Anxious, resentful, essential: Charlotte retail and office workers confront coronavirus
After the coronavirus pandemic hit, one Charlotte-area FedEx employee developed a new routine for when she returns home from her shift.
She takes her shoes off and leaves them outside. Then she heads inside, tosses her clothes in the washer and jumps in the shower.
The employee, who works at a shipping facility at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, is terrified of bringing the coronavirus home to her children. The stress causes headaches, and she spends many nights lying awake in fear.
Despite her anxiety, the worker said it’s not an option for her to take unpaid leave. She has to provide for her family. “I’m scared for my health. But I’m also scared that I’m going to have nothing for me and my kids,” she said.
Those fears are playing out across the Charlotte region for essential workers in shipping centers, retail stores and even some offices who have been thrust into the front lines of the pandemic. The Observer spoke with six of them, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from their employers.
More than 535,000 people in the state filed for unemployment because of COVID-19 in the period between March 15 and April 15, according to the North Carolina Division of Employment Security. But those whose roles have been deemed essential face a hard choice between keeping their job and income or risking their health.
That tension has sparked national outcries for more protections for workers as they face new dangers on the job. And it’s spurred a debate over who is truly essential.
While stocking shelves recently, an employee at Charlotte’s Midtown Target was surrounded by crowds. The customers were mostly buying non-essential goods such as patio furniture, makeup, clothing and supplies to organize their home, she said.
Last week, Target confirmed that a worker at that store had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. That person is in quarantine, Target said in a statement, and it “worked quickly” to sanitize and clean the store.
But the situation caused the worker who was stocking shelves to panic.
“Doctors signed up for this,” the employee said. “Retail workers did not sign up for a pandemic.”
Who is essential?
Starting in mid-March, customers flooded into a Charlotte-area JOANN Fabrics and Crafts as the coronavirus pandemic worsened, grabbing heaps of cotton and other supplies to make masks, said one employee.
The employee decided to take a temporary leave for self-protection and to protect their partner, who was home from work. The worker said the store should have closed to the public and offered curbside pickup only.
“I feel like there was no compassion in it, and there was no higher moral voice saying we should close because it’s irresponsible to stay open,” the employee said.
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended people wear homemade masks, JOANN has been offering free mask kits to customers, said Amanda Hayes, a spokeswoman for the company. She said JOANN has donated and sold enough fabric to make more than 60 million masks.
For that reason, the retailer contends that it is essential, though some states and localities have forced it and other craft stores to close.
Hayes said the company understands that employees may be uncomfortable. The stores are limiting hours for additional cleaning, increasing wages by $2 an hour and sanitizing surfaces.
The county’s Joint Information Center, which is providing information related to the outbreak, said in an email to the Observer that craft stores, including JOANN, are not essential businesses, and therefore must close.
Hayes said that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police have visited Charlotte-area stores and allowed them to stay open. But police are aware of complaints regarding JOANN and are continuing to encourage “voluntary compliance” with the order, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department spokesman Thomas Hildebrand said.
Like other retailers, JOANN is limiting the number of shoppers in its stores and has put down tape markers for people to stand on so they can keep six feet apart, Hayes said. She said they are exceeding the state guidelines for retailers and are working with local, state and national authorities.
“We do not see ourselves as simply a craft retailer during this time — we are supporting the public health of our state and nation,” Hayes said.
‘Stay home’
Restrictions on the number of customers in a store are also required by the latest executive order from Gov. Roy Cooper, which took effect this week. It allows for 20% of a retailer’s fire capacity or five people per 1,000 square feet in a store at one time.
Target is also allowing fewer shoppers into its stores, has put up Plexiglas windows at checkout counters, beefed up cleaning routines and temporarily boosted wages for front-line workers, among other measures, said spokesman Shane Kitzman.
The company announced at the beginning of the month that it would provide masks and gloves to employees over the next few weeks.
Still, the Target worker said the store should close off sections of the store that sell non-essential goods to reduce foot traffic.
“When people say, ‘oh, thank you so much for being there’ — if you wanted to thank me, stay home,” the employee said. “If everybody stayed home, then Target wouldn’t be open.”
Reporting to the office
Meanwhile, workers in some industries are still going into their office jobs.
When some Charter Communications employees started to hear that a colleague in a Charlotte building had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, they wanted to immediately start working from home.
Instead, they reported to work, fearful of losing their jobs if they spoke out.
