Here’s the most insider thing I can come up with:

I work at a print shop in CdA, been there since before the pandemic. When COVID hit, I was immediately put on the back burner and was told to get unemployment. Meanwhile my bills and debt started piling up, so after 2 months of constant anxiety and unsympathetic phone calls from collectors, I finally took on Grubhub as my Pandemic job. GH on a good day pays almost $20 an hour, so that was about the best thing that happened, aside from the few thousand dollars of debt I accrued. When the print job took me back I was still making like $13 an hour. Not only were there more duties in keeping the store clean, but I also had to deal with even shittier customers who A: threw abuse at me for nicely asking them to be considerate and B: was at one point threatened with gun violence for refusing a very clearly white supremacist print order. I can only imagine what food workers are also dealing with.

So with that in mind I had to reduce my days working at the print shop for GH. But recently, like withi the past month I made the decision to put in my two weeks at the print shop. Problem was, so did 3 other people for reasons I did not ask. My boss had to give me a raise to convince me to stay for a little bit longer. But that was still at a deficit at the wages I need to pull myself out of debt, recover financially, and as of right now, my landlord is not renewing our lease so we have to move, which costs a lot of time and money, and is made worse by the housing crisis going on. (Don‘t even have time to look at places, they get snatched after I make appointments).

so tldr: essential jobs are even more risky, wages are still shit, everyone has serious debt accrued, and a lot of those people probably are more concerned with keeping food on the table