‘People come in and say thank you — and it gives me such a lift’

Carmel Kelly works in SuperValu, Gort, Co Galway

I started here 18 years ago, and I have always worked on the tills. I’d say I know about 90pc of the people who shop here.

I have a lot of what I’d call my own customers now — people who would queue up to be served by me, and I love that.

People would often ask me to say a prayer for them if they had some little worry in their lives. And I always do. It’s just the unknown side of all this I find difficult. Some days are tough, but when people come in and say thank you, it gives me such a lift.

When this first happened, people went mad. It was worse than Christmas Eve. And now things have settled. We’ll keep doing our jobs as best we can and make people feel secure that they can get their food and essentials.

A lot of people are afraid to come out shopping, but we chat with them and try and put them at ease and keep their spirits up. And they are helping us, too.

People ask me am I worried about coming in to work, but I’m not. The owners, Peter and Fiona, are very good to us. They are protecting us and minding us. Some of my regular customers would be older people who come shopping on a Friday, usually. A couple of them said to me they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to come any more and I said, ‘Lads don’t panic. Either ring me or Peter and we’ll get your shopping delivered to you’. We won’t see anybody hungry.

We have a great team here with most of the same girls working here for over 10 years.

We have good craic, and we still have a laugh every day, which keeps us going.

That’s what makes the difference.