LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — On Monday, Governor Asa Hutchinson announced all members of Phase 1-B were eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.
That includes people like essential transit workers, government officials, and grocery store workers.
"Well yesterday within 30 minutes I heard about it," Eric Herget, owner of Heights Corner Market in Little Rock said. "Honestly within another 20 minutes, we all had appointments."
It's a day they've been waiting on for almost a year.
"It's hard to believe it's been a year, to be honest," Herget said,
It's a year that, at times, has felt slower than normal. The reaction time from Herget and his staff to get an appointment? Very fast.
"There was no hesitation on any of our staff," he said. "I'm at one o'clock tomorrow, I think everyone else is between one and 1:30."
The push for vaccinating grocery store workers isn't new. Many have called for them to be vaccinated earlier as they deal with customers face-to-face daily.
"We have been frontline since day one of this thing. I'm not going to try and compare us to the health care workers and the hospitals and all that," Herget said. "However, our employees, with minimal PPE that we had available to us, have handled food that everyone's handled, put it in their bag, and all of that, so I do consider our folks frontline folks."
It's a thought that isn't just at locally owned stores. Big box stores like Kroger have employees feeling the same way, especially when coworkers begin to feel more like family.
"For myself, this is my extended family," Sam Walker, a store lead at Kroger on West Markham, said. "To know that they've sat down with me personally and cried, and had those times where they needed someone to talk to, this means a lot today."
Walker himself has also been impacted by the pandemic. It's why he says he'll get his vaccine.
"My grandmother passed away this past year, and it really touched my family," he said. "It means I can not only protect myself, but I can protect my children, I can protect my friends, and I can protect the people that mean the most to us."