'People Gotta Eat': The Spotlight Is On The Risk Grocery Store Employees Take Every Day After A Customer Spits In A Giant Eagle Worker's Face
EDGEWOOD, Pa. (KDKA) - Police are still looking for the customer who spit in the face of a Giant Eagle worker at the store in Edgewood Towne Center on Wednesday night.
The incident has highlighted the risk grocery employees are facing every day.
The President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1776, which represents Giant Eagle's workers, is Wendell Young.
"I'm angry," he says.
Young says the attack is nothing short of a terroristic threat.
"There is no training for that. It's just unacceptable, it shouldn't happen," he says. "It's the kind of thing where something like that happens and a whole lot of our members decide to call and say 'I'm not coming in till this is over.'"
Giant Eagle did not make its employees available to be interviewed today, but Kuhn's did.
At the Kuhn's on McKnight Road, Sherri Grabowski says when you come face to face with hundreds of customers every day, it's hard not to think of the risk.
"It's in the back of my mind, but I just keep doing my job," she says.
Plastic shields went up today at Kuhn's to increase protection for employees and customers. Grabowski and her co-workers view their work as vital: "I think it's very critical, people gotta eat. The elderly have to eat and we're doing it for them."
Stephanie Gutowski runs the deli, where they shut down several times a day to sanitize everything.
"It is the front line, because when you're in the food business and everything is shut down, what else do you have to do but eat?" she says.
Dylan Roush in the café says over the last month, safety has taken on a new meaning: "I'm just trying to be careful about sanitizing my hands, and we're wiping everything down and we have sanitizer buckets at every register."
In the butcher shop and in the store, butcher Chris Martinez says they are practicing social distancing from each other and the customers: "We're trying to keep our distance as much as possible."
"Customers have the right of way" is the motto of Eddie McDoe and his coworkers in the dairy department.
For the customers' sake and their own, "If I'm already stocking the shelves and I see a customer come up, I'll back up and let them get whatever they need off the shelf before I continue to stock."
Stephanie Gutowski gives customers credit because where they have put down floor markings, "Customers have been very respectful of the different boundaries that they have now."
