CORPORATE AMERICA - SEIZING THE HALLMARK MOMENT DURING THE PANDEMIC?

       Pretense!  Like a Hallmark Channel movie, corporate America is attempting to promote contrived images in ads reflecting these profit centered entities as truly caring for their workers during the Covid19 pandemic. What a sick joke!  If companies truly cared for their workers, their first agenda would be to actually take care of their workers at Amazon, Walmart, grocery chains, meat packing plants, and private hospitals  by providing protective safety gear, implementing employee/customer distancing, offering significantly higher hazard pay, and guaranteeing paid health care and unemployment pay for all sick employees.  These conglomerates have immediately spent their profits on slick productions of self-promoting goodwill, while simultaneously putting their employees and customers at increased risks.  Shame on them!  Is there any situation, even during a pandemic,where the greed of corporate America doesn't trump compassion and the greater good?

      Yesterday, I walked into Whole Foods owned by Amazon, which has the most extensive supply chain in the world, only to find all of the check out workers wearing no masks nor gloves while checking out customers.  These workers' hands have handled money, bagged groceries touched by the customer before me, are spreading their own droplets from their nose or mouth onto my groceries while bagging them, and essentially become conduits for the microscopic virus from one customer to the next. When I queried the check out clerk as to why she was not wearing a mask or gloves, she answered that there were not enough gloves provided; they were so cheap they constantly ripped apart; they were only allowed to sanitize their hands after every other customer; and they had not been provided with masks by Whole Foods (Amazon).  However, when I provided my own bags for my groceries, I was quickly informed that they were forbidden due to the possibility of my bags contaminating their employees.  

     Now, if you are thinking that this reality warrants ordering your groceries online and having drive-up delivery, let me disavow you of any illusions of protection through that process:  while in Whole Foods, the majority of the shoppers were young temporary employees hired to shop for online customers inside the store -- none of whom were wearing masks.  They had carts of multiple customers' opened cooler bags, practicing no social distancing nor wearing gloves while throwing things into the containers.  Surrounding these carts were disparate customers openly sneezing and coughing while walking by,  not being required by Whole Foods to be wearing a mask in order to shop in order to protect others.  While I appreciate these essential workers for showing up so I can buy food, I do not condone the lack of protections provided by the greedy conglomerates.

      Protecting others!  That is the objective of the pandemic quarantines and social distancing.  Since we have now learned that the Covid19 virus is easily transmitted by people with no symptoms unknowingly spreading infected droplets everywhere, it makes no sense that everyone is not required to wear a mask when shopping or in any close proximity to others.  I even asked the Whole Foods employee if she would want her own mother to be checked out by a clerk not wearing a mask or gloves, and she answered, "Of course not!"  Do unto others...........the ultimate Hallmark motto seems to have gone missing!