We need food. We need medical supplies. We need doctors.
….we need potted plants?
Hardware stores across our region have taken a business-as-usual approach to the global pandemic now raging through our streets, justifying it by pointing out that they are considered essential services during natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornados.
Yeah…this isn’t a hurricane or tornado. I just don’t think that applies.
Now don’t get me wrong—people need running water and electricity whether we’re social distancing or not! But that seems like a pretty tenuous justification for keeping an entire Lowe’s Home Improvement store up and running, complete with wall clocks and house plants. Particularly because these sorts of stores tend to hire people who are elderly.
The current leave policy for Lowe’s Home Improvement is that any employee who tests positive for COVID-19 gets “emergency leave” for 14 days, and this leave is extended to anyone who has a family member who has tested positive. This really isn’t helpful when there’s no testing available, particularly to younger people with mild symptoms who are the main group of people spreading the disease.
Hardware stores: Send home your elderly and immune-compromised employees. Make age a qualification for emergency leave. Make a history of asthma qualifying, or any other condition that is labeled as “high-risk” by the medical community. For those young workers with mild symptoms who are otherwise healthy and will virtually never qualify to be tested? Follow CDC guidelines and have them self-quarantine for up to 7 days after symptoms began.
You’re not going to make it through this pandemic unscathed, Lowe’s, Home Depot and others. And you’re putting people’s lives as risk by trying.
Of your dozens of departments, only a few are essential. Start acting like it.
Betsy Riley
Mercerville
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