by Fiona Campbell
Emily Wilbur, 21, from Whitby is a university student who temporarily lost her job because of COVID-19. But she still needed to earn money, so she applied to be a cashier at a local grocery store.
After she got the job, the Canadian government announced its Canadian Emergency Response Benefit or CERB. Those who are eligible get $2,000 a month until they can go back to work.
Now, Emily is still working as a cashier as she finishes her semester online. She met me over FaceTime to talk about her first month on the job.
Can you just tell me where you worked before and why you had to quit?
So, I worked at a business track ordering store.
I was a shift manager there. I'm making slightly over minimum…I didn't quit because of COVID. We were laid off temporarily without pay. So, they literally sent us an email being like ‘other companies are paying their employees for this layoff but we're not going to do that’. So, immediately I started looking for jobs and my mom was at the grocery store so she sent me the email that said their available positions. So, I just applied for that because honestly, applying for a job is going to be easier than trying to figure out how to apply for unemployment. And unemployment at the time would have only been stupid. It would have been like 40 per cent, probably of what I was making before. So, I was like, I may as well just get a job. But then five days later, that announcement came out about the CERB…So, it was too late for me to apply for the emergency money, which would have been better.
What's it like working right now?
The management is really good, actually. So, obviously they're flustered too. So, schedules are coming out the day the week starts, kind of thing, which isn't, it's not a big deal for me. I don't really care. And I understand why they're doing that because they're hiring people, new people all the time right now to deal with it. The customers are nice. Most of them thank me for being there. This one lady bought me chocolate bars. I haven't run into that many who are angry. Maybe one or two out of like, (out of) honestly the hundreds of people that I see.
Are you happy working right now or would you rather not?
I would be happy, it fills up my day because honestly, yes, I could be doing schoolwork all day because I'm in class though. But would I really be doing that? Probably not. So, it's still like something to do. It gets me out of the house because honestly, without it, I would sit in my room all day. I didn't work today and I studied a tiny bit…It's just not good to be home all day. I can't function like that.
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