Working As A Cashier At Walmart, This Entrepreneur Found Herself On The Frontline Of Health

In the summer of 2016, Alexandra Drane watched with frustration as the country’s political discourse turned increasingly divisive. Drane, a serial health technology entrepreneur, decided to do something unusual. She applied for a part-time cashier job at the Walmart in North Reading, Massachusetts, not far from her comfortable suburban Boston home. “I wanted to get out of my bubble,” she says.

Drane submitted to a drug screening, filled out her employment history and took a 65-question test to assess her ability at handling customer complaints or potential conflicts with co-workers. On October 7, 2016, as a newly hired “associate,” she clocked in at 8 a.m., and donned a navy blue Walmart-issued vest over her blue button-down shirt and black denim pants.

Courtesy of Alexandra Drane

Alex Drane (right) with her Walmart colleagues.

“How terrified I was in the beginning, when I stood out in the lunch room,” she says. It didn’t take long for the empathetic Drane to get comfortable. Her interactions with customers at the checkout counter quickly confirmed that our shared humanity transcends politics. “We all feel lonely, care for aging parents, or have a sucky boss,” she says. But, as an entrepreneur, who’s been trying to figure out how best to reach caregivers through her new company Archangels, Drane now had a perfect front row seat to America.

Nearly everyone shops at one of Walmart’s 4,761 stores—more than any other retailer, and at least 10% of its customers consider themselves caregivers.

Drane engaged with shoppers. “Is that great body cream?” she asked one woman, who was purchasing six bottles of lotion. “It’s for my son; he has serious health challenges and it’s the only one that works,” she replied. There were also 10 rolls of Mentos. “Is Mentos his favorite candy?” No, they were for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and for the nurses who care for her. (Drane wrote that encounter down on a cash register paper roll, as she did many others.)

Spouses, children and parents passing through her checkout line shared similar stories. Many hold on to jobs while caring for a loved one—almost always at the expense of their health. They miss mammograms and colonoscopies, and dealing with stress makes them more likely to buy liquor or eat junk food. They have twice the rate of depression than non-caregivers and their risk of developing diabetes is more than double. “Caregiving is a chronic disease,” says Marcus Osborne, vice president of Health Transformation at Walmart.

Within two months of working at Walmart, Drane called up Osborne whom she knew from her days running Eliza Corp., a company that does automated outreach to health plan members. “There are a ton of caregivers here,” she told him. Her plan: to have store employees wear buttons with the questions “Are you a caregiver? Ask me how we can help?” They would then hand out a tear sheet with the toll-free number of MassOptions, a government agency that connects caregivers with services, such as transportation, food and financial assistance. The plan flopped; maybe four people put up their hand. Drane thinks customers were too harried to read the buttons.

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