At the moment, the words felt venomous: “We just couldn’t stand staying at home. Who wants to do that?"

I work part-time at a public-facing job in New York City, and they were spoken by a customer last Sunday afternoon — a seeming eternity ago by now, and a day before the city’s schools were officially shut down. Suddenly, the schism between us became clear: One was able to choose to risk heading out, and the other had no choice but to put their health on the line.

Despite this, I’m still one of the luckier ones. My workplace has since closed and I was eventually granted the privilege to self-isolate; I also have a strong support system back home. But this isn’t the reality for many.

As the phrase “social distancing” becomes as common as air and people stockpile on toilet paper, service workers are making ends meet by facilitating commerce and services that are necessary for our survival. Yet cashiers, delivery workers, and other people working public-facing jobs face increased risk of catching the coronavirus due to on-the-job exposure to others — and they often lack sick pay benefits from their employers and are paid low wages, too.

According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, about 27% of LGBT people are food insecure and 25% make less than $24,000 a year, compared to 15% and 18% of their non-LGBT peers, respectively. For queer service workers especially, times of crisis compound the socioeconomic inequalities they already face, and many are forced to choose between risking infection or risking eviction.

Below, we talked to LGBTQ+ hourly workers from across the country about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting them, and the danger, fear, and hard choices they're confronting. Read more via them.