Working the self-checkout area ranks as one of the toughest jobs in our grocery stores, mostly because running these departments with skeleton crews forces cashiers to serve multiple customers and to deal with multiple problems at the same time. The working conditions are more than just frustrating—they can be dangerous, too.
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Jenny Johnson
Unfortunately, grocery and retail workers are dealing with more violence in their workplaces, and it too often involves firearms. Since these workers are in public-facing businesses there is little between them and the world’s problems.
Jenny Johnson works at the Twin Lakes Fred Meyer and was at work recently when a shooting took place. She approached one of the victims who was at one of the front doors wounded. She noticed that he was holding a gun and so she stopped and said she would help as long as he put the gun aside. Once the gun was out of the situation Jenny and a coworker walked the victim over to the customer-service desk and applied towels to the wounds. When the paramedics arrived Jenny was able to keep the victim calm and encouraged him to answer all questions of the first responders at the scene.
But now Jenny is concerned because of the lack of an emergency door near the customer service area. Her coworkers upfront brought up that the Tacoma and Puyallup locations have emergency doors nearby to allow for quick and safe evacuation. We agree that this is a reasonable request of Fred Meyer to keep these workers safe!
We are the Union. The members of UFCW 3000 are over 50,000 members working in grocery, retail, health care, meat packing, cannabis, & other industries across Washington state, north-east Oregon, and northern Idaho. UFCW 3000 is a chartered member of UFCW International with over 1.4 million workers in North America.
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