Grocery Shortages

[walrus]

I think we're going to look back and find the idea of keeping every single grocer and corner store open as nuts and a massive factor in rapid spread. Been trying to go just once a week..not on weekends..and roaming parking lots for the more empty ones. Still blows me away how nonchalant some are especially in a produce section. Old young and complete families with multiple kids in tow..I'm convinced people are cooped up at home feeling the walls close in and are just looking for excuses to go out. It's a literal Petri dish. You can glove and mask up but it's as reliable as the couple next to you picking up every piece of fruit and tossing them back into the display. I mean why not limit access? Require employees to glove and mask? Offer online or even old school limited pre paid phone orders? Parking lot pick up.

We were talking about that today. You see some people in the store 4 and 5 times during the day. It is easy to justify- "I needed milk"- and people use it as an excuse to get out of the house. There are meetings in the aisles.
But it is a small, close knit community, where people have lived together for generations. There are two guys in the group that used to talk guns at McDonald's, they went together to enlist to go to Vietnam. Their fathers enlisted together for WW2, and their sons served together in Iraq.

id imagine it’s much different where you’re at as far as sheer numbers and clustering but ultimately you guys working in store need to look out for yourselves. Ideally the owners and higher ups would be looking out for all of their workers. Ha. What a fairytale. I find myself becoming quite short and matter of fact with some clients. They’re selfish ungrateful shats at times. A few not all of course. I pull up today and we have 3 owners standing at the top of the ramp just carrying on without a care in the world. I say you all need to please stay in your cars as the receptionist instructed and walked a wide arc around them. Seriously caught myself feeling like a ticked off old Dad shooing away some children ffs. You try to accommodate clients but some are thick as hell.

Some people don't appreciate anything and a lot of people are afraid and it shows itself in a variety of ways. And when you are over 70 hours for the 4th week in a row it ain't easy to bite your tongue but you do.
But when you get a chance to get a package of toilet paper to some old guy that didn't get his social security check until the shelves were bare, the look in his eyes makes it worthwhile.
The local pasty guy has been doing home delivery for his elderly customers- and he's at least 70- but thought he was going to have to shut down because of no flour, but I got him 20 pounds this morning and that felt good too.

Seriously I got a lot of respect for all the grocery workers. I hope people don’t soon forget you guys kept working through this mess.