Should we be given protective wear.

My daughter works in a store and has been given hand sanitizers and gloves at her till, they also have marked the floor asking people to stay back and pay by card if possible.

Here all supermarket staff have gloves, masks and some also have visers! All customers are 2 metres apart and most wearing masks and gloves as well.

Our local farm shop staff are all wearing gloves and are keeping their distance. (Most people appear to be paying by "contact-less" card as well.) This shop is a Godsend for locals.

I think it would be reasonable of you to refuse to go to work UNTIL they offer you protective gear and sanitizer.

flowersfromheaven
Perhaps you might want to ask that question of whoever is responsible for Health and Safety at your place of employment? No one on here can risk assess or do anything practical about your personal safety.

I am STILL horrified that our NHS staff haven't been put into hazmat clothing.

Hospitals are finding it dfficult to get enough masks, so shop-owners are probably in the same position. Hand sanitiser is also in short supply.

You could try wearing ordinary gloves and washing them daily when you get home, and wrapping a thin scarf around your face to cover your nose and mouth. That would give you some protection against customers.

They must have access to vodka to make their own sanitiser. Which chain is it? One to avoid in future if the are prepared to risk their staff and customers in this way.

My husband works in the Co-op. He hasn't been offered so much as a pair of disposable gloves! There is no way to organise the queue, or protect the staff at the till.
He also works for two different cleaning companies. He's not had any communication from either of them. No special cleaning equipment, no sanitizing sprays, no extra PPE.
I'm disgusted by the way the staff are being treated it's as if they don't care about their workers.
DH is 68, he doesn't want to retire, but he has hypertension and takes medication daily. I am worried about how safe he is.

Minimoon if your DH wants a retirement he should retire now! Before it is too late.

At the chemist this morning (the one which charged me £3.60 for 32 paracetamol, no-one was allowed in the shop and a barrier was put across the door; we had to yell out our requests from 2 metres away, and the masked and gloved assistant yelled out the information about our medication as we collected them.
Don't suppose much viagra will be collected now!

mumofmadboys, I keep telling him this, but will he listen?

My next-door neighbour is a practise nurse. Apparently, patients are now being sent back to GP's as 111 is overwhelmed.
They have no protective eqipment at all. It is a disgrace.

Remember the virus doesn't enter your body through your hands. What happens is that your hands pick up the virus and then pass it onto other things. If you don't touch your eyes, nose and mouth with your hands then you are perfectly safe having contaminated hands. You wash them to remove the virus before contaminating other objects or eating food etc. Airborne particles are another matter.

Wearing gloves makes little difference because you can pass the virus from object to object on the gloves! It's your mouth, nose and eyes that need protecting from touch.

The Supermarket I work at is one of the Top 4. I can not really say which one because a few colleague who have said thing on social media have had disciplinary.

Why are people still shopping? The supermarket opposite me had, again, queues outside an hour before opening. I think the Government should do as they are doing in Europe: only one person can shop ( thus halving the threat to supermarket workers) and the trolleys should be locked up. Perhaps even a limit to how much people can spend. As I type this, a family of two men, a woman and a teenage boy are all going into the shop together. Madness.

No queues at our asda today the shelves were full and I even got toilet roll. However we were kept back from the till until the person in front was served. No probs. Maybe we are more sensible up north or maybe more scared. I did see a few people with starved worn bandit style though. Lol.

It is easy enough to make a mask. There are plenty of patterns online and they can be hand sewn. You can use fabric from an outworn and about to be discarded clothing or a sheet or pillowcase. Make several and change them regularly during the day, wash them as soon as you get homeand dry overnight on a radiator, wear latex gloves if possible, failing that ordinary gloves and wash overnight.

You cannot make hand sanitiser from vodka, it is only 40% alcohol. Sanitiser needs to be 60% alcohol. Get a bottle of methylated spirits and use that - and put plenty of handcream on afterwards.

Just letting you all know when I arrived at work today we have got gloves , hand sanitizer now and lines have been put in front our tills which will make our jobs a bit less stressful.

MiniMoon, I really feel that your husband is taking unacceptable risks, given his age and HBP. He is also putting you at risk.

He should stay home and self-isolate. A little white lie about feeling unwell (maybe a bad back or sprained ankle) is quite justified, I feel, in these exceptional times. Some folk do it all the time, anyway.

Went to do my week's shopping at Waitrose this morning. We were there a good 20 minutes early and thus managed to be in the first tranche let in at 7.30, It was one person per shop. DH and I got in together because I was shopping for a friend as well as myself. Once the required number were counted in it was one out one in. It was all over 70s and anyone who wasn't was challenged. An NHS worker showed their pass. Queues at the tillspaced themselves out and evryone did everything by the book.

A number of people have said that masks and gloves are useles. They are wrong because they are not thinking outside the box. A mask stops you touching your face with your gloved or ungloved hand during your shop, it contains your sneezes and coughs instead of coughing into your sleeve, which can then spread your bacteria/ if you brush against anything, or getting out and using a paper tissue, with no receptacle immediately adjacent to throw it away,and you can then use sanitiser on your hands , but it is very complicated mid shop. Wearing a mask takes awy all those problems.

Similalry going round a shop where you are constantly handling packets and tins, which could all, theoretically be covered with the virus, that virus load is on your glove not your hand, strip your gloves off when the food is in the car, and if you are really worried leave the food in the car for 24 hours or wipe it when you get home, but there is no point in wiping it if you have shopped bare handed and wiped your hand all over the car before getting in and handling your handbag and lots of other things getting your hand sanitiser out and using it.

None if us is going to have the perfect sanitisation system. You would have to seal youself into aplastic bag for the duration to manage that ( and doing that would also pose other life threatening problems) but I do think that if you shop you should, so to speak, gown up.

Some stores have installed perspex screens between customers and cashiers. Surely you should have gloves if you are handling produce and/or cash.

Gloves make you more conscious of your hands and less likely to put them to your face.