My Experience at Work during COVID-19

As we all know, there are many places that are gradually reopening within the UK during this stressful time. For me, that includes my part-time workplace. I usually only work on weekends as I was a full-time college student before all of this kicked off but recently, I’ve been doing more shifts with the extra time on my hands.



I thought I’d share my experiences at my work at the moment with all the changes and safety precautions we have in place. 



Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)



I work in a garden centre as a front-end customer service advisor, meaning I mostly work on the tills or on the shop floor putting stock out. This also means I have regular interaction with customers, whether it be at the tills as I’m serving them or when I’m on the shop floor and someone has an inquiry. For this reason, we have personal protective equipment available to colleagues at all times.



The staff room has boxes of disposable masks that we are encouraged to wear, as well as change for a new one every 2 or so hours. There are also plastic visors available that clip around a person’s head and covers their face. These are much easier to breathe in but a bit fiddly to attach. I personally just go with a mask. Each till also contains boxes of latex powder-free gloves for till staff to wear when interacting with customers. 



Social Distancing Measures



Customers are informed early on that we have social distancing measures in place within our garden centre. As you drive in, there’s a clear sign that states this message. There is only one entrance to the store and you can only get into it by queuing outside (with 2m apart guidelines) and waiting for a trolley to be given to you. As we have quite a variety in terms of size of stock, each customer is asked what size trolley they require. Trolleys are also wiped on the handlebars with disinfectant before handed to our customers. Once a customer is finished with their trolley, they are encouraged by the till staff to wheel it back to the staff outside who are dealing with the trolleys to save them from scampering around the car-park to fetch them.



We have a one-way system in place within the store and all customers are encouraged to follow it. When queuing to pay for your items, a small green circle on the floor indicates a 2m gap between it and the next circle. The idea is that you move from one circle to the next as the queue moves forward.



Once at the tills, which are now restricted to 3 instead of the usual 5 (as using all 5 would be a violation of social distancing) there are clear screens that separate customers from till staff, with the exception of a small gap for the card reader.



Customers are also told on the door that we aren’t accepting cash at the moment and that it’s card payment only. The concessions (the smaller branches within our store) are also currently closed but will reopen soon. This is also made clear on the door. Our restaurant is open for takeaways but takeaways only and there are plenty of social distancing measures in there too.



We also like to encourage customers to shop singularly or with one other person if need be. It’s also advisable that if you come to our garden centre that you know what you’re after, as we dislike people simply browsing or using it as a family outing during this trying time. If a customer finds that we don’t have the product they’re after, we advise them to stick with our guidelines and queue with everyone else until there’s a gap for them to leave the store. As annoying as it sounds, it’s for the public’s safety.



Other measures I can think of include that only 2 staff members are allowed in the staffroom at a time and must be sat 2m apart. We also regularly wipe down the tills, as well as the card reader pin pad and the tops of the tills where the items go.



One last thing is that we only allow roughly 40 people (depending on how many are in a party) in the store at a time. We maintain this by only having 40 trolleys available outside at the start of a day and giving them to every customer so we can keep track of the numbers within our store. Each customer is encouraged the take a trolley even if they say they don’t need one. Most customers respect that rule, as well as our other social distancing measures. A large majority of them wear their own masks when they shop with us, which is greatly appreciated. 


I feel safe at my workplace during this time and I’m happy to go into work.



Check out our other interesting posts by the girls of our Ranger Unit and I hope you felt informed by this one.



Until next time!


-Grace 😄