1
THE NEWDRILL
HAZARDPAYI
hate to be like this, but my commute
is wonderful now. It takes me fifteen
minutes to drive to work, at the Stop &
Shop in Howard Beach. Normally, it’s
at least half an hour. This is my first day
off in three weeks. I’ve been working in
the grocery business for more than thirty
years. I started as a cashier and worked
my way up to bookkeeper. Grocery work-
ers have always been treated like trash.
You can go into a bank and wait on the
line, and nobody will say a word. You
have two people on a line in the super-
market, and holy hell breaks loose.
I’m fifty-two. I have three children. I
have my little one at home. She’s twenty-
two. And a pit bull named Mookie. I grew
up in Malverne, went to St. Agnes. I had
my associate’s degree in theatre. I wanted
to be an actor on TV. Still do! But, you
know, life happens. Waldbaum’s was down
the block from where I lived. That was
my first job. We weren’t rich. I had to pay
for the car. I had to pay insurance. And
then you just get caught up, and full-time
came around, and I did it.
Things got busier here at the end of
February, and then it just got really, re-
ally crazy. One day I’ll never forget: I
got in at six, and I heard a lot of noise
outside. When the doors opened, they
came in like banshees. Ten minutes after
six, the checkout girl was on a register
with her line literally down the fro-
zen-food aisle. I went to help. It was like
that supermarket show where they just
throw everything into the wagon with
no thinking. Water was the biggest thing.
I don’t understand. People were buying1
SKETCHPADBYEDWARD STEED
CORONACUPBOARD :DAY 20wagons full of water. Three hundred
dollars on the self-checkouts! They were
calling people from all departments to
come up and bag. The empty shelves!
You can’t buy a can of tuna fish, there’s
no Chef Boyardee—things that you nor-
mally wouldn’t want to buy. For two
weeks, it was Thanksgiving, Christmas,
and a snowstorm all together, times ten.
We didn’t have gloves, we didn’t have
Plexiglas at that point. It was just: We
gotta get the customers out. We got
beaten up but we came together. These
are times that none of us have ever seen,
but we knew what we had to do. Now
we have Plexiglas. We use only every
other register. We have tape on the floor
six feet apart, where people should be
standing. They’re trying to get us masks.
In the beginning, we were not allowed
to wear masks. They didn’t want the cus-
tomers to feel intimidated.
I wing it. To be honest, when every-
body was staying home at first, I was
pissed. I wanted to stay home. But then
I said, “Chris, really? You have a mort-
gage, you have bills.” I’m thankful that
I have a job. I go in now at four in the
morning, so I get up at ten to three. I’m
exhausted. I interact with well over a
hundred people each day, between em-
ployees, customers, venders. Some days,
you can’t hide. Yesterday was so busy, it
actually aggravated me. I’m starting to
think people feel immune in the store.
I have my Clorox wipes. I wipe down
my keyboard, my mouse, my stapler,
adding machine, the pen, any drawer
that I will use with a handle, the phone,
the desk—everything I touch. My hands
are killing me they’re so dry. I don’t wear
eyeliner anymore, because I’m always
afraid it’s gonna run and my fingers are
always near my eyes.
Our union and Stop & Shop have
worked together. If you do test positive,
or you have to be quarantined, you’ll be
paid for the two weeks. It’s pretty good.
God forbid it goes longer than that—
then you’ll have to start dipping into
personal time. If you leave to take care
of a family member, you won’t be paid.
But we’re getting a ten-per-cent pay in-
crease. I guess some people call it haz-
ard pay. Before, nobody ever, ever said
thank you. When somebody says thank
you now, you really know they mean it.
—Christine Merola
(as told to Zach Helfand)“absolute best.” By then, my heartbeat
seemed louder than the doctor’s voice.
I scroll through the photos of my fa-
ther on my phone. I need to arrange for
a veteran’s funeral for him, but that may
not happen for weeks, even months. I
am hoping that, in Heaven, Dad has
read my last text: “You were always there
for me.” In this life, he never had the
chance to open it.
—Victor Zapana, Jr.