On The Need For (Bio)Hazard Pay

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

During the Black Friday rush, I was helping a customer and his girlfriend. During the transaction, I noticed his girlfriend looking more and more ill, and she soon sat on the ground.

The customer noticed something and quickly asked me for a bag, which I readily handed over. Of course, things couldn’t be simple as the girlfriend said, “No,” and promptly vomited on the floor. Great.

Now, I did hope she felt better, but I had a problem now. No one in my department was trained for biohazards, and vomit was in that category, so I called for a manager to clean it up because only team leads and higher could do that. The only team lead at the time said:

Team Lead: “Hey, can you just clean that up?”

Me: “No, I cannot. I am not trained in that.”

And of course, said team lead refused to come clean it up. So here I was, trying to help customers while my teammate kept an eye on the… spill… and kept other customers away from it. Someone helpfully donated their cart to put over it after they had finished, but it took a good hour for another team lead to take pity and help clean it up. And that was with us doing calls for assistance for it every five minutes or so. Because who wants to step in vomit?

Related:
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 34
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 33
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 32
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 31
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 30