First of all, there was the memory of being terrified: "We went to work with our stomachs in knots. We heard so many things on the news. And, at the start, we didn't have masks and scrubs!" recalled Ana Fernandes, 57, a home care worker in central France, five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. "We really worked in anxiety. Anxiety," she repeated the word several times. "About catching Covid-19, but also about bringing it into the homes of the fragile people we looked after. But we had to do it, we were needed." Like all her colleagues who had to go and care for people who were losing their autonomy, she never stopped working during the pandemic, despite the lockdowns.

Neither did supermarket employees: Lucia (people only referred to by their first names did not wish to give their family names), 30, remembered when her job in a supermarket in the south-eastern Paris suburbs intensified. "Customers were storming the store! Normally, we only set products up in the stalls once, in the morning, for the whole day. But we had to do it again in the early afternoon, because there was nothing left!" she recalled. "Everyone worked overtime, we did as much as we could!" The first few days, cashiers had no masks or Plexiglas screens to protect them: "We were still a bit scared," she said, "but the customers thanked us a lot for being there, they were very grateful."

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