00:00I work for Shapiro Produce, a produce distribution facility in Boston, Massachusetts.
00:04I'm Alex and I'm here with Refinery29. I've been working here since I was 16. We sell produce and
00:11other associated produce items at the supermarket. As far up as Maine and as far down as Connecticut
00:17and then we also go to Cape Cod on the island. Since the COVID-19 has started, it's been
00:24really interesting for us. Since we are so small, at first we were just kind of thinking like,
00:29okay, we're just going to see what happens, go along with it, and now we're really getting
00:33in the middle of it and seeing just how it's affecting us as a small company in general.
00:38I think if you're paying attention to the news and you're seeing that the people who are going
00:42to work are warehouse employees and truck drivers and people who do those types of jobs, I think
00:47they're now realizing how important those people are because if they don't come into work then
00:51nothing gets done. So I really hope that people are looking differently at these kinds of jobs
00:58and how essential they are. Our family business has been around for I think over 75 years. It
01:04was started by my grandfather and then my father took it over probably only 20 years ago. Now I work
01:09here with my father. I do everything from handling our expenses to some HR roles to handling all of our
01:15insurances. I also do a large amount of sales for the company. So working with a lot of the different
01:21grocery stores that we work with, our demand has gone through the roof. At first we're seeing more of a
01:27demand for the grocery items and now we see it's more of a fresh item. People are trying to stay
01:31healthy. We've had some of our office workers completely change from being you know regular
01:36sales people to actually work in the warehouse and loading pallets, loading trucks, picking orders
01:42and that's I can't even imagine so thankful for them to do that. Whereas my days change it's really
01:49trying to help wherever I can. Changes day to day don't have kind of a set routine in place especially
01:55right now. I try to stay as positive as possible and just try to get everybody to calm down and
02:02you
02:03know just do the job and do this all together. I feel like I've been really lucky through this whole
02:08thing in the fact that I can keep a relatively normal schedule. If anything I work more. Something
02:13that I'm doing during the COVID-19 crisis to relieve my stress is that I'm lucky I live I think
02:20three and a half
02:21miles away from where I work and it's all sidewalks so I run home as much as possible and that
02:27has been
02:28great for me to be able to still work out and the running is just a great stretch reliever so
02:32it's
02:33one of my favorite parts of my day. The sanitation measures that we've taken it's been really interesting
02:37for us because unlike a huge company that has a huge HR team that decides everything to do for this
02:45kind of pandemic where we really have to follow like all the CDC guidelines and have to decide for
02:50ourselves what is enough so everybody in the warehouse has to wear a mask. I have my mask here
02:55I can show you right here. I actually have that one and then I have a cloth one. Oh we
03:02all wear gloves
03:02in the warehouse. Everybody who comes to our warehouse which is only truck drivers at this point
03:07everything is sanitized twice a day and everybody is washing their hands. We do a weekly sanitizing
03:15every week where we have cleaners come in and they sanitize the entire place so we're trying to do as
03:21much as possible to keep everything clean and keep everybody healthy. A lot of people are afraid to come
03:26to work and you can't blame them. A lot of people are either at high risk themselves or have somebody
03:31at
03:31home at high risk so we've had a number of people call out and so because of that we're really
03:37short
03:37staffed and we've been hiring people but it's hard to kind of come up with a line where you don't
03:44want
03:44to hire too many people because then you have new people coming in but then needing people to do certain
03:49jobs so it's really everybody's doing everything that they possibly can to get house on trucks and get
03:55stores delivered and just getting everything done every day. I would really like to thank everybody who's
04:01working in the warehouse and everybody who really has been working here in general for putting all
04:07the hours in and for making all the deliveries and doing all the extra work to make this happen it's
04:12been the greatest of help. I think there's a lot of people who are also in the industry who are
04:17working
04:17from home it's so needed because we can't have as many people in here as we'd want to have. I
04:22see now
04:22more than ever how important it is for everybody to do their part so to both work from home and
04:29have just
04:30as few as people but as much people come into the warehouse and do their jobs here. I don't feel
04:35like a hero because I would be doing this no matter what. I've always wanted to be here and I'm
04:40excited
04:40to be here. There's a lot of different jobs that people are doing right now and that every job is
04:45really important and that especially the warehouse workers and the truck drivers are doing so much work
04:51they're here really on the front lines putting themselves out there trying to get the job done to get you
04:57guys. They're the real heroes here. Providing produce for supermarkets is essential and I'm doing my part.
