Column by Zachary Strauss
I’ve worked at the Kroger in Oxford since November of 2018. But I wasn’t expecting to work there during a pandemic.
When COVID-19 started going around, Kroger became a hotspot in Oxford. The store was always packed with people. In the beginning, many people panic-bought perceived essential items, like toilet paper, hand soap and hand sanitizer. The latter two we still have issues keeping on our shelves, when we manage to get any shipped to us at all. I’ve had to explain to people many times that we simply do not have this or that. Sometimes they complain to me as though I’m in charge of logistics and that I just need to work harder so the people can get their pasta here.
I work in the Pickup Department, so I basically find people’s groceries and bring them to their cars. The department, which was initially very small, has grown into a new behemoth. We've hired around twenty-five new people in the last few months to keep up with demand, and the company has dramatically increased the amount of orders we intake throughout the day, which was difficult given the amount of space we have.
We had trouble with space before the pandemic, so you can imagine how it was during the first few weeks. It’s been a process of moving things around, bringing in pallets from the back to place things on, moving refrigerators out on the sales floor, and even putting people’s things in the beer room. The department grows like a monster, adding more and more space and people.
Working at Kroger in the middle of a pandemic has been far from ideal. In the beginning, I thought it was only a matter of time before I caught COVID-19. I was going to be in an environment ripe with people, surrounded by customers in a tight, indoor space. Sure, the store began to take some precaution, doing more cleaning and making us wear facemasks now (although not the customers. Thanks for looking out for us, Corporate). But I thought that it was almost a guarantee that I’d get sick.
I don’t think I’ve caught it, surprisingly. Unless I had a very mild case and my immune system took it like a champ, I don’t think I did. I never would’ve guessed that in March when everything began to fall apart.
I grew to dislike my job more every time I went in. It wasn’t the stress of the added burden—I didn’t have to do much more than I was doing before. It was the people. We hired more and more people, and it became overwhelming. Too many people, too many cliques, too much everything.
I called off work because of my cough, which hasn’t gone away. I’ve noticed that I’ve started getting flu-like symptoms. I checked my temperature and it was 100.4 Fahrenheit, which is a low-grade fever. I really began to panic but managed to pull myself together and go to sleep. is slowly going back to normal. It is, but not as fast as some make it out to be. There’s still danger and death and pestilence, and we cannot forget this. Hopefully my journal provides some thoughts into my head during these early days, and maybe I had some of the same thoughts that you had, reader.
Diary:
March 18th
I’ve begun to get anxious about everything. And I very much don’t want to go to work tomorrow and I shouldn’t have taken the shift from someone because I really don’t want to go in there anymore. Oxford just got its first confirmed case but I’m positive there are more people who have it, just who haven’t been confirmed or aren’t showing symptoms.
I keep replaying this scene from Jurassic Park of all things. I read the book for my senior English class in high school. The scene is this: when things start crumbling at the park when the dinosaurs are breaking out, the team is unwilling to accept that the situation is out of control because the dinosaurs can’t breed. And when they type into the computer how many dinosaurs they believe there to be, the number pops back up, confirming that there are at-least that many dinosaurs. However, when they’re convinced to scan for a higher amount, it hits it again. And again. Over and over. We only have one confirmed case because of the amount of testing. If we tested more, or increased the number we were looking for, we’d find more. Just like in the book.
March 20:
I’m sick with something. I think it’s just allergies because it’s the beginning of spring, but I have a cough and that’s enough to make everyone around you duck and cover.
March 22:
Ohio is one state which took early action and closed down and is in the former group, which is beginning to re-open. This is interesting to see as it isn’t clear to me how this will play out. I graduated and will move on from Oxford and Miami and will probably lose touch with what happens here, but I won’t forget what we all went through.
March 23:
So I woke up feeling a little better. I checked my temperature and it’s back to being a more normal 98.8, which gave me a lot of relief. I went to Kroger to get some groceries, like water and soda, and general snacks, y’know, to keep morale up. Even a little bit of going outside helped a lot and I might go on a walk later, depending on how I’m feeling. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately, and I can’t really explain it.
March 26:
I have had to tell some of my family members that we shouldn’t meet in person for a while, just until things calm down a little. That’s always a little hard, because we do want to see each other.
March 29:
Spring break was certainly something. I was able to enjoy some fun in the sun in my room.
April 2:
Every time I go to work I get a little anxious. There are so many people at Kroger and I definitely come into contact with some of them. When I take orders out to people, I have had a few people not want to roll their windows down and prefer to have zero contact. It was a little off-putting at first, but I didn’t take offense to it. People just don’t want to get sick.
April 4:
The world is getting worse and the virus is spreading more. I know this won’t get better probably until June. I miss my mom. I miss my nephew dog.
May 28:
It’s been a while since I last wrote in this coronavirus journal. School overwhelmed my life and I lost track of many things, including this. But this provides me with an opportunity to reflect on what has happened since I last wrote, in the beginning of April. Almost two months have passed since then, yet not a lot has changed. The world is beginning to “re-open” in some areas and some places are having their infection rates lower. Some, however, are having theirs increase.
Ohio is one state which took early action and closed down and is in the former group, which is beginning to re-open. This is interesting to see because I'm not sure how this will play out. I graduated and will move on from Oxford and Miami and will probably lose touch with what happens here, but I won’t forget what we all went through.
I don’t know where I’m going now. I didn’t have a job lined up so I’m searching for one now, which would be difficult even without everything going on. There’s talk that there will be a recession soon and there's the large issue that is COVID-19. I’m unsure of what will happen. I just hope we all come out okay.