper products that appear vanish just as quickly. This is normal now for the employees of Stop and Shop in Jackson, New Jersey. Even before coronavirus hit the town, the store went through rapid changes.

As of March 26, there were 35 cases of coronavirus in Jackson Township. With the third highest number of cases in Ocean County, the residents are panicking. And this took them to the grocery store, where even under quarantine, people are still stocking up.

The craziest part, according to Holly Worth, who works at the customer service desk, is how much everything has sold out. Stop and Shop in Jackson is generally a slower store, so having so many empty shelves is strange. “And all the meat!” Worth said, referring to the almost completely empty meat department. “I’ve never seen it like that!”

The phone at the desk is constantly ringing. Customers want to know what the hours are, if there’s any toilet paper yet or when the store will get them. There’s such little stuff left that the store shut down its online grocery pickup because the customers could not get what they wanted. And what they can get is severely limited. The limits keep getting stricter and stricter – two packages of meat, one case of water and one pack of toilet paper, if you’re lucky enough to find any.

The store had to change the way it operates entirely. It changed from its normal hours of 6 a.m. to 12 a.m., to now opening from 6 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. just for people over the age of 60, closing at 8 p.m. so associates can sanitize the store and stock the bare shelves a bit. The store is installing Plexiglass shields at the registers for cashiers who cannot practice social distancing and is supplying them with gloves if they want them. Stop and Shop’s previous “no hassle” refund guarantee has now turned into no rainchecks or refunds of any sort.

Even though the employees are putting themselves at risk for the virus by coming into work, many agree that the worst part is how the customers are treating them. Plenty of people are being very kind, thanking the cashiers for still coming in. But there are many who are not.

Perishable Manager Jeremy Papa said an older woman who looked like “someone’s grandma” yelled at him right at the beginning of the craziness. She was angry about there being no toilet paper, he said, and when his attention briefly wandered she said, “Are you even listening to me, you tubby, ugly, bitch?”

Another older woman was trying to buy two carts of paper products and was told there was a limit by front end lead Delio Nogueira. When he refused to give them to her, she said he was discriminating against her and that she would be calling her lawyer.

Despite the general insanity of it all, the employees of Stop and Shop are grateful to be some of the few who still have a job to come to. (The 10 percent pay raise does not hurt either.) In such uncertain times, the workers are trying to make the best of it.