People are selling necessities to their neighbors? Where? 
I’ve not read anything about it.
What I meant is that I strongly believe a lot of the scarcity issues are from hoarder locusts deliberately clearing store shelves so that others in their community cannot obtain necessities without paying extortionate gouging prices to said hoarder locusts, such as on eBay or Amazon. I have also seen photos of people selling (for example) toilet paper out of their cars at insanely high prices ($5/roll sticks out in my mind).
We don’t have a Costco or any warehouse-type store for a 50 mile radiius, but I went to our Wal-Mart for the first time in three weeks. I thought they might have restocked from the first panic rush in early March, but the shelves were much emptier now than then. Low on all meats, including chicken, low on eggs, haven’t had any paper products for over 2 months; soup, pasta, flour, yeast don’t exist anymore. Produce and dairy departments looked pretty well stocked. Large pallets scattered all over, but no one to transfer them to shelves. The in-store Subway is out of business.
As I loaded my car from a shopping cart, an employee came up and offered to take the cart, so I thanked him. He said, “Have a nice day,” and I didn’t feel obligated to respond again. So he repeated it, in caps, “I said, HAVE A NICE DAY.”
I told him, “Sure.” I guess some tolerance is in short supply after all.
One thing I don’t understand is why Wal-Mart, with all their purchasing muscle, is unable to get adequate supplies. Locally, at least, they are the least stocked of any similar outlets, and have been for two months.
I just got back from Vons. They were pretty much stocked up with everything. If it wasn’t for the masks and weird stickers on the floor, you’d think it was February. They had Charmin, garlic, plenty of produce and meat. The only thing they didn’t have was all purpose flour. It wasn’t very crowded either.
Of course, I’m in California and we are pretty self sufficient when it comes to produce, cattle, chickens and seafood.
I’ve been trying to figure that out as well. My guess is that a couple things happened all at once. First, Walmart was slammed with demand. Their domestic sales went up by 10%, increasing over $8B from $80B. Also, their online sales rose 74%. In order to keep up with the demand and ramp up quickly, they hired 235K new employees. But those people needed to be trained in a hurry. I don’t think it’s always that easy to throw that many new people in the mix and expect to get better service. I’m guessing that the merchandise wasn’t lacking in many cases. It might have been getting it out of the trucks and on the shelves that was the issue. And then for the online orders, the packing.
Walmart And Target Win Big In Sales But Only Walmart Sees Bottom Line Win
According to this article, other stores, including Target, didn’t see as much of an increase in demand until after the stimulus checks. Walmart’s problem was more complex than Amazon’s too because Walmart is trying to increase online as well as sell in brick and mortar. Amazon has Whole Foods, but it’s not on the same scale as Walmart.
I’m seeing toilet paper pretty much everywhere. Sheba cat food in those 24-double pack boxes, however, are out in a lot of stores. And if they do have them at least one flavor will be either salmon or tuna. Imhotep hates both. The trout she thought was great, though.
I’m having some neck pain. I ordered some ThermaCare heat wraps for my Kroger pickup but they didn’t have them. On my way home, I decided to stop at Walgreens to see if they had some. Mind you, I haven’t been inside a store in several weeks. I should have turned around and left as soon as I got inside. The manager and the two cashiers were wearing their masks on their chins. But my neck hurts so I grabbed two packs as quickly as possible and got in line. More than half the customers were not wearing masks. I kept as far away from the cashier as I could and got out of there.
I have to hope that this is not how most stores are handling things. I thought about saying something but I didn’t want to delay my exit. I did send a complaint through the Walgreens website telling them I was going to let everyone know that store is not safe to shop in. I’ll never know if that does any good since I’m not going back in there. Things are going to keep getting worse if people don’t stop being so stupid. (I can dream, right?)
At my most recent Safeway run, on 5/21, there was no yeast, but plenty of ground beef - and at only $3.50/pound (for 80/20) if you were willing to buy 4 pounds of it at a time.
That’s what I’m seeing too. Frequently in brands I’d never heard of before, but as long as it’ll wipe the bum, that’s the main thing. I have my preferences, but this isn’t the time to be picky. 
