I just got an email from my usual grocery store that they will be closing an hour earlier each day for the present, to allow more time for the workers to be restocking shelves. Also suspending drive-up deliveries, though in truth I have never witnessed a single such delivery in all the years I’ve gone there.
Anyway. For your amusement: I did my usual Friday-after-leaving-work shopping trip yesterday. Except it was not at all as usual. My first clue was the bread aisle. There was a SINGLE loaf of bread on it. Literally, in the exact meaning of literally. It was cinnamon-raisin swirl, so I left it to someone more desperate than I. I did score one of just three remaining packs of English muffins.
The dairy section was mostly fine – plenty of milk and eggs and cheese, with a few varieties gone. Yogurt had been hit, though. I bought the last five cartons of regular yogurt they had. Not my usual brands or flavors, but oh well. Beggars <>choosers.
I’d planned on buying some pasta. Again the aisle was nearly denuded. All the regular pastas were gone, all brands and shapes. All that was left was a few boxes of gluten free spaghetti.
On to the baking aisle. Hey, no problem, I know how to bake bread… except there was no flour. Not white, not wheat, not rye, any size from any company. There were a few bags of spelt flour and a big heap of, wait for it, BANANA flour. I did not even know there was such a thing!
And that was how it went throughout the store. No paper good, obviously. No sanitizers/cleaning liquids. Maybe 5% of the usual amount of canned vegetables. Tuna and canned chicken and canned pastas…Gone. A few cans of soup, mostly weird ‘gourmet’ specials combos. The produce section was reduced to those little clamshell boxes of herbs and such. No lettuce, no tomatoes, no bananas, no apples, no oranges… no, no, no, no.
The deli seemed fully stocked though. I guess with schools canceled and people working from home they don’t need as much lunch meat for sandwiches?
Anyway. The store was actually nearly empty of customers, too. I felt like I was in one of those post-Apocalypse movies with the tiny amount of dazed survivors wandering through the remains of civilization.
So I decided to stop off there at 8:15 a.m. on my way to a meeting – and they actually had some food! The overnight stockers had clearly put in heroic efforts. I was able to get bread and some other things I’d missed last night. Still big gaps everywhere – the produce department was still wiped out, and items stocked by manufacturers were still missing (like pretty much all breads except for the store brand) – but it was much better than last night.
Then after my meeting broke up a bit after noon, I decided to swing by again on my way home.
Yay! I got fruit! And lettuce! Even green peppers and tomatoes!
But then I walked past the bread aisle…and it was again completely empty! Yep, every single loaf that the workers had been able to put out overnight had been scooped up by noon.
I know this kind of desperation buying will have to taper off quickly – how much room do people have to store food, anyway? – but it’s genuinely starting to make me freak out.
Maybe they are right and I’m the foolish optimist? Why didn’t I buy three, no five loaves of bread this morning?? Maybe I could fit seven loaves into the freezer if I rearrange things…
Will I turn into a hoarder? Stay tuned.