In an email on March 29, Charter, owner of the Spectrum brand, notified employees that a staff member tested positive at the building on East Morehead Street just below Interstate 277. Parts of the second floor and the common areas would be cleaned and disinfected that evening, the company said in the email.
Other emails sent out by Charter to Charlotte-area offices in March said that employees had experienced symptoms of the coronavirus, although Charter spokesman Patrick Paterno clarified that those workers did not wind up testing positive.
In mid-March, CEO Thomas Rutledge said in a company-wide email that Charter would not be instituting a broad, remote work policy.
After a series of news articles in the Denver Post and tech industry outlets publicized employees’ concerns, the telecommunications firm announced it would allow some remote work. But several Charlotte-area workers expressed continued frustration because they have been put on a rotating schedule, where they still must come into the office some weeks.
Internet and telecommunications companies are allowed to remain open because they provide “essential infrastructure” under the statewide stay-at-home order.
In an emailed statement, Paterno said the company is implementing social distancing plans in call centers and operations facilities. The firm is also providing employees with 15 additional days of paid time off related to COVID-19, and if a worker needs to self-quarantine, the individual will not be required to take sick days, he said.
He said they are also staggering shift and break schedules to reduce the number of employees in common areas.
“We will provide the option for remote work to employees whose jobs allow them to work outside the office without endangering our obligation to provide critical services,” he said.
Still, the employees said they don’t interact with customers, but work in desk jobs that they can easily do from home.
“I think I’m relatively healthy,” said one Charlotte-area worker. “I think if I got it I could recover. How do you live with possibly contaminating somebody who is at risk? I would find (Charter) personally responsible. …”
‘More and more panicked’
Though some workers doubt whether they are essential to the U.S. economy, others understand their roles are critical, yet are seeking more protections in the workplace.
The online shopping frenzy caused by the coronavirus has placed great risk on workers in shipping facilities.
Near the airport, three workers in a west Charlotte Amazon facility have tested positive for COVID-19. Four more Amazon employees in other sites in the region also have tested positive, for a total of seven to date in the area.
A worker at that west Charlotte location said he’s been eating lunch in his car to avoid interacting with people in the break room. “Every day I have to go to work, it just makes me more and more panicked, because I don’t know if someone else has it now,” he said.
While the company is taking people’s temperatures before they enter the warehouse, photographs provided to the Observer by the employee show workers clustered in groups on the warehouse floor. Another image shows two workers inside of a delivery truck while it is being loaded.
The company is only allowing one person per truck, Amazon spokesman Timothy Carter said in an email, and has reduced the pace of production for employees to accommodate the change. Amazon did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about the photos.
Carter also said Amazon has distributed millions of masks across the company, spread out tables and chairs in break rooms and posted signage and markings on the floor regarding social distancing.
The company is also boosting pay by $2 an hour and offering paid time off to those diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in quarantine, among other measures.
Carter also said Amazon investigates teams that do not comply with social distancing measures.
“Like all businesses grappling with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we are evaluating and making changes in real-time and encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits, and speed in which we’re managing this crisis to other retailers and major employers across the country,” Carter said in a statement.
‘What about us?’
At FedEx, the employee who is anxious about being on the job and her coworkers sort and scan the packages that come down the chute before they are loaded onto airplanes.
It’s difficult for employees to stay six feet away from each other, the worker said, because they hand packages to each other and share scanners. And she’s afraid of contracting the virus from packages.
Ahead of the CDC’s recent recommendation that everyone wear masks, FedEx ordered millions of extra masks for its front-line employees, which include drivers, package handlers and retail members, said FedEx spokeswoman Heather Wilson.
Wilson said employees are being given up to 14 days of pay based on their typical work schedule, or a guaranteed minimum, if they have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or put into a medically required quarantine. If employees are out sick longer than that, full-time workers are able to receive short-term disability benefits, she said.
Still, the FedEx worker said the company should offer hazard pay and take people’s temperatures as they enter the facility.
“Everyone is talking about, oh, the nurses and the doctors, the nurses and the doctors,” she said. “Well, what about us? We got families too.”
FedEx made $17.5 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter, according to a March earnings release. Given the shipping firm’s resources, the employee at the airport facility said it should find a way to keep its workers safe.
“At some point I feel like an employer should not even care about the costs, just care about their employees,” she said. “I just feel like we’re expendable.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Anxious, resentful, essential: Charlotte retail and office workers confront coronavirus ."
