Grocery store employees are considered essential workers and therefore have been working since the novel coronavirus outbreak.

One employee at a Long Island Trader Joe's spoke to Insider about his experience so far working during the pandemic.

He shared things he wishes shoppers would stop doing during this time, as well as precautions he, his peers, and Trader Joe's are taking to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in their stores.

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In this As Told To, Insider's series of edited conversations about unique experiences, Rachel Askinasi talks to a New York-based Trader Joe's employee in his mid-20s about his experience working during the pandemic. He asked to remain anonymous in order to speak frankly.

Grocery store workers are considered "essential critical infrastructure workers." They are continuing to work, exposed to hundreds of people daily, including some who are playing dangerous, virus-related pranks.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

When the news of the virus first started off, we had a massive influx of people coming into the store. Everyone was buying literally everything. We were so unbelievably overwhelmed with the amount of customers we had that we actually ran out of stock. By the end of the day, on a daily basis, our shelves were empty.

Normally, a Trader Joe's gets around one truck of groceries at night and one in the morning. At that time, we were getting three trucks a night and two every morning. It would take us an extra hour every single day we were working to make sure that the shelves were being restocked for the next day just to have the exact same thing happen over and over again.

That went on for about two weeks up until the quarantine rules were actually set, like limiting people in certain confined spaces and making sure that everyone was at least six feet apart.

Since then, things have been a lot more calm.