Wow, what a ride the past year was. I loathed just about every day of it, may we never see its like again. You see, I was an "essential worker" during the pandemic and I learned so very much about myself, corporate America, tolerance, intolerance and society as a whole. I was not a doctor or a nurse, I did not drive an ambulance, fight fires or any of the heroic, selfless jobs that were so incredibly crucial and dangerous during the awfulness that was 2020. I managed a gas station/convenience store/quick service restaurant and it was the worst working experience of my 50 something life. A working life that has included bartending, waitressing, school lunch lady, fast food management, recess monitor, door to door knock off perfume sales (for a day) and years of babysitting.
You see all manner of people when you run that kind of business, you see the working folk who come in for their morning coffee and slice of breakfast pizza, the construction workers loading up their coolers for a long day, parents and students grabbing something quick before getting to class to the late night assortment of interesting people you never see in the light of day. I thought I had seen damn near everything the service industry had to offer but nothing, NOTHING I had seen in the many years before prepared me for what came down the pike in 2020.
My state enacted a mask mandate fairly early in the COVID game and we had to comply, period. If my store had been reported for non compliance, the list of troubles that could follow was extensive. The company I worked for had clear rules about masks, hand washing and stringent cleaning procedures. I want you to imagine running a 7-11(or Holiday or Cenex or SuperAmerica or whatever gas station/convenience store you like), Subway, Dunkin Donuts and Domino's all at the same time in the same building during the pandemic. That is what I was doing. We did not get to work from home, we did not shut down and draw unemployment, we were "essential" and did not miss a beat. We had to rethink every last thing we did and pivot on a dime.
We could no longer fill our donut case, we had to give people individually wrapped pastries from the kitchen. We could no longer have grab and go hot food, each item had to be handed out one at a time. Refillable coffee cups were a no no and people were PISSED. Our made to order subs were halted so we premade and filled our open air coolers as best we could. All while washing hands and changing our gloves constantly. Our workload doubled and tripled but we were expected to keep to the same or fewer labor hours. Some of my staff were terrified of the virus and quit, some had to be coaxed into staying, some we more than willing to work but the mask requirements were reason to constantly complain and try to dodge it.
I was incredibly lucky to have a well trained staff that really liked working with me, they took a lot of pride in doing their jobs well and producing quality goods. At first, we felt like the corporation we worked for had our backs, they shelled out extra hourly wages and free meals for my staff and were pretty understanding about late paperwork and t crossing and i dotting. I felt like we were going to get through this more or less intact and that we would all adapt to whatever normal was to become.
I have never been more wrong in my entire life.
As I said, at first we did well, we figured out our new routines and procedures and my staff followed the new rules so well. They learned on the fly and followed the rules, the general public did not adapt quite as well. From day one, we learned how to gently remind people to wear masks. One of my cashiers, who I would refer to as "my human box of puppies" because of the pure joy that she brought into my store every time she came through the doors, came up with the least confrontational way to remind our customers to wear a mask. We would simply ask "Do you have a mask you can put on?". We would offer a mask if they didn't have one with them. Honestly, I could not imagine a less offensive way to do this. Clearly I have no idea what it's like to be asked a relatively innocuous question in a time of national crisis, how triggering that can be. That question, posed by a sweet young woman or my older morning cashier or the various, polite and respectful evening cashiers, served as the utterance to the opening of the gates of hell and releasing every demon within. That question, almost from day one, was answered with everything from: "Fuck you", "Who do you think you are", "I'm never coming here again" to "You just lost my business", "What are you gonna do about it" and "Shut up". We were spit at, threatened with violence and called every name in the book. One man actually pulled his fist back and took a step toward me and said "I oughta beat the shit out of you." While his wide eyed, maybe eight year old daughter stood next to him. We had people throw food on the floor, leave items on the counter and storm out. We had a guy come in, blow right past the cashier offering a mask and scream at us while he did his bathroom business and made a huge mess in one of the restroom stalls. That gem was banned from the store after that one. One fella decided to make a stand in the store to the point that, after being asked to leave and refusing, we called the cops because he was trespassing. This jackass decided the mask mandate was the hill he was willing to die on and proceeded to get into a physical altercation with the responding officers. He lost and ended up tased and twitching in the parking lot and eventually hauled off in the back of a squad car. The kicker was that he was wearing a mask the entire time...I still have no idea how to process that one.
