Name: Mike Pasquale
How long have you worked here?
I’ve worked here for five years on April 23rd.
What do you do?
I have a lot of responsibilities. Some days I am assisting in the warehouse and other days, like last week, we are assembling a giant tent for guests to stand under when they wait for food at the pantry. We had some real rainy days recently, so we put up the tent for that. I am also a driver. I pick up goods from local stores and bring them back to our warehouse and store, United Way Distribution Services on Blandin Ave in Framingham. We unload everything from the truck and get it set up to be sold or stored for future use. On Mondays and Thursdays, I help unload the trucks with the donations from the Greater Boston Food Bank and get it out to everyone who needs it. This could be to food pantries or other organizations such as SMOC. Once we get food to our pantries, I help stock shelves and get food bags ready for clients at the Pearl St. Cupboard.
What is different since the Coronavirus outbreak?
We are wearing masks and gloves all the time. That’s a huge difference! There are stores we can’t go to anymore to pick up merchandise because they are closed. We still have those partnerships though so once COVID-19 is over, we will be able to work with them again. We also have fewer volunteers, and I understand that. We have a lot of older volunteers and they are worried about getting sick. We have just seen less volunteers since all this has started. The biggest difference, I would say, is how busy we are. We have a lot more people, especially new people, coming to get help.
What is it like being an essential worker?
I feel like I am on the front lines every day. You have to be cautious because you just don’t know. A lot of people are stressed and that creates a tense environment sometimes. The workload has increased a lot but I don’t mind. We're getting it done and I’m proud to be a part of this team.
What is the need you see every day?
The amount of people needing help has increased. We have more and more new families every day. We are seeing lines wrap around the building. We usually close at 1:00pm but there are so many people that we can’t turn away so we end up staying later to get people in the door. We’ve had to ask some people to come back the next day because the line has been so long and that’s difficult. We could work until midnight every day if we never stopped the line but we just can’t do that because we need to restock the shelves.
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