This is how grocery store workers should dress

What is it going to take, Corporate America, before profits no longer trounce the lives of your workers?

I am livid. Another worker here in Connecticut, a Stratford Stop 'n Shop employee, has died after contracting Coronavirus. Perhaps a dozen more from ShopRite have tested positive in nearby Milford. A worker in Salem, Massachusetts also died of the virus.

I read these stories in horror. Up until March 14, I was one of these workers, a part-time cashier at Fresh Market in Guilford, Connecticut. I only worked between one and three days a week, but it was enough to terrify me when I realized the virus has struck the Constitution State and we weren't being offered anything more than gloves and hand sanitizer. I actually had to ask for gloves my final week, just days before I was tasked with cleaning shopping carts to make them sanitary for the town's tony clientele. One woman stopped and said, "Ohh, you have to do this." I smiled, chirped: "I don't mind. I want to keep things safe." Clearly we were entering a nightmare, where no one was safe. The long rows of shoppers on my final day, March 13, filled me with such dread that I was sick at my stomach by nightfall. I quit the next day, even though I could not afford the loss of wages. I knew my life mattered more than $80 a week.

Stores are stepping up in various ways - enforcing social distancing, doing senior shopping hours, spraying down counters and putting in sneeze guards. I appreciate all of that, and perhaps if all that had been implemented a month ago I would not have quit so fast. But it does not take a scientist to realize how much in danger the grocery store worker is. Unlike his medical worker counterpart, the grocery clerk is not decked out in PPE, even PPE he had to fight for, clean himself or even make himself. The grocery worker, most managers will insist, is the front line of their PR campaign to Not Scare Customers and Keep Them Coming Back.

The store I worked at had a few others in my age range, even older. I think of them every day when one of these stories emerges. I know how unsafe any store is right now, the same stores I must go to if I want to eat. This is why I argue that immediately, grocery clerks who want to take time off til the virus has passed be allowed to do so with pay. Those who stay should be given hazard pay - double pay - so as much as $20-$30/hour. Then they should be outfitted in masks, gloves, shields, etc. NONE of this is too much. FURTHER, their temperatures should be taken before their shifts and on one of their breaks; then the manager can sign off. Further, grocery stores must take temperatures and provide masks to every single customer.

The cashier, if she's lucky, makes $15/hour. I made $11. Some people in the country make about $9. Even full-time this is not a living wage. Everyone is surviving, not thriving. The least their managers - at Fresh Market, Stop 'n Shop, Safeway, ShopRite, Walgreen's, CVS, etc. - can do is everything I have mentioned. I was told that Covid sufferers would get two weeks paid time off. Yes, this is, sadly, better than some are being offered but it is laughable. If a senior such as myself contracts Covid-19 we may well end up in a ventilator. If we end up in a ventilator, she may not emerge from the hospital at all. Two weeks? That is enough time to send chills through the hearts of my friends and family and arrange for my will to be notarized.

Ball's in your court, Corporate America. If you don't care about people's health, you may want to think about the flurry of lawsuits that will make your head spin once half the grocery store work force has perished.

May they rest in peace.