My morning working in a food distribution line shows the COVID-19 impact on America

If you really want to see what COVID-19 is doing to America, spend a morning working in a food pantry.

I’ve been an employee at GraceWorks Ministries, a nonprofit in Franklin, Tennessee, for over two years, but I had not worked in the food pantry until recently. As the accounting and HR manager, my days are spent running payroll, cutting checks and doing the million behind-the-scenes jobs that, quite literally, keep the lights on.

But we are short-handed, the need is huge, and I love having an excuse to leave my desk job for a few hours to participate in the heart of our nonprofit. That’s how I found myself driving to work early on a Saturday morning to distribute food.

I arrived at work an hour before our 9 a.m. distribution began, and cars were already starting to line up. Silver sedans, black SUVs, old Fords, a new Lexus — they were all there. Their engines were turned off, waiting while we set up, organized ourselves, did a quick prayer (we need it now more than ever!) and set out to feed as many people as we could in three hours.

We normally operate our food pantry like a grocery store, helping neighbors choose their own food from shelves of options. But once COVID-19 guidelines were put into place, we switched our distribution to curbside delivery. We prepare a shopping cart full of food inside our food pantry, then deposit the bags of groceries directly into the trunks of our neighbors in need.

The carts I created today were full and generous. They had toilet paper, about two dozen types of canned goods, canned meats, pasta, rice, breakfast items, fresh produce, bread, baked goods, 10-15 pounds of frozen meat and a few “goodies” to make each basket cheery.

It doesn’t take long to be humbled, working at a place like GraceWorks ... and today it happened, once again.

Almost everyone is in need

As I filled my first cart, I remembered how yesterday I complained to my husband about what a pain grocery shopping had become. The masks and gloves made it hard to just pop in to buy what you need. In fact, “popping in to buy something” was discouraged, so we had to bulk shop, making an exhaustive list, and buying food for our family of five in one shopping trip. It’s easy for our family to spend $250 a week on food.

This morning as I packed a cart for a family I would never meet, I realized I (and most Americans) live such a novel life. I am able to pick and choose what food I eat each day. I could make a grocery list, shop for the items I need and throw in a few extra treats I know my kids love, to make this time of isolation a bit more cheerful.

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Not so when you are in a food distribution line and you rely on luck. Normally, we try to be aware of cultural food preferences (some don’t eat pork; others don’t eat beef), but when you are distributing a cart a minute, and have a line of cars stretching into the street, the goal is simple: Fill carts with food fast.

I’m not sure how long people were waiting for their food today, but I’d say it was easily an hour. People don’t go to food pantries because they are fun or convenient. They go because they need food and are willing to wait a long time for it.

The need we are seeing surpasses all ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic barriers. Seemingly almost everyone is in need. Yesterday, 75% of the people who picked up food had never been to our food pantry. Many say they are out of work and don’t have a paycheck coming in for the foreseeable future. Many are downtrodden and in despair in their normal lives, and this pandemic has further deepened their burdens. Some feel as if being in a food pantry line is something to be ashamed of when, really, food pantries exist for times exactly like these and for people exactly like them.

I had packed maybe eight carts when my coworker came up to me and said, “Susan, I love you. ... Go faster.”

I thought I had been packing at record speed. I never shop this quickly in the grocery store! But I picked up my pace, started singing (badly) to the '80s music on the speakers and just kept going. The food kept flowing. My back hurt; my hips hurt; I checked the clock. Only an hour had gone by.

How you can help

We ran out of bread; we ran out of macaroni and cheese; we ran out of so many things. And, miraculously, unexpected deliveries came in from churches and community members: Bread, rice mixes, macaroni and cheese. It was like watching manna arrive from heaven as boxes of food kept appearing, and appearing, and appearing on the food pantry shelves. In the end, every single person who came through our line received a generous cart of food that would make many days worth of meals for their families.

As the day’s work wound down, the overwhelming truth I was left with is this: The demand is real, and it is widespread. We fed 143 families today in three hours. We normally feed 30 families in a seven-hour day.

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While most people won’t be able to volunteer in a food pantry due to COVID-19 restrictions, there are still very tangible ways to help:

►If you still have a job, donate money to a nonprofit in your area. They will put it to good use as they help people in your community who are less fortunate.

►If you are someone who has any extra food or toilet paper to spare, please make the effort to donate some of it to your local pantry. GraceWorks is tapping into every food resource we have, as is every other food pantry we’ve talked to, and we need more food.

►If you live in a neighborhood that allows it, offer your porch, or your trunk, as a collection point where your neighbors can donate food and toiletries.

►Host a drive-thru food drive at your church or community center, where donations can be picked up directly from one person’s trunk and put into another vehicle that will take it to the food pantry.

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Think about what you donate. Think of how excited you would be to receive a box of Fruit Loops or Golden Grahams or yummy granola, compared with the generic USDA corn flakes that normally are distributed. And give like you’re giving food to your own family. Give what you would want to eat.

Be sure to contact the food pantry to find out the best time and place to take your donation, then deliver it, knowing that the food you are dropping off will be in the hands of a neighbor who needs it in record speed. The times we are living in ensure it.

Susan Seiling is a writer and a nonprofit ministry leader from the Nashville area. For more information, visit lifebysusan.com.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Working in a food distribution line makes me see coronavirus impact