Sad to say I'm facing making this decision right now...
I work in grocery and managed to survive this long by being an 'essential worker', but now am being told to wear a face mask while I work. This is the point where I can't give anymore.
Grocery is a labor job, you lift and move cases of all weights all day, stooping, bending, reaching while holding weight, sweeping, cleaning. It's work, and the kind of work you need to breathe clearly for. Case of water? 40lbs. Pork loin? 70-90lbs
Boss is asking no questions and offering no assistance, just go along with it or fuck off.
Now the burden is on me to present my case for furlough, leave of absence, paid vacation or something. My less independent minded colleagues are already suffering under these things, constantly taking them off to breath, rub their ears or defog their glasses, completely undermining their purported effectiveness.
Noone is talking about how masks increase the liklihood of getting ill from wearing these things all goddamn day while trying bust ass for the average frightened, ignorant customers.
In fact I've been told that it's our customers who have demanded this new policy with no regard for the consequences.
Faced with these pressures I have no choice but to try and survive a few weeks without work until the general populace gets fed up enough with this destructive hysteria to demand real change. At this point, refusing to be subjected to this harmful humiliation is the only productive thing I have to offer now.
Wearing a mask when you aren't around other people is stupid and detrimental to health, not helpful. If you are stocking where there are no customers and you know there won't be, then you shouldn't have to wear a mask.
You also could get a mask with a exhalation . It will ease half your breathing, and actually the part where your lungs aren't as strong. Those don't protect others as well though but your boss won't realize that.
Thin paper masks are less effort to breath through than the thicker polypropylene ones. They are a little less durable though.
Also you can work slower. Your boss required you to wear a mask so he should deal with the consequences. He should and probably has calculated to some extent that less work will get done because of it. If not it should be demonstrated. Work no faster than you are able to work while wearing it. That's just basic safety advise.
Appreciate the tip about exhalation vented masks. To clarify, this store does stocking and receiving during business hours, on the sales floor so avoidance is slim to impossible. As in they dump anywhere from 3 to 6 pallets in the produce section and attempt to break them down and stock while people shop.
Despite my tenure they reject most of my ideas on how to run things. For example dumping pallets on the sales floor instead of the receiving dock.
These fools used to pile cardboard onto flat top carts and attempt to make it across the store to the bailer. I taught them to use shopping carts instead, as it contained the mess and the carts were needed for other things besides garbage. That process took years, and now they are hardcore stuck on it.
I've known shopping carts are more dirty on average than toilet seats for some time however, so I devised a better method: Use the largest boxes of the day to hold all the broken cardboard. These self righteous nonces still painstakingly pick each broken down box out of the shopping carts to throw them away, even as I walk up next to them, dump my box in 2 seconds and away. Meanwhile they are grabbing filthy warehouse boxes by hand from a bloody filthy shopping cart!
The indignity of being ruled by idiots, normally a forgettable burden, has become dangerous to my well being.
As in all colds and flu....some get it, some dont...We all soldier on, comrade.
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