I have a fairly thick skin and can shrug off most unpleasantness in a way that only years in customer services can teach, but this was different. Ordinary day to day rudeness is one thing, this was something that no one could prepare for. I have been called a bitch often enough over the years that it doesn't even make me break stride, I raised two teenagers so mutters under one's breath mean nothing and I spent two years as a playground monitor so temper tantrums are more entertaining than anything else. But straight out hate from random people that I am not allowed to take down is something else entirely. They say you haven't experienced working in the service industry until you've cried in the walk in cooler and that is totally true. I have NEVER been at the point that it was happening almost daily and to multiple members of staff. The hardest part of all of this was who was treating us this way.
My store is not in a big city, it is not in a bad neighborhood, it is not on an interstate highway patronized by people from all over the universe. This store is located in a small town kind of in the middle of nowhere. These were not strangers treating me and my staff like shit, these were people from our own community. People that we saw EVERY DAY, these were regular customers, neighbors, people from other business that we would see out in the world when we were off duty. People who then acted like they hadn't just been calling my staff Nazis and assholes. That was the hardest part of all. That is what changed me in ways that I'm not entirely sure I will ever fully recover from.
I know that seems like a dramatic statement, but I know that my social DNA is different now. I was in customer service for so many years because I truly enjoyed it, I loved my job, my staff and my customers. I liked having a job that really changed every day, it was never boring and that was what energized me. Weird things that cropped up made for great stories, juggling multiple situations throughout a day was fun and interesting. That all vanished and I dreaded going to work to deal with people. I would come home and kind of just sit in a daze until it was time for bed. I didn't write (as you may or may not have noticed), I didn't talk to anyone (and those who know me in real life know how not me that is), I barely functioned at home because work had taken everything I had just to get through the day. I stopped doing almost everything I liked to do; cooking became heating up canned soup, reading was reduced to headlines and summaries, interactions with even the people I still liked were something I had to force myself to do. I became truly angry every time I would hear someone complain about working from home. I mean, I wanted to punch people because ALL I wanted was to be safe at home with no one calling me a fucking nazi whore for simply trying to follow the rules. I am not a crier, generally if I am crying that means something is TERRIBLY wrong. It was not unusual to come home and sometimes my only activity for the entire evening was a series of crying jags until I'd fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.
The casual way that people would be cruel and hateful to us was mind boggling and soul crushing. It also has real life, physical effects. I left my job in May of this year because the stress I was dealing with (or rather not dealing with so it shot out in all manner of unpleasant ways) was literally getting ready to kill me. I had not seen my doctor for any of my usual routine visits (I'm a type 2 diabetic) so when I saw her in March and my triglycerides had doubled, my A1C had shot up and my daily blood glucose numbers were shooting up and cratering constantly with no real changes to my medication or diet. Seriously, I was not sitting home eating sticks of butter and mainlining Hi-C, this was the physical manifestation of stress on my body. Basically, my job was going to kill me. I knew I was feeling like crap and that something wasn't right as my hair had been falling out for months, but this scared the shit out of me. I literally could not do this job any longer.
I left the job the first week of May and started a new job ten days later. I spent the time between jobs sleeping. I had a lot of big plans to get all kinds of things done in my down time and accomplished exactly nothing. I would get up around 9:30am and needed a nap by 1pm, within the week my glucose numbers were stabilizing and I stopped anger crying. A month out and my shrink noted how completely different my speech and gestures were; apparently I had been on high speed setting for quite a while. He thought I was sad about something I wasn't talking about until he realized this is how I am when I'm not running on anxiety, barely contained hysteria and caffeine. My hair has stopped falling out and my skin doesn't resemble sandpaper anymore.
I had a long talk with a good friend that I haven't talked to in a year, we would text from time to time but that was it. This is someone who I dearly love and enjoy and I just didn't have it in me to stay close to the people I needed the most. Happily, we were able to pick right up without it being awkward or uncomfortable and I am so thankful that I didn't have to sacrifice a valuable relationship on the altar of the job and COVID.
While I did not get the disease and did not lose anyone I loved to it, COVID's destruction reached into parts of everyone's lives that are unexpected. Be gentle out in the world, be kind, be polite and think before you say a word. Do this even when we're not in the middle of this shit, maybe we will treat everyone better the next time we face a crisis together.
