The grocery store worker
One of a series of stories looking at the new normal for our neighbours whose jobs are considered essential
KITCHENER — Alan Sapp was one of the first employees to wear a cloth mask to work when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The produce department worker at Zehrs in Kitchener’s Stanley Park mall said his wife made three for him. As an essential worker and public transit user, Sapp did not want to take any chances.
“There is this prevailing attitude that this will go away, but it is more deadly than we first thought,” he said.
“I’m not young, cavalier or immortal.” Sapp, in his early 60s, stocks produce on shelves, answers customer questions about produce and works in the grocery store’s back room.
He said he was impressed with the store’s early adoption of public health protocols, but like many other workplaces early in the pandemic, it was slow to acquire a stock of masks for employees.
Now the Zehrs location has a good supply of personal protective equipment, Sapp said, and employees can choose whether they want to wear masks and gloves.
The days of panic-buying groceries are past and Sapp said his shifts are more predictable and his job — stocking produce aisles with lettuce, salads and other vegetables — has not changed. But how he does his work has changed in subtle ways.
Sapp said he is more mindful of the space around him. He wears a mask. He reckons he has washed his hands more than he ever has in his life.
In general, he said customers have been generous with giving him space in the store’s sometimes cramped aisles.
“I hear more people say ‘thank you,’” Sapp said.
“I think for the most part people wait until I move out of the way to get something.”
But every now and then someone will reach around Sapp and get a bit too close for comfort as he stocks a shelf with bagged salad.
He doesn’t try to worry about whether he will catch the virus from someone at his workplace.
“I would find it too draining and debilitating,” he said.
“Everyone has their own way of dealing with this fear. I’m just going to go in, do my work, and then I’m going to take off.”
Sapp worries more about getting sick on the bus he takes to work where he said it is difficult to maintain a two-metre distance from other transit riders.
He worries more about his son who lives in Waterloo and who he hasn’t seen in a long time.
Sapp works at the grocery store part-time year round, and is also a drama teacher at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate. He said he worries about the fate of the performing arts, both at his school and in his community.
He has seen an uptick in customers wearing masks, but he hopes it will become a norm in public as the economy reopens and more people head outside of their homes and back to a semblance of normal life.
“The mask is there to protect others,” he said.