"Metropolitan Market uptown only enforces the 6 foot social distancing at the front of the store. There are signs and floor markers, but the rest of the store is a free for all. I work in the liquor department. Most of my time is spent opening the spirits case for customers, which is located in a main throughway in the store. Anyone coming into the store via the main entrance has to pass through my work area to get to the produce department. My particular area is a bottleneck where people are forced to pass within 6 ft. of each other and me constantly. We have large wine displays which limit space, and for the past few days large displays of other products limiting space in another main throughway leading to the res t of the store. Additionally, we have tons of couples and even families coming in to the store, as well as people coming in daily, and almost everyone that deals with me walks right up to within a foot or two away from me. I know it's difficult policing the public, but I really feel Met Market could do more to educate the people about safe behavior. They have a small sign by our secondary entrance, but they could have larger more noticeable signs outside the store so people would see them before coming in. Or we could have staff posted outside to talk to people and limit how many people come in like other stores are doing. There are employees whose regular jobs are gone because we've shut down their areas of the store, they're still allowed hours doing busy work sometimes unrelated to the virus, they could be put to better use. Speaking of which, they're not really limiting the number of people in the store. I've asked and they've said they keep a limited number of shopping carts available, so they know when those are gone there are too many people in the store, but that's a laughable way to count the store's population, as I said, there are a lot of couples coming in and people coming in for only one or two items, so they don't use carts. Sometimes a store manager will patrol the store with a counter, but again, not an effective way to count as people are moving about. Even if these methods were accurate, there have been way too many people in the store, it's been a zoo. There are many times where I can't even give the customers 6 ft. of space let alone 3 ft. because I get trapped between customers coming at me from all directions. The mask they supply are cheap and located jumbled together by the time clock which is not very sanitary with people and touching and possibly sneezing on them. Thanks for listening." - Davis Sameshima
The aforementioned complaint was filed by Davis Sameshima in Seattle, Washington on Tuesday May 5, 2020 with DOH doh.information@doh.wa.gov against Metropolitan market uptown #157 saying, Essential business not following social distancing requirements. Email address given was Dmsameshima@avvanta.com and no phone number was given.