so here’s an entirely infuriating story from my shift today

much like every other store, we’ve had a large spike in medicine ball orders lately. gotta love sick season on top of omicron. it’s infuriating enough when obviously sick people come through for their medicine ball, but this customer really took the cake today.

i was at window, but the person on DTO had their headset up loud enough that i could hear the customer as well. i heard them ask, in quite the sniffly voice, might i add, if we had any drinks for COVID… 🤦🏻‍♂️

the person on DTO just said no but we have some herbal teas, and they ordered a medicine ball ofc.

being at window, i was very reasonably uncomfortable with serving them. i’ve already been on isolation due to an exposure once this month, i only have one more paid COVID leave for the quarter. no way was i wasting it because some dumbass has no consideration for any other life forms. so naturally, i asked if i could refuse them service because they were clearly sick, and my SSV told me to suck it up because we can’t refuse pay… said they’d get in trouble for it if the customer decided to report it.

is that true? will i and my SSV get in trouble if i refuse someone service? if so, that seems like a wild violation of workers’ rights, doesn’t it?

anyway, i ended up just holding my breath through the transaction, then drowning my hands and work station in the appropriate disinfectants. i fucking hate people.


edit: adding to this, it was wild to me that no one else seemed to have a problem serving this person… partner on DTO just carried on, none of the bar baristas thought twice about making the drink, like wtf? y’all don’t care that i’m out here catching diseases?