Regulating ‘non-essentials’ males ‘essentials’ more dangerous
On July 24, the 蘑菇视频 published an article regarding concerns about the return to school and issues with rule-breakers in these odd times. I would like to write to you as an employee of an essential storefront.
I’ve worked at a Sheetz for a bit more than a year. We sell everything, snacks, freshly prepared food, alcohol, we’ve been in a weird spot during all of this. Business spiked when restaurants were limited to take out, because customers could still come inside to order due to our status as a storefront, and not a restaurant. We were short staffed before everything changed, and we still are now that things have been changed. This means that we don’t have the manpower to break up loiterers, or even suggest customers wear a mask.
While you and those in power addressed bars specifically, our customers come in close contact with one another; brushing shoulders as they wait for food, meeting casually in the parking lot for hours on end. The list goes on and on. There are no regulation regarding specifically to the type of location I work in, although the contact my customers have is more dangerous than what they’d have in bars in my opinion. That being said, this increase in traffic has led to some new regulars, mostly coming to my store because they can’t go to their first pick location.
I’m not writing to you with the intent of writing any great wrongs with society, I’d just like to suggest that my workplace became a much more hazardous area due to closures of “nonessential” businesses, and reopening these nonessential businesses may decrease the flow of nonessential traffic through “essential” businesses. If consumers had more options to choose from, it’d be more practical both to enforce the rules and to follow them.
Jeff Machosky
Smithfield