Restaurant and retail workers are eagerly returning to the job despite their concerns about COVID-19.
“I’m still nervous about the virus, but I’d take being nervous at work over being paranoid at home for a few more months,” said Danielle Edwards, a waitress at a restaurant and bar in north Georgia.
“I was excited to be back because I really needed the money. But it did make me nervous knowing I’d be serving people without knowing if they themselves had been taking precautions,” Edwards said.
She said that the restaurant has “been slammed every day since people want to go out” and that people have been giving “pity tips” because of it. She is grateful because when she lost her job, she had to use money from her savings and rely on her parents to get by. “If it hadn’t been for my parents, there’s no way I wouldn’t have gone into debt,” the 20-year-old college student said.
“I am excited to be making money again because I didn’t qualify for unemployment,” said Lindsey Wertz, who just recently got her job back at TJ Maxx in Indiana, Pennsylvania. The 21-year-old is more concerned that people are not going to abide by the new store policies that have been put into place than she is about getting the virus.
“We have to abide by the 6-foot rule, we have to wear masks, we have to clean down registers after every customer, we are only allowed four customers at a register at a time, and we are only allowed a certain number of people in the store at a time,” Wertz said.
She has heard from coworkers who got jobs at grocery stores while they were laid off that the attitudes customers have had are “insane” and that they feel like they don’t need to follow the store’s rules. However, despite the concerns, Wertz is ready to be back at work after not getting paid for weeks. She said that she didn’t qualify for unemployment and has been living off her school loans.
Another 21-year-old college student, Matt Zupon, was also excited to get his job back. His “chance of death [from the coronavirus] was lower than my ride to work,” said Zupon, who recently got his job back at a Staples in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
“Most people have been good about masks,” Zupon said. Although he received unemployment, he was “excited” to be back because he “needed money to live.”
There are millions of people who are willing to go back to work despite COVID-19 concerns but are not able to because they lost their jobs indefinitely. Sara, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles, is one of them. On March 21, Sara was permanently laid off from her job at Nissan. Despite her concerns about the coronavirus, she has been looking for a job to start immediately. “I want to go back to work, but finding work has been tough,” Sara said. She has been applying for jobs since being laid off but hasn’t been able to land one yet.
Sara also just heard back from the unemployment office, eight weeks after applying for unemployment. “Fortunately, I have a savings account, and the drink business I started is helping as well,” she said
There have been some groups who have stepped up to raise money for those like Sara who are still not employed. The Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a nonprofit group that works to help those employed in the restaurant industry, started the “Coronavirus Relief Effort” to help get money to restaurant workers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19.
“When we launched the relief fund, in two weeks, we received about 10,000 applications from restaurant workers from all over the country,” said Anthony Advincula, public affairs officer for the group. He said that the donations go straight to the workers and are normally a payment of $100 to $350. This is to help workers until they are able to get unemployment.
“Most of the workers need help with utility bills, cellphone, water bill, electricity, and some need help putting food on the table for their family,” Advincula said.
