FACE MASK VOLUNTEERS DIY THEIR OWN KIND OF DIVISION OF LABOR
ON MARCH 23, Kat Henry was working the cash register at the Kansas City Hobby Lobby, where she’s a department manager. It was the last day before the store shut down to avoid spreading COVID-19, and customers were stocking up on fabric and sewing supplies—getting ready, she assumed, to do some quilting while hunkered down at home. “We tend to see that when it’s going to snow,” she says. “People kind of rush in and buy all the supplies.”
Overhearing customers’ conversation, she soon realized she was wrong. The cloth wasn’t for quilts but for protective masks. One customer’s sister was a nurse who needed covers to wear over the single virus-filtering N95 mask she had to make last all day. Two
