Essential work during COVID-19: ‘I’m so fucking scared to even be here’
Unruly customers, no pay for over a month, 100 phone calls to the Employment Development Department (EDD) — stress and frustration are all a reality for many essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pasadena City College (PCC) student Madelyn Miller, who works at Bath and Body Work in the Santa Anita mall, has been out of work since Governor Gavin Newsom’s Safer at Home orders were announced on Mar. 16. Miller had to work in the public during the early spread of COVID-19.
Before the store and mall was officially closed, Miller was on the verge of a panic attack with the stress of COVID-19 and what it could mean for her and her family. When she came in to work on Mar. 16, she was so visibly upset that even her manager took notice and pulled her to the side to check if she was okay.
“I just kept thinking ‘I’m so fucking scared to even be here,’” Madelyn Miller said.
“I started crying,” Miller said. “I was horrified and scared of coronavirus and this was back when no one was wearing masks because the CDC was like ‘We don’t need to wear masks’ so everyone was running amuck. No one was doing anything. I just kept thinking ‘I’m so fucking scared to even be here.’ Everyday I had to come in to work I was scared.”
When Miller came back from the break room, calming herself down by talking with her boyfriend, her manager spoke to all the employees.
“My manager went up to us and was like ‘So I just got an email, we need to close the store immediately,’” Miller said.
The relief of not having to work during a pandemic was short-lived. Miller hasn’t received an unemployment check for over two months and counting.
After filing for unemployment on Mar. 22, Miller received a letter from EDD a month later with a completely different number in the social security box than hers and wages saying zero dollars.
Worried that someone else had her social security number and the fact that she had no wage information, Miller began a weeks long battle of trying to get in contact with someone to figure out what this all meant. After weeks of constant busy lines and once even calling over 100 times in just one hour, she was eventually able to talk to a representative. Miller found out that she didn’t have someone else’s social, the unemployment office simply supplies everyone with a temporary social until proper identification is submitted.
When she finally got her identification papers, she immediately sent in her information on April 21 and has heard nothing since.
“I’ve had zero income,” Miller said. “I’ve been living off the last of the money Bath and Body Works paid us after they closed.”
Miller and her coworkers were paid bi-weekly for four weeks. Their wages were averaged from the hours worked in the month prior to closing. Once the Safer at Home orders were extended, Bath and Body works let their employees know that they would get one more paycheck, which would include their accrued paid time off, and they would then be furloughed to avoid having to fire anyone.
Miller has had to live off the last $900 check for a month and a half.
While money is tight and something that Miller stresses about everyday, she does not want to apply for other grocery store jobs that are currently hiring.
“I have asthma,” Miller said. “I live with two other essential workers and I just worry that if I get another job, I’ll only be adding even more risk to our household.”
While it seems that malls will be unable to reopen, Miller’s mall has already informed them of safety procedures they will be implementing for customers. In the email detailing the use of protective equipment at the registers and limiting the amount of customers allowed in stores, not one word was mentioned about what they would do to keep employees safe, according to Miller.
“The mall never once mentioned what they’d be doing for us and our well-being, which didn’t make me safe or like I would be okay going back,” Miller said. “Going back is scary enough, I don’t need my workplace to make me feel like I don’t matter. Things changing would obviously also help associates stay safer, but it wasn’t presented as ‘Here’s how we are going to change to make things safer for our associates’ ever.”
Besides having to deal with the stress of not receiving her unemployment check, living on limited money and worrying when the mall will open again, Miller is also not coping well with quarantining.
“As someone who has mental illness, I thrive when I see my friends or even going to work,” Miller said. “Being able to say ‘I don’t feel good today lets go do something.’ The last thing I need to do when I’m having a hard day mentally is isolate. Isolation is like the worst possible thing for me personally.”
For PCC student Ariel Perez (disclosure: Perez is a coworker of the writer), who had to keep working through COVID-19 since her work was considered an essential business, things have also been a struggle. For this nursing student, balancing a job, her six-year-old and school work with a crowded house has been harder than she thought it would be.
“I’m basically homeschooling my kid as well as working and trying to get my own school work done,” Ariel Perez said.
“I’m basically homeschooling my kid as well as working and trying to get my own school work done,” Perez said. “The teachers only have lectures twice a week and for like 45 minutes, then they are giving instructions to the parents on what to do with the kids. She’s young so her attention span is so short.”
Perez works part time at Staples in Pasadena. During the start of the Safer at Home orders, all part-time employees’ hours were cut to five hours with store hours changing almost weekly. Managers encouraged workers to immediately file for unemployment with lost hours because of COVID-19. With at least a month’s wait time between receiving unemployment and only five hours of work on a weekly paycheck, Perez had to budget a lot to make sure she had enough money in case her unemployment checks came later than expected.
“Financially is the biggest thing,” Perez said. “Unemployment kicked in finally which is awesome but I think not having the feeling of security anymore and our hours being cut, it’s more just being scared and not knowing what the future holds.”
PCC personal counseling adjunct psychologist, Alison Johnson Psy.D, explains that this is an extremely common reaction for people during a pandemic. While Johnson has never helped Perez or Miller personally, she has prior experience with American Red Cross as a disaster mental health worker and works with students overcoming anxiety among other things.
“With COVID, we are learning to live without knowing,” Alison Johnson Psy.D said.
“Students who are working express a good deal of anxiety because of not knowing what is coming next,” Johnson said. “Typically, our work provides us with some structure and continuity to our day. If someone doesn’t know if they’ll still have a job in another month that creates a lot of stress, worry and anxiety. It’s a challenge to learn to live with not knowing. With COVID, we are learning to live without knowing.”
If others were unable to work, it would also be much harder for Perez to be as available for any shift as she usually is.
“I also plan my day around my kid so it’s harder for me to get called into work randomly or adjust if anyone needs to switch,” Perez said.
Working during this time itself has been an extremely unique experience. Following Safer at Home orders, many new policies were put into place. These policies included: plexiglass screens at the registers, stricter sanitization processes, no public bathroom use and a halt to all tech and recycling services and some copy center services.
“Customers have been very paranoid, to the point where they can’t function properly in stores,” Perez said. “A lot of people have also tried to call over the phone and have us shop for them and be willing to give us their card information over the phone, which is not something we do and is also a bit ridiculous.”
This unusual behavior also makes sense.
“When people are under stress, initially they respond with more coping tools and strategies, but if that stress persists over a long period of time, then your coping resources actually get drained,” Johnson said. “When our coping resources are drained, we tend to not behave as well as we normally would.”
Besides working part-time, Perez is also a full-time student. Having a child home presents another set of problems when dealing with homework and especially finals week.
“When I’m doing my school stuff it’s hard to focus because every five, 10 minutes it’s ‘mommy this,’ ‘mommy that,’ so it’s been harder that she is not in school,” Perez said.
Because she has to teach her child schoolwork during most of the day as well as ensure a normal eating and playtime routine, Perez either wakes up super early or stays up extremely late to get her work done. Luckily for her, many of her teachers have been pretty lenient, some even providing online copies of books and providing study guides that are similar to the actual test questions
“This whole thing has been a blessing and a curse,” Perez said. “Despite all of the trouble and fear, I have gotten to spend a lot more time with my kid and my family that live with me.”
Perez and her family have been having more family dinners together, making bonfires outside for s’mores, having wine and relaxing with her mom and setting up movie nights.
“That’s been the best part,” Perez said. “When we were all working or at school, we were never all in the house together.”
