Angie Kim’s Story
Angie Kim, a senior director of finance with Loblaw Companies Ltd, one of Canada’s most abundant food and pharmacy conglomerates. The various Loblaw companies employ over 200,000 people across the country. For three weeks, Angie has been volunteering her time in different grocery stores as a frontline team member, be it stocking shelves, serving customers, or motivating employees. She doesn’t have to be there, but she’s doing it nonetheless.
Angie took to LinkedIn recently first to make certain that the rest of the world appreciated what these frontline workers are doing for society. (As grocery stores across the world have been deemed an essential service.) But Kim also was showing an incredible level of leadership by calling out some rules of engagement in all grocery stores for the rest of the world to follow. Some of the best included:
I am not hiding any stock in the back room.
I am not making you wait outside the store for fun. I'm trying to protect everyone so we can provide safe place to shop without overcrowding.
I am sorry you may have to wait at the checkout. You are going to have to be a little bit more patient and trust me, your abusive comments to our cashiers don't make them work faster.
Our teams are exhausted and scared too. When you see our staff taking a break, leave them alone. They more than deserve that break.
But what really caught my attention was the fact she volunteered to be squarely in the face of the disease. I reached out to her to understand why. Her reason was gut-wrenchingly poignant.
“I’ll be honest, since I started serving at the front lines, the first thought in my mind when I wake up has been ‘Can I do it again today?’ I’ve been a store manager a few years ago, but despite that experience, these last few weeks have been by far been the most challenging times that test the limits of both my physical and emotional capital. There’s a big part of me that is scared about how exposed I feel as we serve and interact with hundreds of customers daily. (Another confession, I didn’t even tell my mother I’m working at the stores because she’ll worry too much for the same reason.) But, there’s a bigger part of me that knows that I will regret it if I didn’t make the choice to be here and now. I know I’m privileged to volunteer - I’m in good health, not in a household with young children or anyone with compromised immune systems. I have a team at the office that is willing to pull extra weight to allow for my absence from my daytime job. Overcoming my fear rewards me with so much gratitude every day, and I know I’ll look back to these times with pride.”
Angie demonstrates a mesmeric level of selfless leadership for many to emulate.