57: Sue Heisey

Food Distributor, Russo Market

Susan L. Heisey is a food distributor for Russo’s Food Market, which remained open during the shutdown. She works about 45 to 50 hours a week, and her job varies a lot from day to day. She takes care of the human resources responsibilities as well as most of the general problem solving for the business. It fell to Susan to work with the owners to create a plan for how to deal with the pandemic and what to do if any employees got COVID. They had to learn what new guidelines they needed to follow to stay open, change opening hours, figure out how best to keep people safe, and navigate how to incorporate deliver and pick-up orders. It required a lot of creative thinking, but ultimately she think that the business has actually grown during the pandemic because they were able to offer a lot of important accommodations that people needed. 

Susan lives with her boyfriend of 20 years who is retired, and she knows eight people who had COVID, though she did not get it herself. Personally, Susan doesn’t feel like she struggled too much during the shutdown, being happy to stay home. Work, however, was hard for her because it was a very reactionary time. Things were changing very quickly, and she was not able to plan ahead. The goalposts kept getting moved, making it difficult to adapt. The most important thing for Susan during this time has been respect. Respecting other people and respecting safety guidelines are crucial, she believes, to moving beyond the experiences of this pandemic.