Today I worked my first shift open to the public for 12 long weeks. I was incredibly nervous about it and made it such a huge thing in my head that I was struggling to sleep or relax in the few days we had before opening. It felt like the first day back after the school holidays, but instead of going back to your normal place of work you were being entered in to the hunger games.
I know lots of people will be starting to go back to work and will be rightly feeling quite anxious about what the new normal is going to look like, so I wanted to talk about how it went and the different measures in place in our store to keep us and our customers safe. If you're considering going back to your favourite non essential shops soon, hopefully this will put you at ease too.
We had 4 days deep cleaning the building before opening (it's never been so sparkling clean!) and by the end of each day I felt like I'd been hit by a bus! I really wish I'd spent more time running and less time watching friends and eating Ben and Jerry's during lockdown. (I'm lieing, I don't wish that at all) I never really felt tired spending all day on my feet before, but my body had obviously gotten quite used to lock down life and it did not thank me for the lack of excercise.
I work in retail, so the thought of being around the public was quite daunting. For the last 12 weeks we've been in control of who we see and where we go, so to suddenly be around strangers and have no idea where they've been or what they've been doing sent my anxiety sky rocketing.
I managed to keep it together for the most part, until I walked past the mile long queue to get in to Primark this morning! (what's the betting people who are complaining about the BLM protests won't have anything to say about that!) Luckily the queue died down quite quickly and it stopped looking as scary by the time other stores started to open up.
I won't pretend the city wasn't busy, because it really was, but all of the stores from independant, to department store have done a really good job of making it safe to shop for customers.
I thought I'd spend some time talking through the safety measures we've put in place so you have an idea of what to expect when you venture out to the shops:
*We're only letting 10 customers in to the store at one time. We have a pretty big store so this doesn't feel like a lot of people at all and their is plenty of room to easily keep at least 2m from eachother wherever you are in the store.
*There is anti-bac everywhere! Get ready for your hands to be dry as hell and to use a whole tub of moisturiser in a day.
*There's a one way system at the till point and the floor is marked out in 2M blocks for safety.
*All transactions are contact free (meaning we don't touch anything you're purchasing) You take the hangers off, scan the items and bag them up yourselves. Contrary to popular opinion, you don't deserve a discount for doing our jobs for us. That stopped being funny after the 5th time we'd heard it) There's a sneeze screen in between us and you, it feels a little like you're in a bank but worth it for the added safety.
* Contactless has been upped to £45, but even if you choose to use the pin pad, we clean it after every use.
*Fitting rooms are closed so you can't try things on, which makes sense so we don't have multiple people trying on items. We're extending our returns policy so you can take it home to try, and if you do need to bring it back we quarantine it for 72 hours before we put it back out.
I left work today feeling really happy, confident and relaxed. Our company have really thought through how to make us feel safe and we had lots of customers comment on how safe and comfortable they felt and how nice it was to be out talking to people.
I had such a lovely day talking to customers and being back with some of my team, it almost felt like things were back to normal or at least a very strange version of it. We had a lot of older customers in today who hadn't been out or seen anyone for 13 weeks. It was lovely to have the time to have a proper natter from a safe distant. I will never take social interaction for granted again. It's so important for our wellbeing.
Remember if you're out and about shopping over the next few weeks to be kind. You have no idea how people are feeling and we are doing everything we can to make sure you're safe, so it may mean your shopping takes a little longer, luckily the majority of shoppers have been supportive but you'll always have the odd few. (massive, massive admiration for every key worker that has carried on throughout all of this, you're incredible and I have no idea how you did it!)
I really am glad to be back and Into a new routine. Let's hope things only get better from here and 2020 ends on a high.
Until next time,
Just Lucy Jane x
Add comment
Comments