Grocery workers have new safety fears after shooting
If an active shooter barged into the King Soopers store in Thornton where Marc Stout works, would the 58-year-old part-time employee unload a display of avocados on the floor hoping to trip up the gunman?
No, that would happen only in the movies, he concluded.
Would he hide, barricading himself somewhere in the store? Would he approach the shooter? Throw trash cans? Could he protect others?
“It sounds silly, but these are the scenarios that ran through my mind,” Stout said. “You try to plan for it, but I don’t think there’s really ever a plan for something like that. A couple of us employees were talking today about how we could barricade ourselves in the refrigerator and pray we’re safe in there.”
After a year in which grocery store workers were heralded as essential heroes, putting their health on the line to make sure their communities were fed during a historic pandemic, Stout and other Coloradans who work in supermarkets were forced to reevaluate their job safety again this week after a mass shooting at a King Soopers in Boulder left 10 dead.
Stout became a King Soopers associate about a year ago after COVID-19 caused his usual sports radio and broadcast jobs to dry up. Figuring a grocery store would be
a steady job during the pandemic, Stout signed on to help fulfill online orders at a King Soopers that sits about 500 yards from where he lives. He was working Monday afternoon as rumors of the Boulder tragedy traveled around his store. When Stout worked Tuesday and Wednesday, he said the market was noticeably less busy and somber.
“There was a palpable mood of concern,” he said.
A customer asked Stout on Wednesday whether he knew where the evacuation routes were, which he then pointed out to her. He had gone through activeshooter training at the grocery store, but he wondered how much would stick if — God forbid — he ever needed it.
“You watch it. You understand it. You log it,” Stout said. “And you never expect it to happen.”
Already afraid
Kim Cordova, president of Local 7 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents King Soopers employees among 22,000 members in Colorado and Wyoming, said some grocery store workers were afraid to go to work before the fatal shooting.
“They’ve been through so much through COVID,” Cordova said. “We’ve been dealing with a real uptick in aggressive and violent behavior from the general public. Slapping. Pushing. We’ve been pushing for armed security in the store. We’ve been worried something like this was going to happen. Workers are terrified over this.”
Cordova and Kelli McGannon, spokeswoman for King Soopers, said the grocery chain’s employees across the state were being offered options to access mental health care in the wake of the shooting.
King Soopers stores, particularly in Boulder, have extra security personnel on hand this week, McGannon said. She didn’t know whether they were armed.
“We’re heartbroken,” McGannon said. “Despite being a large company, it’s a tight-knit employee group. In the days since the shooting, we’re learning about all the heroic acts from customers, associates and first responders and we are forever grateful for everyone who so bravely responded to protect our associates and customers.”
When Tracy Nixon, 51, heard fellow Instacart shopper Lynn Murray was a victim in the shooting, the Thornton resident wanted to help.
With the permission of Murray’s family, Nixon set up a GoFundMe and made Murray’s husband the beneficiary.
The GoFundMe had raised more than $61,000 on Thursday with Instacart donating $50,000 to the cause.
Nixon said she’s in and out of grocery stores in north Denver every day shopping for customers who use Instacart to deliver their food. After Monday’s shooting, Nixon described the atmosphere in her usual stops as “sobering.”
Flower displays with the victim’s names on them greeted King Soopers customers as they entered. Foot traffic was down.
“It can bring a tear to your eye,” Nixon said. “Who thought that where you consider your safe place would turn into a mass shooting? It’s made me be more self-aware of how to get out of any store I’m in. Who thought going to a grocery store would be the last day of your life?”
The loss of normalcy
Galina Ciboch, 41, said she loves being an Instacart shopper but acknowledges doing the job the past year has felt daunting.
“It definitely feels like we’re putting our lives at risk, even more so now,” Ciboch said. “You’re going into the store not knowing if this is the day I’m going to bring COVID home. Now with this, it’s like nowhere seems safe. Movie theaters, schools, churches, concerts and now grocery stores. It feels like we’re putting ourselves out on the front lines.”
Being from New York and living through the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and then 9/11, Ciboch said she already walks through life on the lookout, checking stores for emergency exits and keeping her eyes open for suspicious behavior.
Perusing grocery stores the past few days, Ciboch has felt even more uneasy and, judging by the lack of patrons around her, she thinks she’s not alone.
Despite the circumstances, Nixon, Stout and Ciboch aren’t deterred from doing the jobs they all said they loved.
Stout said reading about the victims of the shooting hit close to home because he, too, works with a range of age groups from teens to retirees. He could see his coworkers reflected in the obituaries he read.
“The snapshot of the deaths — the 10 deaths, which is so unfortunate — is a snapshot of my King Soopers,” Stout said. “It’s an entire slice of life working at your local grocery store keeping you fed.”
Stout said he doesn’t want people to have to deal with beefed-up security to pick up a gallon of milk.
“It would take the humanity out of going to the supermarket to have more security,” Stout said. “Where’s the one place you could go during this whole thing? The grocery store. I would never want to take that normalcy away. Can you imagine going through a metal detector at the King Soopers? I don’t want that kind of lifestyle.”