BE: As a customer the shopping experience is one of the things that has changed the most for a lot of people. But for you and your staff, what are the main changes that you have had to introduce and how have you adapted to those?
RG: The biggest changes have been introducing social distancing properly and the fact that people now have to queue outside to get in and we have to limit the number of people we bring in. That creates additional problems in terms of doing jobs like maintaining the availability of stock. We have to fill shelves while we also have customers shopping in the store, and that makes it a lot harder to maintain that now.
BE: Whilst you are trying to protect customers, you also need to protect staff don’t you?
RG: Yes we do and the fact that you are also having to wear PPE all the time as well has its own struggles. For example, it’s very hard to fill frozen food while you are wearing PPE gloves. You generally adapt to what you are doing and social distancing for the staff has become a habit – they do it naturally because they have done it for so long now. It is becoming routine now but at the beginning it was difficult to get yourself into that frame of mind.
Customers have been great, we have had so many people thank us, we have had chocolates given to us, flowers, cards and the local community feel very appreciative of what the staff are doing which is really nice to see.
Pictured: During the peak of lockdown, trips to the supermarket were one of the only approved reasons to leave the house.
BE: Do you think that the role you play in the community is more appreciated now than it was before?
RG: Most definitely, I think people are a lot more talkative and a lot more polite. They recognise what the staff are doing and the role that the staff are playing in this time and they are appreciative of that.
Unfortunately a lot of people haven’t been able to work, they may be back to work now but they haven’t been able to for some time, and our guys have had to work all the way through it.
BE: Is it difficult to adjust to the idea of having social distancing not just as a short term measure, but as a longer term change that you have to get used to?
RG: I think it is just about getting used to the ‘new norm’. We have been having to do it day in, day out, eight – ten hours a day and we’ve been in work for so long now that it is becoming habit.
So in terms of what we do it is easier now and it will just need to be tweaked a bit more as we go through the phases and we will see how they feel they need to change things.
To read the rest of this feature from, which includes interviews with key workers across the local industry, click HERE or pick up a free physical copy of CONNECT.
Pictured top: Robin Gilbey.