I don’t care if you think everyone should be wearing masks.
I don’t care if you think masks are useless.
I don’t care if you think the pandemic is going to kill us all.
I don’t care if you think it’s all a hoax.
You know what I care about?
The lowly retail employee who went from being vilified as a minimum wage drone to applauded as an essential worker in the space of a week. The cashier who got told they were putting their life on the line so that people could buy something. The sales floor employee who got told they were probably going to get sick so that people could buy something. The retail employee who spent 4 months getting a minimum “hazard bonus” for working double shifts to try to keep the store open while the rest of the world lost their collective brains.
The slightly simple greeter who gets assholes yelling at him because we dare to have signs up spelling out the states facial covering mandate.
The service desk worker who has assholes yelling at her because we don’t kick out someone who’s not wearing a mask.
The sales floor employee who’s getting yelled at multiple times a days because “why the fuck aren’t you carrying bird seed any more?!” (seriously, bird seed, I’ve had more pissed off people over the lack of bird seed than anything else this past week)
The specialty department supervisor who’s almost old enough to be MY mother who’s been doing this her whole life who walked off the sales floor in tears after dealing with that one last asshole on the sales floor last week.
It’s not the fault of anyone in the store that we’re out of what you want to buy. We’re stocking out onto the shelves every single god damned thing we can find that even kinda sorta fits. And the company is using every bit of their pretty massive buying power to try to get us stuff to put onto the shelves.
It’s not the fault of anyone in the store that the state not only wrote up a facial covering mandate but has started fining stores for each unmasked person they find in the store.
I suppose it might be our fault for not turning away people who aren’t wearing masks, but since we carry some pretty essential supplies the company has decided they’re not going to do that. And frankly if you want to come stand at our door and try to stop that big ass angry dude from coming in without a mask then feel free. Frankly I’m not paid enough, and neither is anyone else in the store.
If you want to bitch about something the company might actually be able to control feel free to take it up with the corporate office.
If you want to bitch about the politics of it feel free to take it up with your local politicians.
Don’t take it out on the people who’re way to massively overworked and underpaid and who don’t have any control over it anyway.
(and yes, all the described incidents of asshole customers have all happened, either to me personally, or where I could see them happen to a co-worker. I seriously have no idea how in hell this country made it through the last few months without some kid working their first retail job losing it completely and going postal on customers, I really don’t.)