By Anne Swardson
Seeing these bakery employees protect themselves was a reminder of France’s “other” heroes. The biggest ones, of course, are the doctors, nurses, first responders and other health workers, who are truly laying themselves on the line to cure those stricken by coronavirus as hospitals start to overflow. But there are also shopkeepers, garbage haulers, bank tellers and others dealing with a public whose health condition may cost them their lives.
Many of them are required to be at work. They are members of the essential services that must stay open during this lockdown, now in its ninth day. It’s scheduled to end next week, but chances are rising that the “confinement,” as it’s called, will last longer.
Those service workers are getting some appreciation. Intermarché, the supermarket chain, is running full-page newspaper advertisements headlined “Thank you to all our discreet heroes.” Le Parisien newspaper recently carried a cover article entitled “Without them, all of France would stop.”
President Emmanuel Macron retweeted his thanks to a supermarket cashier, caught on camera in tears saying she was afraid because she didn’t know what kind of disease she might be bringing home from work each day. “We are here for other people, who need to do their shopping,” she said. “If we weren’t, people couldn’t survive.”
Macron’s response: “It’s thanks to you and your colleagues that we can fight together against COVID-19.” He added that the country was working hard to produce more masks. Good thing, since the cashier didn’t have one.
His government has tightened the movement regulations even more. Open-air markets have been banned in the name of social distancing. (And good thing. Where else do people press against each other more tightly?). This is where the one in my neighborhood would have been today. The orange lines mark where the stalls usually are.
As for the people who man the stalls twice a week, they hopefully can benefit from the government payments enacted for those who have lost income.
Bakeries, of course, are one of the most essential industries in France. CNews cable channel interviewed a young baker in the west of Paris today who described the measures he had taken to stay open: He’d laid off his entire staff (also eligible for replacement payments) and was open fewer hours than usual. Interviewed wearing a mask and rubber gloves, he also explained that he was only accepting payment by credit card so he didn’t have to touch cash. If the lockdown was extended further, he said, well, he would cope. What choice did he have?
Every night at 8p.m., French people go to their doors and balconies and loudly cheer the country’s health workers. That’s a wonderful gesture of support. But maybe one night should be devoted to the people who are making sure they can eat, and manage their money, and live on clean streets.