SHANA GAINES, STORE MANAGER AT WB LIQUORS, HOUSTON
I’ve been at the company for three years now.
Work has changed — we see our customers come in early during the week versus how, before, they used to come in on the weekend. Now they buy more products so they don’t have to come out as much, so they can stay home and help flatten the curve.
We modified our hours. Before, we closed at 9, but now we close at 6:30. The curbside is new. That’s something that we’ve started, and you can also call ahead.
We just do what we can for our customers. We have increased our cleaning. We now wear face masks and gloves, whereas before we didn’t do that.
My family, they’re very, very nervous — me being out all the time, and then them staying at home. And when they ask me what work’s like, I tell them it’s different because we’re not able to interact.
We’re used to interacting with our customers. And now, it’s kind of like they come in, they know exactly what they want, they get it and they leave. It’s not like it used to be before, where they walk around the store, they browse around. Now, they go get exactly what they want and they leave. There’s hardly any communication between customers amongst themselves. Because everyone is so fearful. It’s odd to watch.
So what we do here is we smile. We still try to talk to them, we try to engage in conversation even though we can clearly see they just want to get in and out. We went from giving hand shakes and elbows to now we do air high fives from a distance.
So it’s definitely changed.