“They couldn’t fire us; they needed us. I didn’t slack off, but I could have if I wanted to.”

Mason Schoof, 21, is a fourth-year civil engineering student at UW-Milwaukee. During the pandemic, Schoof worked at Walmart in his hometown of Muskego. Schoof gained perspective on the gravity of the pandemic through his experiences there.

Natalie Hey: What was working like during the pandemic?

Mason Schoof: Sometimes it was nice because we would close early, and it wasn’t stressful working once all the customers were gone. From 7-11 we didn’t have to worry about any customers being there, so we could just do whatever we had to do. Our management created new jobs focused around the pandemic like sanitizing carts, and taking employee temperatures as we walked in.

Hey: Do you think your job became harder or easier?

Schoof: Easier. Management didn’t care. They couldn’t fire us; they needed us. I didn’t slack off, but I could have if I wanted to. It was also easier because when we closed early so I wouldn’t have to deal with customers. I could put my headphones in and just do my job because nobody was there.

Hey: Did you have to deal with any difficult customers?

Schoof: Yes, a lot of people would be difficult when they would ask for things that weren’t on the shelves. We would have to tell them that we couldn’t check the back because we weren’t allowed. If one of us had covid and we went and touched everything in the back, we could infect all of the other services, so we had to tell customers we can’t go in the back to look but they would get mad about that. People would also get mad about masks. People would make a big fuss about wearing them or try to find ways around it. We couldn’t really enforce it, to tell them to wear a mask but mainly people were difficult about covid rules.

Hey: Do you think your views of working changed?

Schoof: No. I get the essential worker thing, but it didn’t change the way I thought of my job. I was really doing it because I was making money and nobody else was. I didn’t want to be sitting at home.

Hey: Did you feel like you feared getting covid?

Schoof: Yeah, the whole time I was like how have I not gotten covid yet? When I was working there I just kind of forgot about it, so I guess I wasn’t really scared I was just cautious.

Hey: Did you look forward to working?

Schoof: No, but I was thankful I had something to do. I started to look forward to working there when I was almost done, but during April and March I did not want to go. It was fun though because things changed every day, restrictions would get tighter and tighter.