| Jaicee said: I'm a grocery store worker. I bag your groceries, do carry-outs, collect carts from the parking lot, clean the windows and the ledges and the door handles, sweep the store, clean your shit off the bathroom floor (women's and men's), take the trash to receiving to be dumped, take the bags in the "recycling" bin back to receiving to be trashed too (store policy!), clean up spills, put away items that customers abandon, help people find their way around the store, have our affluent customers who make at least triple my income get upset with me because they didn't read their coupons, do other people's jobs for them because they were too lazy and selfish to bother, get talked down to by a new guy from Boratistan who blew in recently and seems to think he owns the place, and other fun stuff like that. This has been my job since...way too many years ago now. Anyway, they decided to give me a $2 an hour pay raise, along with all the store employees, back in late March for working a public-facing job during a pandemic. They called it "thank you pay". Now they're taking that pay raise away starting this week because apparently the pandemic is over now...even though coronavirus cases here in the U.S. state of Texas are still on the rise? Also, I still have to wear a mask all day at the store, get a daily temperature check before starting, follow the little arrows down each aisle, stand on the little social distancing stickers when picking up a drink for my lunch break, and fill in for the cart sanitizing people when they go on their lunch breaks, so apparently the execs don't think the pandemic is over enough to eliminate any of that stuff, just over enough to cut my pay back to $9.39 an hour. Is this fair? |
Yeah. Here it became a ritual for some to applaud at a given time the work of the "essential workforce". And I think this is so wrong. If we appreciate the work of all the people doing everyday shit that keeps society rolling, we should pay fairly. But all thta happens is a bit of clapping their hands.
I am sure the CEOs will get a pay raise, because "they brought the company through the crisis". But all these workers will be getting the short end of the stick again and again.
I think our society has a very twisted view on which jobs are how important. At least if we look at the payment. The most essential jobs are usually the ones paid the least and having the worst working conditions. And that is true with or without a pandemic.
