The Corona-virus’ Impact on Wal-Mart (Cont.4)

4. Social Response

According to previous blog, we can see the hard work they have made to keep customers and faculties aware importance of social distancing. From social network sites, I can see that a few people are staying positive, but most are negatives. Some of them don’t understand the seriousness, showing aggressive attitude towards the decision. There are so many workers asking their jobs back from Wal-Mart after they deploy them home.

A lady as customer posted a twitter showing a video: an Asian lady touch all laptops in Wal-Mart for no reasons. The “Robbie Zombie” blogger tries to stop her but didn’t help. (1) The lady shows aggressiveness and revenge attitude to society. She might have suffer some unfair treatment from society but her behavior is increasing troublesome to Wal-Mart faculties and the risk of coronavirus’ spread.

This shit is crazy a woman goes off on a Chinese lady and Walmart pic.twitter.com/66w4LtzpmM

— Robbie ¤ zombie🇺🇸 (@zombie_robbie) April 13, 2020

One Wal-Mart worker is in opposite situation. She walked out in protest of her workplace condition. The girl Maya needs salary to support herself and her families, but she is worried that every time she goes to work, she will bring danger to her life and those she loves. “We’re just open. We interact with everyone. We touch everything,” she said. “It’s really unsafe and unsanitary to be working in those conditions, knowing what’s going on.” According to Maya, her supervisors did little to ensure that others didn’t become infected. They did not disclose the name of their sick coworker or provide any testing to those that came into contact with them. And, she said, several workers were sent home without pay for wearing masks.

“To my brother, Walmart was family. But to Walmart, my brother was just a number,” McMiller, another Wal-Mart worker said. “They didn’t follow up on him. No one knew he was sick until I called.”

“We have heard from stores across the country that Walmart has not been doing enough to make associates feel safe,” Maya said. “Walmart’s profit margins matter more than us. We’re not essential. We’re sacrificial. I will be replaced if I die from this. I don’t have a mask or gloves. The only thing I have is a stupid blue vest.”

It seems like Wal-Mart can’t execute the policies and adjustments to everywhere and taking care about everyone. Low-wage essential workers across industries — from grocery store employees to bus drivers and delivery workers — find themselves in a similar situation to Walmart workers. They cannot work from home and aren’t afforded the health precautions that the CDC is advising Americans to take. And the majority of those workers are people of color, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. Walmart, for example, is the largest employer of African Americans and Latinx workers in the country.

Even if there are so many negative comments under this special circumstance, there are some customers show understanding and provides some suggestion as comments. One netizen “Navywill88” says: “Better bring your groceries list. And make sure its organized by section if the one direction traffic part is true. I always doubles back constantly because I’ll pick up milk, leave the section for the next thing on the list, then be back 5 feet from it to get eggs a minute later. ” Their attitude shows their supportive behavior to Wal-Mart team and care about society.

In my opinion, workers’ situation is understandable – they need money to survive and pay rent, take care about families etc. Their healthy, however, should be their first priority to take care, and that’s Wal-Mart’s main goal currently. Wal-Mart and low salaries worker’s point of views are conflict, they can’t understand each other’s situation.

Reference

https://www.wwno.org/post/walmart-workers-say-they-face-choice-their-safety-or-their-paycheck

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/04/03/changes-to-our-shopping-process-to-encourage-social-distancing

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/fujx91/walmart_will_limit_customers_and_create_oneway/