A grocery store manager has shared an account detailing his team’s experience of dealing with shoppers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In the account, which was shared by a Brisbane Coles employee and obtained by Westside News, the manager said his staff members were “exhausted” and “scared of getting sick” as they “[put] themselves in harm’s way every day”.
The manager, who has 25 years of experience, said “ignorant” customers had accused him and his team of forgetting how to order in-demand products or causing “the warehouse to be out of product”.
“I promise if it’s not on the shelf, it’s not in a hidden corner of our back room,” he wrote.
“I schedule as much help as I have, working TONS of overtime, to help YOU.”
He said his staff worked “tirelessly” to stock the floor and disinfect “every surface possible” each day.
“The next time you are in a grocery store, please pause and think about what you are saying and how you treat people you encounter,” he wrote.
“They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitiser, milk, eggs and meat.”
The manager encouraged shoppers who had difficulties in getting basic supplies to ask a neighbour or a friend who have stockpiled.
“If the store you go to is out of them, maybe find the neighbour or friend that bought enough for one year … there are hundreds of them … and ask them to spare 1 or 2,” he wrote.
“They caused the problem to begin with.”
This article originally appeared on Over60.