Most of you know that I work for our emperor, Walmart. During this craze, I’ve seen so much both of good and bad. People have been thanking me, but honestly, I’m just doing my job. The real heroes are the truckers and suppliers who are working overtime to get us the items. But I digress.
So this whole thing started a couple of months ago, when I could see a run on pasta, but oddly enough, not pasta sauce. So I did my shopping and went back to normal. This whole thing has been kind of nice for our store, because topstock was getting out of hand and our back room was incredibly full. But then fast forward to the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone and their dogs were out shopping. The shelves were more empty than I had ever seen them, and a general sense of panic had filled the store. I’ll admit, it got me, too. I even heard of a customer who stole a packet of vegetables out of someone else’s cart because the shelves were empty. And that a fight had to be broken up.
But we just worked as best as we could, getting stuff on the shelf as quickly as possible. Honestly, the whole last week has been a blur because of how crazy it’s been. Our store manager has been on the floor everyday, working right alongside us. They’ve had department managers and even automotive workers out on the floor stocking. It was all very anxiety inducing. (I myself had 3 attacks in the course of one week).
Finally, things started to seem like they were calming down. The store figured out ways to make people less panicky and with all of the doomsday buyers finished, all that was left were the regular shoppers. The shelves were still empty, but at least we had some kind of calm in the store. With the reduction of store hours, we even had a chance to get the shelves filled without someone taking the product in a heartbeat. Things were looking up.
And then as most of you are aware, we had a 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Utah. I was stocking the bake aisle, and luckily nothing that fell off the shelf was going to break. (it was a different story for the peanut butter aisle.) I was anxious, but was able to calm myself down. I remember there was mass confusion about what we needed to do. Fifteen minutes later, the store was evacuated, but we as employees were to wait to see what was going to happen. So we kept working. When the store re-opened, people were back in droves.
While we didn’t see too much panic, there was still some sort of urgency in the air. I am eternally grateful for the advice given by the prophets to have everything in order. Although I still had some residual panic from the customers, I knew that we had everything we needed and didn’t need to worry. Needless to say, it’s been a hard few weeks.
I feel for those young people who were working at places like my friend at Universal and Disney. They’re out of a job for the foreseeable future. As many of you don’t know, all during this year, I had been feeling burned out and was looking for new work using my degree. Rejection letter after rejection letter came to my inbox, and it became fruitless. When all of this started, I thanked God for helping me to have a job that has security in times such as these, where I can still work and bring home the much-needed paycheck for our family.
While we’re not out of the woods yet, I feel like things are getting back to normal. Stop panic buying and let us do our jobs. We can only get back to normal by working together.
So this whole thing started a couple of months ago, when I could see a run on pasta, but oddly enough, not pasta sauce. So I did my shopping and went back to normal. This whole thing has been kind of nice for our store, because topstock was getting out of hand and our back room was incredibly full. But then fast forward to the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone and their dogs were out shopping. The shelves were more empty than I had ever seen them, and a general sense of panic had filled the store. I’ll admit, it got me, too. I even heard of a customer who stole a packet of vegetables out of someone else’s cart because the shelves were empty. And that a fight had to be broken up.
But we just worked as best as we could, getting stuff on the shelf as quickly as possible. Honestly, the whole last week has been a blur because of how crazy it’s been. Our store manager has been on the floor everyday, working right alongside us. They’ve had department managers and even automotive workers out on the floor stocking. It was all very anxiety inducing. (I myself had 3 attacks in the course of one week).
Finally, things started to seem like they were calming down. The store figured out ways to make people less panicky and with all of the doomsday buyers finished, all that was left were the regular shoppers. The shelves were still empty, but at least we had some kind of calm in the store. With the reduction of store hours, we even had a chance to get the shelves filled without someone taking the product in a heartbeat. Things were looking up.
And then as most of you are aware, we had a 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Utah. I was stocking the bake aisle, and luckily nothing that fell off the shelf was going to break. (it was a different story for the peanut butter aisle.) I was anxious, but was able to calm myself down. I remember there was mass confusion about what we needed to do. Fifteen minutes later, the store was evacuated, but we as employees were to wait to see what was going to happen. So we kept working. When the store re-opened, people were back in droves.
While we didn’t see too much panic, there was still some sort of urgency in the air. I am eternally grateful for the advice given by the prophets to have everything in order. Although I still had some residual panic from the customers, I knew that we had everything we needed and didn’t need to worry. Needless to say, it’s been a hard few weeks.
I feel for those young people who were working at places like my friend at Universal and Disney. They’re out of a job for the foreseeable future. As many of you don’t know, all during this year, I had been feeling burned out and was looking for new work using my degree. Rejection letter after rejection letter came to my inbox, and it became fruitless. When all of this started, I thanked God for helping me to have a job that has security in times such as these, where I can still work and bring home the much-needed paycheck for our family.
While we’re not out of the woods yet, I feel like things are getting back to normal. Stop panic buying and let us do our jobs. We can only get back to normal by working together.
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