photo credit Cash Saver
Mark Gatlin, vice president of store operations for Cash Saver.
Who do you picture when you picture a hero? Perhaps a firefighter, rushing into a burning building, enters your mind. I experienced just this sort of heroism firsthand, last fall, when my husband’s and my Midtown home lit up from an electrical fire. The quickness of the Memphis Fire Department crew that evening stunned me, but what stays with me even more vividly is their compassion. One man, whose name I do not know, handed us a bottle of water so that our dogs could drink from our cupped hands. Those firefighters understood precisely what to do in order to keep us, and as much of our home as possible, safe.
Living in these pandemic days can feel a little like being in a fire that just won’t be snuffed. The best most of us can do is avoid it — we can deprive it of oxygen by preventing its insatiable desire to spread, but that’s about all. There is a certain quiet, collective heroism in everything we are not doing. There’s heroism in staying home, in keeping our distance, in wearing masks when we do need to draw near others.
But then there are those who are taking active steps each day to make the rest of us safer, and to sustain us during these difficult days. We decided to talk to several locals whose heroism takes different, but undeniable forms, for which they are uniquely qualified. Without question, we could have filled every page of this magazine with other local heroes’ stories.
— Anna Traverse Fogle, CEO & Editor-in-Chief
Mark Gatlin has been on the front lines of the Memphis food supply since 1976, when he first took a job with Seessel’s. Now the vice president of store operations for Cash Saver, Gatlin has witnessed about all that could be imagined in the grocery business, but he’s never seen anything like the current pandemic.
“I went through Hurricane Elvis [in 2003],” reflects Gatlin. “One time there was a man who predicted there was going to be an earthquake here. We went through an ice storm [in 1994]. If you put all those together, they would not equal what we’re going through now.”
Gatlin has a distinct challenge: Provide food and health products for his customers while keeping his staff — close to 300 employees at three locations — healthy as the coronavirus wreaks havoc, often invisibly. “We’re providing gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer for our employees,” notes Gatlin. “We’re going along with six-foot distancing in all stores. When all this is over, we’ll go back to 24-hour service, but for now, we close at 10 p.m. each night and open at 6 a.m., to give our employees a chance to clean and sanitize everything, to get the stores as close to a germ-free atmosphere as you can have in the retail business.”
Ten to 12 Cash Saver employees work alongside professional cleaners (Jan-Pro is a partner) to make the start of a business day as safe as possible. All the while, Gatlin aims to stock shelves with in-demand products that his suppliers can’t always provide.
“Overtime is not an issue. If you want to work 32 hours, that’s fine. If you want to work 55 hours, that’s fine. We’re not forcing people, but a lot of employees are making some extra pay. The need is there.”
“When people walk into a grocery store and they see 60 feet of empty shelving, the problem isn’t with the store,” explains Gatlin. “The supply chain has broken down. We recently ordered 250 cases of toilet paper for [the Midtown] store, and we got seven cases. Every other retailer in the United States is doing the same thing. Customers have no earthly idea of how we get our products, so when there’s a problem, it’s directly associated with the retailer. At this point in time, there are things that are just 100 percent out of our control. We’re not hiding toilet paper in the back room.”
Human density is the most critical variable in the spread of any virus, and it has to be measured and managed carefully in a facility providing food. Gatlin says between 25 and 45 employees must be on hand in the 69,000-square-foot Midtown store, depending on the day of the week and time of day. And no more than 300 people (counting staff and vendors) can be inside at the same time, a number that stretches social-distancing regulations.
“If we approach that limit,” emphasizes Gatlin, “we begin regulating the number of people who can enter the store.”
Gatlin recognizes the mental strain that has made the lockdown especially trying. Cash Saver has done what it can to keep employees comfortable, both in mind and wallet.
“Most of my employees are getting two days off a week,” he says. “On the flip side, overtime is not an issue. If you want to work 32 hours, that’s fine. If you want to work 55 hours, that’s fine. We’re not forcing people, but a lot of employees are making some extra pay. The need is there. Every employee — from lowest-paid to top — has also been given a raise of $2.00 an hour while this is going on. Bonuses have been distributed. These are bad times, but some positive things are happening also.”
Gatlin chuckles in noting the pandemic coinciding with allergy season in Memphis. Watery eyes and a violent sneeze 12 months ago are measured very differently in 2020. “I’m notorious for having springtime allergies,” he says. “We’ve had a couple of employees who took time off to get tested, and were negative. But if someone doesn’t feel well, they don’t come to work.”
