When I started my job back in April 2019, I had no idea (well, none of us had any idea) that a year later our economy and everything else would suffer under the hands of a Covid-19 pandemic. I remember sitting at my kitchen table with my Mum one day before work and she asked:
"Has this been labelled a pandemic yet?" I just shrugged. A few days later and it had been officially labelled a pandemic. Little did I know though that things were about to get worse from there on.....
March 2020: Every single day coming into work was filled with dread and fear of the unknown. This was before people started wearing masks, but the odd customer would come in with a scarf wrapped around their nose and mouth. On a normal day, a customer wouldn't mind you standing extra close to them while you packed the stock on the shelf beside them, but since Covid-19 had hit Ireland, people literally jumped away from you. It felt very strange, but people were scared and that's understandable, but we were fearful too. As the fear was rising more and more everyday, it drew in more crowds of customers who wanted to stock up as much as possible, pay for their goods and return to the safety of their houses. It was frightening to be packing in the aisle especially when there was people dotted on every single inch of the aisle. Sometimes it got so crowded in the aisles that we would have to leave for a little to take a breather and return a few minutes afterwards when the crowds died down. I'm quite an observative person so it was quite visible to see how uneasy people were when doing their shopping. Eyes were darting all over the place to see where one could step that wasn't next to a stranger, families flocked together closely and battled their way through crowds to get their hands on the goods they needed. It was chaos, but that was just the beginning.
I remember packing my aisle one day and I was stocking up the fish section where all the tinned mackerel and sardines are. We call it box-packing; where we pack the stock on the shelves in their own boxes and it's only a matter of tearing off the top half of cardboard or peeling off the plastic so customers can take the stock out. I had just packed a full case of small tinned fish and placed it on the shelf (there was a gap meaning the shelf was empty for that particular stock), turned my back for 5 seconds to grab another box and when I turned back around again, the box of fish had disappeared, whisked away in a trolley by a middle aged man. I stood there thinking "wow, the full box?! Did he really need them all? Someone else will probably be asking for them later...". People were even taking the full boxes off our delivery cages before we even packed them; it was insane!
Toilet paper, hand sanitisers, soap and a long list of other essentials became treasure, they were known as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Deliveries were big and everyday we would walk into the warehouse and witness how many cages we would have to pack and it really took a toll on us; we were tired and burned out and so many other emotions mixed together. We were packing the shelves yes, but it was keeping the shelves packed that was near impossible. Once you pack one thing it's gone in a matter of seconds and it got to the point where our normal 3pm - 10pm shift wasn't giving us enough time to pack our deliveries. A few days before St Patrick's Day, four co-workers and I were put on night shifts from the hours of 10pm until 7am in order to gain some control back over stocking the shelves again. The hours were long and we managed to pack some of the shelves again, but of course not all the gaps were filled, but we tried our best especially with the tinned food aisles and the toilet paper aisle. Our break times were 2am - 3am and in that hour we had wished we were at home in our own beds, sleeping, but then we realised we weren't alone in wishing that.
There were other retail workers most likely doing the same thing as us, the nurses and doctors in the hospitals all over the world who were treating Covid-19 cases and so many other frontline workers who worked through the long nights. My days felt long and short at the same time; getting home from work at 07:30am and even though I felt tired, there was still that restless feeling laying deep inside me that turned from dormant to active pretty fast. 9am - 10am I would be lucky enough to let sleep take over my body and then in the hours of 4:30pm - 5pm I would eventually awake from my slumber, get food and prepare myself for another night of packing. Our night shifts ended on 7am March 17th 2020; St Patrick's Day. A day that we all were looking forward to, a day that should have had a parade and drinking in the pubs, but everyone remained indoors, the streets were dead. One day off to gain back my strength before plunging back into my normal 3pm - 10pm shift and I knew for a fact that one day was not enough to regain what energy I had left behind in my aisle 11 during the nights previous. I remember waking up on March 18th 2020 at 2pm; I had slept through my 10am alarm and I had to get ready for work, catch a bus and then walk the rest of the way to work all in the space of an hour. I was a zombie walking into work, my eyes still heavy with sleep and I was begging that the next few days would go by fast so I could have my two days off.
Highlights (well, not really):
1. packing, packing, more packing and...oh! Packing!
2. Bouncing between tills and the shop floor (getting till trained in order to help till staff reduce the waiting time in queues)
3. Night shifts (10pm - 7am) and longer day shifts (3pm - 10pm or 1pm - 10pm or 12pm - 10pm)
4. Tiredness, tiredness, more tiredness and oh? Did I mention tiredness?
5. New phrases of "Ah sure, we work together, we might as well go down together too", "Sorry, can you please stand behind the green line?" and "Sorry, can you stand back there a little, please?"
6. Wearing a mask with glasses (oh my god....the fogging)
7. This one was a personal highlight for me, but I was asked could deposits be put on hand sanitisers? *shrugs* Like I said previous, hand sanitisers were like bottles of gold.
All in all, we managed to somehow get through it, but one thing for sure, I really hope something like that never happens again.
Just goes to show that not all heroes wear capes; they wear a supermarket uniform, a Bus Eireann shirt or a doctors/nurses uniform.
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