I honestly wouldn’t want my kids working right now. I am glad they’re sheltering at home with us. All 4 of us have asthma that always acts up when we catch any “bug.” In addition, H is >70 and I’m >60. We all have varying chronic health conditions. Some of the extremely sick had NO risk factors, some had several. I rarely have had a bagger in decades.
Hunkering down and social distancing is an important job we all need to do right to help the most people possible survive so we can move on to better times.
@abasket@ClassicMom98
Thank you both for your perspectives. This whole thread has been so helpful to us. I just didn’t want to come across as selfish because other high school kids also bag and check at his store. But everyone here is right, I can only protect my son. Other parents can make/or not the same call for their boys. I am not a huge poster, but I love CC. So many good folks on here!
Our son is a high school junior , works at an ice cream shop and he was adamant abt going there 3 weeks ago when the shelter in place just started. My husband strictly said NO and after few arguments he settled down. Shop owner too agreed for this break. We wouldn’t risk sending him when having ice cream and all is completely non essential.
We have a nephew who works at Target to help pay for college. His (divorced) parents aren’t thrilled with all the hours that he is now being asked to work, but also know that they have limited funds to help him pay for tuition, room & board. The 18 year old is exhausted after every shift, stressed non-stop but appreciating the larger paycheck.
If your son doesn’t require that paycheck for anything, I would keep him home. These kids are too young for the added stress.
@TwoHighSchoolers
Thank you for your perspective. We are fortunate that this job is not a necessity. Agree with you… we are pulling him from the schedule for the foreseeable future. He can’t even return to school until May 4th so certainly shouldn’t be working before then.
Our high school senior works part time at our local UPS store. He only works about 10-15 hours per week and wears a mask and gloves, and they only allow 2 customers in the store at one time. My husband is also an essential worker so we already had exposure from him. We are all healthy, and we’re in California where our curve flattening is going well so far. Our entire county only has 29 COVID cases in hospital right now. I might feel differently if we lived elsewhere.
My 19 yr old son has been home from college since late Feb. He’s doing online classes for the rest of the semester. Before S even broached the subject, Dh told him he’d let him know when he could look for a job/internship. But he warned him to “expect to just do a lot of reading and writing this summer.”
Dh’s perspective is two-fold but related. First, he doesn’t need a job. We pay for everything and he has money in the bank. Two (And I’ve said this in another post), this is a college town. There are a ton of young students who needs jobs to make ends meet. He does not need to take away a job from someone who really needs it.
If we get out of stay-at-home and he still spends his summer reading, writing, and getting to know his new hometown… I really don’t see that as a wasted summer. Sure experience would’ve been nice but I think there are going to be a TON of kids his age who will have resume gaps.
If it makes anyone feel a little better if their kid stays with the job- I work for a company which has about 30,000 customer facing retail employees nationwide and we have only had about 6 cases of COVID 19 and everyone recovered. Precautions are important. Of course- location matters as does the volume of customers.
Our son is 34, living with us, and working at a grocery store. Wife and I are really conflicted, feeling like all the “social distancing” we are doing may end up being for naught if he brings the virus home to us. We have been wanting to move him out for a while, but I suppose it would be worse if he had a lease or a mortgage payment and got laid off. Even more conflicting, I read (not sure if it’s true) that employees who resign for Covid 19 reasons will be eligible for unemployment benefits. State + Federal unemployment would mean he would make more not working than working. But if he was home all the time we would have a dangerous mental health problem. (Us, if that is not clear)
Probably because all restaurants (doing take-out only) fall under the “essential” definition. It is not like anyone writing the definition of “essential” wants to have to define specific types of restaurants or foods to be “essential” or not, and any such definition would be complicated, voluminous, and controversial.
If you bring your own bag, you need to bag yourself.
Nobody should be using reusable bags right now. NYS just eliminated single use bags March 1 and has reversed that decision due to the bags potentially carrying the virus.
My friend recently asked me my opinion about if her daughter, who is a senior in H.S., should continue working as a cashier at our local supermarket. So far, her dd is calling in and not working.
I shared that IMHO, it is a team. If she chooses not to work now, then I don’t think she should expect to be on the team when this is over. I don’t think its fair to expect your co-workers to put themselves in harms way, but you sit out. I think she needs to be on the team or off the team. If she ins’t gong to work now then resign. I would see it differently if she or one of the family members had a compromised immune system that the teen needed to be especially careful of.
I have been terribly worried about grocery store workers. It is the one place everyone is going and until recently there wasn’t much protection for workers. I am truly grateful for grocery workers and keep them in my prayers. To me, they are heroes just like the healthcare workers.
My senior worked in an in-home licensed daycare. When this broke out we made her quit. She has a host of autoimmunes and I will never be willing to take chances with her health for a paycheck.
I don’t understand why we shouldn’t be using reusable bags if we are bagging ourselves. I wash mine, and the insulated roller bag gets wiped down with Clorox, and left outside for at least four days between uses. No one touches it but me in the store.
@momofsenior, the reason there are bans on reusable bags is because not everyone does as you do. People use the same dirty bags over and over again. Those bags touch the cart and the conveyor belt, and the bagger has to handle them.
I think being part of the team is very important. Ex., no one should expect to get both Memorial Day and Fourth of July off, you can’t say as a high schooler that you need both Friday and Saturday nights off, everyone can’t call in sick during the Super Bowl.
I question whether 16 or 17 year olds (being minors) needs to be working on the team during a pandemic and whether they are ethically able to consent to acceptance of the risks. That’s what parents are for.
True the grocery cashier job might not be available later for this worker and maybe the high school student mentioned above is not a minor.
To me, reusable bags can help us avoid having to have or touch a shopping cart at all—just put groceries in your bag, put on belt and then put it back in your bag. Take bag home, unload and wash. It seems less exposure for shopper than using store’s cart. My kids have been shopping with our shopping bags.
Once you have put your items on the belt you have potentially re-contaminated the belt AND recontaminated your items by being on the belt. It may make you feel safer but it’s still making others exposed as well.
That’s great for the person that owns the bags, less great for any cashiers that have to ring up the groceries and any staff that have to clean the grocery carts because it’s introducing more outside potential pathogens to the store and to items that the cashiers and staff have to touch.
Unfortunately, most people don’t clean their reuseable bags as often as would be necessary to sanitize them, so bringing those bags into stores introduces a risk for the store employees.
It’s hard - we need to think in terms of not just protecting ourselves but how we protect the people around us, especially the vulnerable ones like essential employees who are exposed to many people and their germy stuff throughout the day.
My senior works at Starbucks - at this point only the drive through is open. We have struggled with whether she should continue, but it’s one of the few things keeping her spirits up, and we live in a state with very low infection rates.
I noticed that Target was hiring and considered having my 16 year old apply, but I think that’s much riskier than what my daughter is doing.
The crazy thing about my daughter’s Starbucks job is how many classmates she sees coming through the drive through with friends. We have been under stay at home orders for weeks and so many parents are letting their kids hang out with friends. It’s maddening.