When I was in my local Ace Hardware a week ago, they had a pretty good stock of hand sanitizer. (Don’t know if it’s chain-wide, but our local store is strict about masks, only allowing a limited number of customers in the store at a time, social distancing in the line to get in, etc. Sounds like Lowe’s and Home Dopey aren’t like that. I love my local Ace. :))
Haven’t looked for dried chickpeas, but have had no trouble finding canned lately.
There’s one odd thing I have trouble finding: Pepperidge Farm sandwich white bread. It’s what the Firebug makes his sandwiches with. Pre-pandemic, it wasn’t particularly hard to find. Now it’s nowhere around here - not at Giant or Safeway or Weis or Walmart or the local non-chain grocery. If I don’t find more soon, the kid will either have to be less picky about his bread, or give up sandwiches.
Went to Lowes today (big box home improvement store) and it was almost as if this whole Covid thing never existed. There were people wearing masks, maybe 20%, but the place was jammin’ and there was very little social distancing. Now that I have access to masks, I’ve been wearing them in public places like that but clearly, in my part of Indiana, most people have gone back to pre-virus behavior.
On the plus side, found a couple gallons of disinfectant grade bleach there.
Still no TP around here (Norcal) but it does seem to very geography-specific. I was talking to a neighbor about the TP situation and his Dad lives ~20 miles away and that Costco has reliably had toilet paper for several weeks.
I’m in northern California myself and seeing TP at places like Walmart. I don’t usually go to Costco in person.
I deliberately go to the grocery store late at night to see how well they’re stocked. The TP aisle was completely stocked. had an interesting conversation with the person stocking shelves. He said the buyers didn’t place orders like they normally did for TP. they got what the distributors had available in the pipeline.
Still out of spam and now they’re out of pitted dates.
Since I’m an early-a.m. insomniac, 6 a.m. Sunday morning has become my regular shopping time. Except for Wal-Mart which doesn’t open until 7, they’re all open, and even the ones without senior hours are uncrowded enough that I can often go the wrong way down an aisle because there’s nobody else on it. And if I have to go to WallyWorld, even they aren’t too bad first thing Sunday morning.
This totally explains the eclectic variety of TP brands I’ve been seeing lately. For instance, I’ve got a 4-pack of Regio TP in the basement; its label is entirely in Spanish.
I live in centre city phila., we have big stores in the neighbourhoods surrounding centre city. I haven’t been to the big store in a month. The little corner stores have a pretty good selection. I was able to get bounty paper towels and charmin in the corner store.
The small intercity target didn’t have any paper products, or my cat’s favourite food. Corner store did.
Toilet paper is pretty much back to normal around here, at least for the stuff I buy (the cheap single-ply with 1000 sheets per roll).
One shortage that I didn’t anticipate, but makes sense in retrospect, is herbal tea.
I don’t know if you might have Menard’s stores in your area; they’re a low price version of Lowes/Home Depot (like Walmart versus Target). Anyway, they have some strict policies: no one under 16 years old, mandatory masks, six-foot spacing marks. Went there yesterday for some grass seed; it was actually more comfortable and less intimidating because everyone was wearing a mask. No disapproving or judgmental looks, since everyone is following the same rules. I don’t shop at Costco but I wonder if shoppers there feel somewhat the same way about the mandatory mask policy.
We’re going to try an organic CSA with delivery for 6 months. It’s a local consortium so we can get meat and honey as well as produce. They deliver for $5. You order each week (in contrast to the “you get what you get”-style CSA). This ought to improve the quality of the produce and meat, and decrease our Fred Meyer/Albertson’s bill, as well as decrease the number of curbside pickups we’re making each month. We figure we’ll trade, freeze, or dry anything in excess.
Lowes yesterday, and I was surprised: 100% mask use. Seriously. I saw no one without a face covering (where I’m equating face covering and mask, I suppose). Social distancing was awesome too.
I didn’t expect this.
Winco shoppers were a bit more attentive to distancing than Walmart shoppers. I think higher mask usage at Winco as well.
And I found hand sanitizer in the wild!