The day before Thanksgiving is traditionally a grocery store’s busiest day of the year. However, March 2020, was probably the busiest month of the year for grocery stores across America.
I remember hearing people whisper, “The Governor and President are going to shut down restaurants, bars, theaters, gyms, and spas. Schools will be closed. People will start working from home. An order for everyone to be quarantined at home is going to begin any day.” Thousands of people rushed into grocery stores. Nobody wanted to be quarantined at home without food, let alone enough supplies to make pies, cakes, and cookies! Myself included!
My first trip to the grocery store seemed to be a race to see who could fill their carts the highest. The second and third time I went back to the store made me feel I had finally met the goal to overstock my cupboards and freezer. I did miss the run on toilet paper and didn’t find it again in any store for three weeks. Fortunately, I bought boxes of Kleenex as a back-up.
In my lifetime, I had never lived through hurricane warnings as my sister in Florida had done on many occasions. She was used to seeing empty shelves, but in the Midwest, it was a very rare sight. I had also never seen long lines at the grocery store as I did prior to the pandemic.
With all that said, who has been there for us every single day making sure we had food? Grocery store employees. Don’t you think it was stressful for those employees trying to keep shelves stocked, let alone dealing with all the chaos? New policies and procedures were implemented overnight to keep employees and customers safe. Those employees were working tirelessly around the clock to keep up, while probably wondering if they would get infected with the dreadful Covid-19 virus. I would say stress might have been an understatement during this pandemic for grocery store employees. Thankfully, as time went on, more and more people started wearing masks, and plastic shields were put in front of cashiers.
The next time you’re in the grocery store, please make sure your mask is on to protect yourself and the employees. But most of all, make sure you just say thank you to employees for all their hard work.
Check out my video on YouTube, “Thank a Grocery Worker,” to celebrate all grocery store employees. Enjoy!
My name is Desi, “The Attitude Adjuster” and your “Stress Less Coach.”
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