Grocery store, during the holiday season, consumers are rightly looking for a ‘normal’ holiday season. For many, that means big family dinners and Black Friday shopping. Retail and service workers have been working to keep shelves full and customers happy since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Life at the front was extremely stressful for these workers. 카지노사이트

As a result, they have been identified as “essential workers”, providers of essential services who work closely with customers and colleagues.

But unlike healthcare workers, grocery store workers had no prior experience or training fighting infectious diseases. At the start of the pandemic, the public celebrated grocers.

They were hailed as “heroes” who risked their lives to fight for the good of their local communities. Billboards and the evening news reminded people to be kind and compassionate towards store employees. Large supermarket chains initially offered their employees a “hero bonus”, but this soon disappeared.

Many grocery store workers quickly felt forgotten as businesses and customers adjusted to the new normal

Customer Conversations

Not surprisingly, customer hostility plays a significant role in the mental health of grocery store workers. Over time, shoppers have become increasingly rude, to the point where interactions with customers today are often confrontational and sometimes violent.

More than half of the grocery store workers we’ve heard from believe they’ll be verbally threatened by an angry customer at some point during the pandemic.

Employees often rely on customers to follow basic public health rules and conduct themselves in a civilized manner. Many lack management support to enforce public health guidelines to protect them, their families, colleagues and customers. 온라인카지노사이트

Add to that the holiday stress and you have more

The stressful situation for grocers is expected to intensify in the coming months. The National Retail Federation forecasts a busy holiday shopping season. It could even dwarf last year’s highs despite rising inflation and supply constraints. This is against the background of the growing number of COVID-19 cases across the country. And since Nov. as of October 24, 2021, less than 63% of the eligible US population was still fully immunized. We believe that no employee, material or not, should choose between paying and risking their health and well-being. As shoppers flock to the stores this holiday season to find the perfect gift for loved ones or ingredients for a family favorite recipe, making individual choices and following local safety guidelines can also help retailers navigate a safer and happier holiday season.

Anxiety, Depression and Stress

Grocery store workers who believed their workplace was safe placed a high priority on enforcing safety protocols around customer behavior. For example, our study found that grocery store workers’ sense of security tripled when they believed store managers had clear policies requiring customers to wear masks and observe social distancing. Employees who felt safe at work had significantly fewer mental health symptoms than who felt unsafe.

We asked grocery store workers to rate their sense of safety in the workplace, both in terms of their ability to protect themselves and the extent to which management has prioritized their personal safety. Overall, about 60% of the 3,000 employees we spoke to felt generally safe at work. The two most important factors explaining the high rates of mental illness among grocery store workers were the perceived lack of effective workplace safety measures and the lack of enforcement of store policies such as mask use and social distancing. 바카라사이트