Low Hum of Menace

Ira Glass

I got my teeth cleaned this week, and I was asking the hygienist how it was going with the global pandemic and all. And she was like, just yesterday somebody stole two face masks from the counter right there. And so I was like, do you know who? And she was like, yeah, she knew exactly who, because she caught her red handed, and the woman wasn't sorry at all-- wouldn't give the masks back. I mean, there's a national shortage, but still.

I heard about this woman, Kim, who decided a couple weeks ago to buy some face masks for her mom. Her mom works at a home caring for the elderly, and face masks are recommended for people like her mom. Kim went shopping for some. CVS-- sold out. Rite Aid-- sold out. Target-- sold out. She called pharmacies around town in northern California, where she lives. No luck, until she reached this one woman.

Kim

She said they were sold out, and then she paused for a second. And then she said, well, I have a stash at home. I might be able to sell you some masks. Let me call you after work.

Ira Glass

Wait, and so suddenly it's like you're doing an illegal drug deal or something over a mask?

Kim

Kind of felt that way. So I called her after work. We set up a time and place, and we met the following day in front of the Safeway, next to the Glacier water bottle vending machine.

Ira Glass

Wait, wait.

Kim

And--

Ira Glass

Wait, that's what she said? She said, OK, we're going to meet in front of this Safeway in front of the Glacier bottle vending machine?

Kim

Yes. I found her easily, gave her the cash, got the box, said thank you--

Ira Glass

Now, describe the actual physical transaction. Now, when you handed her the cash, was it a kind of like your hand was over top of the cash so someone else couldn't see it, and she palmed it away from you.

Kim

Pretty much, yeah.

Ira Glass

The woman asked for $100 for 10 masks. Kim talked her down to $70. Regular price would be $1 per mask, maybe $2.

Kim

And she told me that she had two boxes left. So if I wanted more, I could come back.

Cameron

I work at a local co-op here in Seattle, Washington called PCC Community Markets, just a little bit different clientele. They're kind of like a Whole Foods clientele, a little more particular.

Ira Glass

Cameron works in the produce department, and he's a cashier. Washington state, you may know, has more cases than any other state, and most of them are around Seattle. So the co-op started selling out of toilet paper, beans, flour, hand sanitizer when this first hit the news.

Cameron

It's been pretty tense, very just on edge. A lot of people are upset that we don't have hand sanitizer wipes for our carts. I've had a few customers vocally yell at me because of how I was touching their cans when I was checking them out at the register.

Ira Glass

Like this one guy, who had a lot of cans.

Cameron

It was a kombucha energy drink. I can't remember the exact brand. He probably had a couple dozen. Some of them had fallen over, and I'd grabbed the top of the can versus the bottom of the can when scanning it, which, I mean, I can understand. But at the same time, I probably wasn't the first person to touch that can, so.

Ira Glass

What did they say to you?

Cameron

He just wanted me to be aware of what I was doing. It took me a minute to understand what he was saying, because he was so frustrated. I don't remember the exact words, but paraphrasing he was asking me in a pretty passive aggressive way why I'm touching the cans the way I am.

Ira Glass

Somehow that's exactly what I would have pictured. I'm picturing sort of Fred Armisen in Portlandia.

Cameron

You're so spot on it's gross right now. [LAUGHS] He was wearing glasses, for sure, and some sort of fleece. But he was just telling me how I need to be touching the cans without touching the tops, and yeah.

Ira Glass

Some people have more to fear than others right now, I think, like Jasmine Reese. She works at Los Angeles airport, LAX, cleaning out planes after they land, including international flights. Coronavirus became a very real thing to her over a month ago when a plane arrived from Hong Kong.

Jasmine Reese

Even as I'm getting on the plane, and I see first class, business, I'm walking down. And I'm seeing co-workers with face masks, and I'm like, what's going on? Why does everybody have a face mask? They're like, oh, because there's a virus. There's a virus, and you have to clean this plane. This is one of the planes that, you know, this is Hong Kong. And I'm like, oh, let me go downstairs and go get me one, because keep in mind that I'm five months pregnant.

Ira Glass

And did they have face masks? Were you able to get one?

Jasmine Reese

Yeah, but we don't have them every day, and we work every day, but we're kind of low on supply, so meaning that we may not have face masks every day. We may not have gloves every day.

Ira Glass

There have been days since the virus when you went in, and you had to clean a plane without a mask?

Jasmine Reese

Yeah, there's plenty. There's plenty of days that we get on there and we don't have no mask. We're cleaning. Sometimes we get on there. We don't have masks and gloves.

Ira Glass

One job the crew does-- they reach deep into garbage bags on the plane and pull out the garbage by hand. Jasmine cleans American Airlines planes. She works for a contractor called Jetstream Ground Services. A number of Jetstream employees have been quoted in the press saying the same thing about gloves and masks that Jasmine says.

We reached out to a spokesperson for the company, Eric Rose. He said in emails, quote, "we are at a loss as to why the employees are making these false claims." Jetstream Ground Services has always had an abundant supply of safety equipment for all employees to fulfill their daily assignments." End quote.

Just this week, the Service Employees International Union started distributing masks and gloves to workers like Jasmine in LAX, saying Jetstream has not properly provided them. The day I talked to Jasmine, two people who work at LAX had at that point tested positive with the virus. Jasmine thought one of them worked at terminal seven.

Jasmine Reese

So we have a person all the way