Letter to RHU: Retail Hell Swine Flu

Hello RHU, let me start by saying a few things.

I'm 21 and I live at home doing daycare for my younger siblings and taking care of the house and pets so that my parents can afford to work full time and not have to pay for daycare etc.
My dad works at a well known heating and air conditioning wholesale supplier that's based here on the east coast and favors the colors black and yellow, and my mom works as a pharmacy tech in a well known drug store that favors the colors red and white.

Now, my dad's paycheck pays for our rent and our bills and my mom's paycheck covers things like food and other little necessities. We can't particularly afford for either of them to lose any work, but apparently customers don't care about that.

My mom's particular pharmacy is literally the only one left in the area that still has Tammiflu in stock and everyone including other companies like Wegmans, etc, are directing patients there. So my mom spend all day either at the register or on drive through taking scripts and handing out antibiotics and tammiflu, and the entire staff keeps huge containers of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes.

She comes home with horror stories every day of slimy scripts, people who are obviously very sick with the flu but aren't wearing a mask, people coughing and sneezing and wiping their noses and then trying to hand her credit cards or discount cards or scripts...or sneezing all over the counters and registers without even trying to cover their mouths and sending globs of snot and slobber all over the place. They go through a medium sized container of hand sanitizer every day and a container of disinfectant wipes every couple days. Fucking disgusting.

On my dad's side, he works the counter for their branch, and he has a dipshit boss to boot. In this kind of business, contractors are often older men who are relatively ignorant outside their field of work, the kind of generation that doesn't like doctors or dentists or anything like that and have a tendency to wander around with dirt and oil under their nails and all over their hands and arms and clothes. Very set in their ways...so this apparently makes it excusable for them to come in coughing and hacking and sneezing all over the counter and putting their filthy hands all over the merchandise when they're obviously sick, and my dad isn't a fan of doctors himself but he's not stupid either, not with my mom working as a pharmacy tech plus the fact that he used to be a chef and is very hygiene conscious for someone in his line of work. He does what he can, but his boss is just like his customers (only stupider) and they don't have things like disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer and his dumbass boss won't let him buy any for the store because it's a "waste of money".

And of course his boss, who leaves at least a half hour early every day get's all kinds of pissed off when my dad has to show up 10 or fifteen minutes late sometimes because of family emergencies and car problems, despite the fact that my dad regularly stays late to finish things and make up for getting in late and what does the boss do? He yanks all my dad's sick time without even telling him, so now we REALLY can't afford for him to get sick.

Let's add to that that our landlord got served with foreclosure papers on the house we're living in...oh wait, the papers showed up here and show he hasn't payed on the mortgage since September and has been getting warnings about this, and that he kept taking our rent without letting us know and, oh, not putting it towards the mortgage.

Now, I and my sister has swine flu and my brother who is a senior in high school is risking the school dropping his college classes for absences because he's staying home to help me even though he could catch it.

Happy fucking holiday season people. My heart goes out to everyone that relies on retail hell for their income and especially anyone that has to deal with sick customers that don't try not to spread their nasty ass germs and don't care if you can't afford to get sick. I don't work retail hell but my parents have enough horror stories to keep me away. I'll pass a few more gems on at some point.

In the mean time, good luck RHU.

Praying to every pagan god in existence that we all get through this swine flu shit and the holiday hell season intact.

~Red.

 

Comments

[Magical Shrimp]

Well, that's a real slice of hell. Maybe if people weren't such self-centered fucking slobs there wouldn't be a pandemic because the germs would be in the kleenexes at home instead of dripping off of credit cards. People suck.

[Spritzy]

ooh, good luck to you Red. You'll be in our thoughts.
I agree with Shrimp, if people were more germ courtious...and if companies didn't punish their associates for coming in sick there'd be less problems with the diseases spreading.
I swear if I ever catch the flu I AM going in to work sick and spreading it all over and honestly responding to anyone who asks that yes I am this year's Walking Death. If they want the store to remain plauge free then they can let us stay home without punishment.

[Jit]

I went into work with bronchitis and pnemonia for the four days I worked that I was contagious because our store doesn't allow us sick days. I'm pretty sure I got four or five other people sick. Sucks for our company. They should learn to give us sick days.

[Kat #2]

Good God, what the fuck is wrong with people? Hope everything turns out okay.

