32: Guiseppe Coccia

Deli Counter, Russo Market

Giuseppina Coccia is a deli counter employee at Russo’s Italian Market, where she works about 30 hours a week. As an essential business, the market was able to remain open during the shutdown. Giuseppina enjoys her work talking to customers, taking orders, and making salads and sandwiches. She did the catering too before the pandemic, but with fewer events happening there has been much less demand. She hopes that they will soon be able to open part of the market that have been closed down, like the salad bar, so that their customers are better able to enjoy themselves. It has been much harder work to keep the customers happy and safe during the pandemic. 

Giuseppina lives with her husband who is retired, and the beginning of the pandemic was very difficult for them. With so much about COVID still unknown, they were very frightened, and wearing masks took a lot of getting used to. It was especially scary for them when their son got COVID, though fortunately he recovered. She and her husband were both very careful when going out, but they still tried their best to engage with other people so that they did not become isolated. Giuseppina hopes that everything goes back to normal, especially for people in the restaurant industry, which is suffering greatly. It has really struck her how many things the world has missed because of the pandemic. She prays it never happens again.