Item

A Day at Macy's Inc. During a Worldwide Pandemic

Title (Dublin Core)

A Day at Macy's Inc. During a Worldwide Pandemic

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

As my primary source I chose a picture that I took on March 17, 2021 at 8:39pm, it was the end of my shift in my retail job. This picture was taken one year later since they first closed down the city. I work in Macy’s Inc. at Bay Plaza, and the store was closed during the pandemic until the end of June. When the store first reopened, big crowds of people came to the store every single day without caring about the pandemic. It is understandable that all they wanted was to shop, and also get out of their houses to distract themselves. This picture is just a small representation of what retail workers have to deal with during times like this. It got to a point, where it was very frustrating seen so many people at the store walking around trying to shop. Many people did not care about the 6ft social distancing, and others did not want to wear a mask because it was too hot, or they couldn’t breathe.

There was a limit of 600 people in the whole store, but in days like this I know for sure that it was more than that. The women shoes department was always full of people, there was always a long line, people were right next to each other, and others were screaming or talking too loudly. People were getting into arguments with each other, many were getting frustrated because they wanted to get a shoe size right away. Others were just sitting on the couch sleeping, you could hear babies crying, and kids running or playing around dropping shoes on the floor. I remember I was in the register during my whole shift taking customer after customer, some were really nice but others very rude. As my job, I have to ask every customer if they want to open a Macy’s credit card with us, but their answer was always, “I can’t afford it, this virus has made me broke” yet, they were still out shopping. On this day, I had a disagreement with a customer because I told her to put her mask on about 3 times, and she just ignored me. She then, approaches me to pay for a shirt, and I told her very kindly once again, “can you please put your mask on? Thank you!”. Her reaction was priceless because she was furious and asked me if it wasn’t enough with the plexiglass that was between us, I felt very frustrated because she didn’t seem to understand how serious this virus is. I told her no, and refuse to ring her out she then, proceeded to another register very furious and still with no mask on.

We are not essential workers but working in a retail store during this pandemic has been very overwhelming. The company benefits from all of this because they reach their sales goals every day. When I think about it, we as employees should be happy that there are sales because it means the store won’t close down, and we can keep our jobs. The customers do not seem to have any type of consideration for any of us as retail workers. It upsets me because now more than ever, everyone should be thankful for still being alive after what we just went through this whole year. We need to appreciate each other, and respect one another because we don’t know what everyone is going through. Always be kind to everyone!
Bronx Community College Student.

Date (Dublin Core)

March 17, 2021

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HIS20
Spring2021
ProfessorCulkin

Partner (Dublin Core)

Bronx Community College

Type (Dublin Core)

photograph
personal essay

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Consumer Culture (shopping, dining...)
English Public Space
English Social Distance
English Labor

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

essential worker
crowd
store
sale
Bay Plaza
mask
Macy's
department store
Bronx
New York

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

retail
Macy's Inc
mall
shopping
women shoes

Collection (Dublin Core)

Service Industry

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

05/18/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

05/20/2021
06/25/2021
07/10/2021
10/27/2023

Date Created (Dublin Core)

03/17/2021

Format (Dublin Core)

image/jpg

Rights (Dublin Core)

CC-ND-NC 4.0

Item sets

This item was submitted on May 18, 2021 by [anonymous user] using the form “Share your story- Bronx” on the site “Bronx Community College New York”: http://mail.covid-19archive.org/s/bronx-community-college-new-york

Click here to view the collected data.

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