This pandemic has been rough and hard and relentless and brutal and eye opening. It has really been so many things. And while front line workers in hospitals, and in pharmacies and in doctor's offices and school teachers and so many more people I'm sure I am forgetting have been going through this, have been dealing with it up close and personal, and deserve every single bit of praise they are receiving, I do want to give a shout out to another group of people who have been doing their jobs all along, yet do not seem to get the attention.

Those people are grocery store workers. And I am not talking about the pharmacy, again give them all the praise, or the people administering vaccines, they are truly heroes, I am talking about the people that stock the shelves, that work the checkout, that clean the store and everything in it. I'm talking about the hourly employees and the GM's and the store managers. They have been doing it the whole time. They have seen the worst of the worst. They have had to deal with some miserable people who I have seen shout at them for simply asking them to wear a mask. Grocery store employees deserve our praise as well. They had to deal with the toilet paper shortage at the start before any of us. I went to a Walgreens one day in Saint Louis when the shelves were being restocked with toilet paper, and people were pushing other people over, mainly the worker restocking the shelf, to get a roll of toilet paper. That is brutal. I cannot fathom how the workers dealt with this. They had to be a mix of scared, angry, annoyed and frustrated. I mean, we have relied on them to keep their shelves as stocked as possible. And when some of the stores did not have stuff, they had to deal with some miserable people, who were also scared themselves, yelling at them in their face. Then we had the mask mandates being established. I was, and still am, all for this. Some other people, not so much. Some people really skirt this rule, or choose to ignore it. I have encountered people being asked to leave a store because they have refused to wear a mask. I have seen grocery store workers being screamed at when they simply ask a customer to put their mask on. I have seen grocery workers scoffed at when they ask someone to put their mask on properly. They don't deserve that. They don't need to be yelled at or demeaned in that manner. Yet some people treat them that bad. Again, I have seen it in person. It is horrifying. But again, grocery workers have had to deal with this since last March. And, just for a second, imagine if they went on strike or refused to work or wanted to get some kind of better protection for themselves. People would have bashed them. We need grocery workers more than ever. We need them to survive. We need them to stock the shelves. We need them to scan our items. We need them to help us find stuff when we can't, or to let us know when they may be getting items in their stores. I have a totally newfound respect and admiration for grocery store workers. I will fully admit that I took them for granted before the pandemic. They just scanned my groceries and I was on my way. But now, since everything went down, they have had to deal with horrible people, low stock, frantic and scared shoppers and mean, unintelligent people, and they have done it with aplomb. I go to the store every Monday to get our groceries for the week, and today I just sat back and admired all the hard work they were doing. My local Aldi, and even more local Schnucks, had workers stocking shelves, had their lines moving quick and in order, were cleaning every surface in the store and helping people out when they needed it. It was a breath of fresh air.

Grocery workers deserve all the accolades, and I just wanted to let them know how much I appreciate their hard work, especially in the grim face of this horrific pandemic. Thank you for all you do. You are all truly indispensable.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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