@rechu I am sending my vibes too.

Do you know what precautions will be taken at voting stations? This May we have local elections and have been advised it's 'one in one out' at stations so there will be queuing outside the room. We will have to sanitize hands upon entry and wear masks (there's the issue, over here a person just has to say they're exempt no proof required).

If you do get selected I wonder if there are things you can do to help reassure yourself and keep yourself safe. Double masking (a surgical mask plus fabric) is one idea. Disposable gloves another.

All I can say is having worked in customer facing retail role throughout the pandemic the risks are not as great as I first feared. Retail workers did not get sick in big numbers. We come into contact with many people but those contacts are brief - infection happens with longer contact and shared airspace (15 minutes plus). When I realised this I relaxed a lot. So hopefully in a voting station contacts will be brief too.

The biggest risk in these scenarios are your colleagues as you are with them all day. When infection has spread in supermarkets it's been throughout staff who have been working closely and sitting in break rooms together. So if you do get selected, be careful to keep your distance from colleagues.

This year we were encouraged to apply for postal votes and first time ever we have - I'm the kind of person who likes the whole tradition of going to the polling station so for me it felt sad but postal votes felt like the right thing to do. Is there a similar encouragement to vote postal?

Best of luck and hope some of what I've written reassures you. I remember how very scared I felt at first going to work in the pandemic.