Sales assistants in shops are significantly more likely to die from coronavirus than many other members of the population. In fact, believe it or not, they are even more likely to die from it than doctors, nurses and other health workers.
The Covid-19 death rate among male
shop workers is an incredible 75% higher than the general population. And it is
60% higher among female shop workers than the general population.
So obviously there is an urgent need
for social distancing and face coverings in shops to protect these workers from
the spread of coronavirus. New measures making face coverings compulsory in
England were introduced on Friday 24th July.
According to the Health Secretary Matt
Hancock: “We want to give people more confidence to shop safely and enhance
protection for those who work in shops. Both of these can be done by the use of
face coverings. Sadly, sales assistants, cashiers and security guards have
suffered disproportionately in this crisis.”
The new regulations will be made under
the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, with a maximum fine of £100 -
reduced to £50 if it is paid within 14 days. Children under 11 and those with
certain disabilities are exempt, similar to the rules applying to public
transport.
Do supermarket workers even care?
So we know that shop workers are at
much higher risk of coronavirus than the rest of the population. But do they
actually care? This brings me on to an experience I had earlier today in my
local branch of Aldi supermarket.
Regular readers of this blog will know
that I have experienced numerous customer service problems when shopping at
Aldi. OK, yeah I still shop there despite their awful customer service. But
only because of their cheap prices, and some of their products are
(surprisingly) of quite high quality.
But the customer service at Aldi
absolutely stinks.
You would think that in a busy
supermarket on a Sunday afternoon, staff would be wearing masks and carefully
socially distancing. But that is not the case, in my experience, whenever I visit
this store. In fact, it pains me to say it, but based on my experience in Aldi,
the staff are actually a lot worse at obeying social distancing rules than the
customers themselves!
I don't know what the cause is, but I
have definitely detected a very laissez-faire attitude to the dangers of
coronavirus shown by many supermarket staff across the board, and especially at
the cheaper supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl.
Maybe they are so busy with work that
they forget about the importance of social distancing; maybe it's bad
management; or maybe the workers just don't care!
I've detected this type of attitude
from supermarket staff on numerous occasions, across several different
supermarkets. But today, what I experienced at Aldi was particularly bad. I had been waiting
in the queue with my basket of shopping. I was keeping 2 metres away from the
people in front and behind me in the queue.
Then when it was my turn to get served
I noticed that two members of supermarket staff were standing exactly where I
needed to be to pack my shopping. They were chatting away merrily and refused
to budge, even though they could clearly see I was waiting to pack my groceries.
They refused to move out of the way.
So I stood there and waited. I refused to pack my shopping. I just stood still, glaring at them. And STILL they didn't move, but just stood right next
to where I needed to pack my bags, talking about some trivial non-work-related
rubbish.
In the end, the cashier who had
scanned all my groceries had to ask her colleagues to move out of the way so that I
could pack my bags.
Apart from the utter rudeness of this
behaviour, it just got me wondering how stupid some shop workers are. Maybe
they actually wanted to get coronavirus so they can have some paid time off
work?! Maybe, they thought this deadly virus couldn't affect them? And maybe
they were right.
Let’s face it, even if these two young
women had caught Covid-19, at a young age it is extremely unlikely it would
kill them anyway.
But it could kill one of their older
colleagues, or the elderly customer standing behind me in the queue.
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