[Kat]

We have all these signs and stuff saying "If you're sick, stay home!", and yet so many retail/part-time/whatever jobs penalise you if you try to get off... which is especially ridiculous when you're in a job that sells FOOD, where you'd think they'd THROW you away from them if they thought you were sick :/ Grrr.

I hope things get better, man. That really is the pits...

[N/A]

People are morons. I've had the flu lately, just at the tail end of it now and 99% sure I'm not contagious because I haven't had a fever in 5 days but I'm still coughing. Anyway, we were basically totally out of food so I had to go out and get groceries. I used hand sanitizer before I went in, didn't touch anything I wasn't buying, and used the self check out so nobody else would have to touch my stuff. After I was done I wiped the cart down with one of the sanitizing wipes. All because I knew there was a very slight chance that I might still be contagious. I have to wonder why I bothered though given how many people were walking around openly coughing and sneezing in to their hands and fondling produce. I doubt I'll be eating any veggies that don't get peeled or cooked until spring.

[Ponytails]

Get over it, God!

[Matt]

My place of employment makes it REALLY hard to call off from work. You can't call off a day in advance, yet, it must be done at least 3 hours before the start of your shift...And lucky me, I had a shift at 10am. I tried calling at about 11 the previous night, but no. Apparently I was calling off a day in advance. So I had to drag myself out of bed at 6:30 to call in sick. I call, and the supervisor isn't there, so I am told to call back at 8...WTF? I set my alarm clock and call in, and I am told that I should've called in at least 3 hours in advance....HOW?

[twitter.com/flecks_flyer]

I haven't called into work yet, and I hope I don't have to for the sake of my fellow slaves, but working in a pharmacy, I figure its going to happen eventually. So far, I've been lucky enough to have missed the truly ill. I feel for you Red, and I hope your family makes it through the flu season relatively unscathed. Good luck. FF a.k.a. Pharmacy Psycho

[Katie]

I work as a cashier in a grocery store. I have a little bottle of hand sanitizer on my register at all times. I figure I am bound to get sick at some point with these idiots who come in sick or drag their sick kids in the store. One woman had to get EBT cash out of her card. Her daughter had been "so sick". But god forbid she should have to wait to get cash out than care about the welfare of her daughter.

[Kaelyn]

I only work one day a week since I have been in school full time, and sure enough after my shift I started getting sick. I now have almost lost my voice and can't afford to miss any school OR the one day I work! Now that I recall the day I remember this one lady sneezing in her hand and then lugging out a pocket full of change! And silly me didn't think to say anything about it because...what can you do when you have a long lineup full of customers??

[Hoffi]

There's something you could do about the foreclosure. Go talk to the bank, that you are willing to pay your rent directly to them and send your landlord the receipts instead of money.
The bank will probably prefer to get the money instead of a house, which is very hard to sell due to the bad economy.

I'm not sure if this is legally Ok, but the bank's legal department might give you an advice.

[Red]

Thanks for all the warm wishes everyone.
My mom used to be a paralegal so she's doing what she can talking to the bank and the landlord and scoping out other houses in the area.

So far (fingers crossed) no one else is down with the flu and we're hoping it stays that way. We're stocked on disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer at home now and using them obsessively to keep my parents from getting sick. So far it seems to be working. Here's to everyone making it through flu season intact.

[Retail Drone #37]

My work was thankfully handy with hand sanitizer. People are disgusting. My boyfriend is giving other people a run for his money. He will sneeze right in my face because he never knows he's going to sneeze.
Parents aren't any better when they never teach their children to cover their mouth when they cough.

I witnessed a young boy coughing all over this shelf of toys, without a parent in site. I swear I want to strangle those idiots. The parents I mean.

[Logan]

I used to work fast food. I rarely get sick, but when I do it hits me hard. The last time I had the flu bad for about a week, barely being able to get out of bed. The restaurant had a policy that you needed to call in sick at least 2 hours before your shift. Since I was scheduled for the lunch rush, I made a point to call in as early as possible so they would have ample time to try to get the shift covered. I set my alarm and called in 5 hours early figuring they would appreciate the extra warning. I found out later that the boss complained, because 'how do you know you are still going to feel sick 5 hours later'. I wish I would have known at the time. I would have waited til 5 minutes before my shift to call in just to be sure I was still sick.