Friday, April 17, 2020

Keeping Grocery Workers Safe


The risks being taken by grocery store workers these days are all too real. On April 13 the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), representing over 900,00 grocery store workers, estimated that 30 of their members have died from COVID-19 and nearly 3,000 are not working because they are quarantined, hospitalized or awaiting test results. When asked what could be done to improve their safety, here's how members responded:
  • Limit the number of customers (72%)
  • Ban unruly customers (49%)
  • Hire more security (41%)
  • Hire more workers to meet demand (26%)
  • Create advertisements with customer safety tips (23%)
The UFCW has also asked shoppers to take the "#ShopSmart Pledge" which includes wearing masks, keeping 6 feet or more from workers and other shoppers, and proper disposal of safety gloves.
    Blissfully unaware of the #ShopSmart Pledge
    All of these suggestions make tremendous sense. The biggest risk by far to grocery store workers is their constant and close proximity to shoppers, any of whom could easily infect them via airborne transmission of the coronavirus. What doesn't make sense is this memo, sent by the President and CEO of the NJ Food Council to mayors of many townships in New Jersey. Inexplicably, the memo concludes that reusable bags are a major health threat to grocery store workers, an issue that wasn't even mentioned by UFCW members. Almost certainly, this memo was motivated by this bit of propaganda created by the Plastic Industry Association. While a dirty reusable bag could conceivably pose a safety issue to its owner, there is no link whatsoever between reusable bags and grocery worker safety.

    There's no denying that a shopper's reusable bag could become infected with the coronavirus. But so could every other object within the store, including the paper and plastic bags that are provided. That's why everything you purchase should be washed or put into quarantine when you return home.
       
    While the State of New Jersey hasn't banned reusable bags, my local grocery store now forbids their use, even for customers willing to do their own bagging. Rather than argue the illogic of this policy with an overworked and over-stressed cashier, I settled on a workaround. When asked whether I wanted paper or plastic I responded, “No bags at all, please!” and unloaded my groceries onto the conveyor belt. I then went to the end of the checkout and loaded my groceries back into my shopping cart as soon as they were scanned. I think the cashier really appreciated it. I was done loading and out of her way seconds after she had scanned the last item. I rolled the cart out to my car, loaded everything into reusable bags that were stored in my trunk and went home. I was happy, the store was happy, and the environment was happy.

    Monday, April 13, 2020

    The Ten Plagues Easter Eggs


    Two years ago, Marilynn and I drove to Massachusetts to attend our first-ever Seder with my son, his wife and members of her family. As a (lapsed) Catholic, I figured that the perfect way to bridge the two faiths was to bring our set of Easter eggs based on the Ten Plagues of Egypt.We made them back in the late 90's when all of our kids were either in high school or college. They quickly became a family heirloom, always good for a laugh during the holiday season.

    Sadly, that particular family heirloom never got to experience a Seder. On our way to the event, our 2017 Toyota Prius caught fire in West Hartford and, to quote the incident report, "burned to a shell". Within that burned shell were 10 tiny shells as crispy as potato chips. The heirloom was toast. Worse, we never took a picture of this heirloom, something unheard of in these days of smartphones and Facebook.

    This year we had once again planned to travel to Massachusetts to attend another Seder. Afterwards, we planned to swing over to New Hampshire to spend Easter with my daughter and her family. But another disaster (named COVID) intervened, forcing all of us stay sequestered for the holidays. But desperate times call for desperate measures. It was time to recreate the Ten Plagues of Egypt Easter Eggs!

    Since we all had some time on our hands, we decided to turn this into an event.  The first step was the plague selection process. We quickly determined that the plagues had to be assigned randomly; otherwise we'd all fight over the flagship plague, the "Angel of Death". Each participant's name was written on a Domino Rally tile and all 10 tiles were loaded into another Mullen heirloom: my 1994 Rangers Stanley Cup mug. (They were on well on their way to winning the Cup again this year too!) I then opened a Zoom meeting to allow everyone to bear witness as I randomly drew holy tiles from the Sacred Cup. The resulting Scripture (showing the results of the assignation process) has been preserved and is shown below. If you click on it, you might have a few questions.
    The first thing you'll note is the unique numbering sequence. Rather than the usual boring 1-10 format your grandfather would use, this list breaks into freestyle following "5". Next, you'll note that two plagues were assigned to families. With 10 plagues and 8 adults, we decided to give an extra plague to families with kids living with them. (No symbolism intended!).

    Then there's the assignment of the flagship 10th plague. Somehow, this plague was assigned to the Angel of Death himself! I'm not sure what happened here but clearly the note taker was under more stress than the group realized. Finally, the list also reflects an issue that has bedeviled biblical scholars for thousands of years: What the hell was that Fourth Plague anyway? Some believe that the original Hebrew should be translated as "swarm of insects". However, per the  English version of the Passover Haggadah, this plague should be translated as a "swarm of wild animals". In an attempt to broker a truce between these two warring factions, let me just point out the obvious. When you categorize an item as "animal, vegetable or mineral", an insect is an animal. Therefore, both translations are accurate.  Q.E.D.

    As a bonus, each participant was also tasked to create a "COVID-19 egg". Not all participants participated, though. Some just assumed the role of "idea man" and let their spouse do the actual work. At any rate, we only ended up with six COVID-19 eggs. All the eggs are shown below (click to enlarge). There was talk of having an elaborate scoring system to determine the Ultimate Egg of the contest, but everyone's jaw dropped when they saw the egg at the top of this post. Game over, man. Some of the other plague eggs are superb: the lice, the flies; hell, the Angel of Death works as comic relief and even the River of Blood is surprisingly artistic in an Yves Klein sort of way. But there's no topping that frog in a teacup.  Congratulations, Sara! And congratulations to the entire family for recreating a true Mullen Heirloom!