How increased stress is affecting essential workers
Essential workers have reported an increase in mental illness since the start of the pandemic.
When Katrina Storton started working at a Target in Goleta, CA, her store had less community than she was used to. Workers at the store weren’t allowed to eat lunch together and she only knew the people on her team.
“We were already kind of just treated like numbers,” said Storton. “But once quarantine started and corporate told us we had to start complying to certain health codes and things of that nature, it became very clear that it was the customers who were more important than the employees.”
Just a few months after she started, Storton was forced to open the store by herself. No one else came in for their shift except her manager, who she said spent the morning on the other side of the store calling other workers to see if they planned on coming in.
She was working self-checkout alone when a man demanded she scan his items for him.
“He was asking this of me while I was helping an elderly person at the register,” Storton said. “He was actually putting his fingers between me and the screen and snapping at me and telling me, ‘you have to go scan these for me.’”
