This is what I do too. My local supermarket still has the arrows, but now that masks are legally mandated by the municipality, it seems silly to follow the arrows when so few people are in the store. Like you, I go at an uncrowded time, mostly ignore the arrows, and nobody seems to mind.
We have arrows at work (academic building on a college campus). On the lower floor you’re supposed to enter the building at the south end and walk north; then you can take the one-way UP staircase to the second floor, where there is another one-way hallway, north to south, that ends at the DOWN staircase. So, in theory, if someone steps out of a classroom to go to the bathroom, they are supposed to make a full circuit of the building, visiting both floors, before they can get back to the classroom where they started. It’s the most ridiculous security-theater thing ever. Meanwhile, the university has issued absolutely no guidance about opening the windows during class, which would actually be useful.
Lots of things are inconvenient. Like wearing a mask. But it does some good. So we (most of us) comply. The arrows are not just “out of date,” they make no sense. So we don’t comply.
No.
It’s for the same reason that people dont wear masks, gather in groups, and insist that high school sports resume. Because they think they know better than everyone else.
These one way rules were implemented in many places (not just grocery stores) when it was believed that face to face transmission was a primary vector. I was good policy. And it’s still not bad, because many people either dont wear masks or wear them wrong.
My grocery also doesnt allow reusable bags, to limit the possibility of cross contamination. But, they do allow purses and backpacks. I am rather fastidious in my decontamination procedures and I use the self check out so the possibilty of cross contamination is nil. Should I just ignore this reg and bring my bags in anyway?
There are plenty of other regulations that “make no sense” like not bringing water bottles thru security at the airport. Or having to wear shoes at the 7eleven. Should we just ignore these, too?
But, most fundamental of all; it’s their place of business. They can implement any (legal) nonsensical rule they want, and it’s just the height of disrespect to say “nuh uh, not gonna do it!”
Like I said: self important whiners.
Err, i do comply. But i, like others, suspect the arrows are counter-productive. And that’s the question here, “does this help?”. The anecdotes are meant to illuminate how much time people spend, how many shoppers they pass, etc.
I don’t know if there is a factual answer on this. The best you can do is intuitively cobble together what we do know.
Research seems to show that masks help. Every day there’s a new study that shows masks are less than 100%, but closer to 100% than previously thought, even when they’re ill-fitting or degraded.
Logically, that tells me most of the viral load is being carried by macroscopic droplets of saliva. That’s why masks work, the droplets are big enough the fibers can catch them, and that they are more likely to settle out in a downward direction than float around indefinitely like a dust mote.
If that’s true, then anything that keeps people’s mouths from directly facing one another will probably help. I can’t say how much one-way lanes actually help. It doesn’t seem like much, but that’s what I thought about masking before all the research came out.
Then there’s also the benefit of stress reduction. In pandemic times, personally, I’m less stressed when people are distant from me and preferably not facing me. Stress degrades the immune system, it can make people irritable and have poor judgment. But this might be a wash, since it seems like about half of us are already deeply stressed by having to be considerate of others. If stores were strict about the one-way policy, I could see people having to lap too many aisles to reach their goods, leading to stress and possible altercations, which probably don’t help matters.
So I feel like the labeling is good, and it would be helpful if the community gets 100% behind it, but probably harmful if it’s forced and mandated.
Oh, I follow the arrows within reason (if my item is 4 feet the wrong way down a completely empty aisle, that’s different) but many people do not. This has caused me a great deal of stress. I expect people to generally follow the rules, and approaching me the wrong way down a one-way aisle is akin to driving the wrong way down a one-way street: “What is this crazy person going to do next?”
But there’s no one-way arrows on the ends of the aisles, and I don’t get stressed about people going the other way there. If the rule is not doing any good (and I don’t think it is, at all) it’s ultimately the rule that’s causing me stress. And the more arbitrary and unenforceable rules that get put in place the more people will start to ignore and resent them.
The Publix here had them but removed them.
I thought they were a good idea at first, but now I agree that unless, like others have mentioned, the stores have a quite strict customer limit, they are only of very marginal utility at best. They simply can’t even come close to halving the exposure from a grocery store, because they aren’t enforced in the large main aisles orthogonal to the small aisles, where most of the exposure to people is going to happen anyway. And it never even crossed my mind that we’re not supposed to pass people until they’re done shopping.
If I waited, not only would I get passed half the time by someone else, sometimes going the wrong way, but I’d be breathing in the air for a minute or so from all the other customers while the person in front of me reads the packaging on all the cans of cat food. Although if someone is looking at something I also intend to purchase, I do wait for them to be done.
So in my experience they only cut down on a couple interactions per store visit out of dozens. They probably don’t hurt, but I can’t see how they could be very useful. Customer limits would be better.
Yeah, that’s the tragedy here. We have a vocal contingent who refuse to submit to anyone’s public health authority except their high-school health expertise, who push back hard at every coordinated and consistent policy, and then jeer smugly when policies turn out to be uncoordinated and inconsistent.
<prolonged rant censored after I thought better of it, but use your imagination>
I don’t have specific and credible proof on this, but intuitively based on my reading it seems like one person breathing around you is usually not going to be a problem. The problem is continuously inhaling large viral load that accumulates in close, unmasked indoor spaces.
Some researchers are now proposing that the much-hyped inadequate mask filtration actually helps immunity, because you feel safe enough to venture out, and you pick up such small amounts of virus that your body can defeat it and gain immunity (don’t try variolation at home, I suggest waiting for the experimental research on this).
Sort of like smelling a fart won’t make you throw up (usually), but you wouldn’t take a car trip with a lactose intolerant family.
Why would the virus care what direction I’m going when I pass someone in a grocery aisle?
We can understand why a mask might help. We can understand not reusing bags. I cannot understand walking north vs. walking south can make a difference. True, I’m not an expert in the field, but the rationale for this seems to be that everyone walking in the same direction will keep people from passing each other. That simply isn’t true.
Well, if they happened to sneeze or cough just before you passed them, you might get it right in the face.
That was one of the few justiciations I could think of for one-way traffic.
My face is going to be in approximately the same location either way. But maybe. Okay.
I can only speak for the handful of markets in my suburban area in which I shop, but most people ignore them. In fact, the most aggressive shoppers who scowl at you for being in THEIR way are the ones who are usually going the wrong way.
The one way signs definitely increase my stress. Now, if I miss an item, it’s really an ordeal to loop all through the store again to find it. So I feel stressed in every aisle that I might be missing something. It makes me shop slower, for the same reason.
I mean, I want to stay away from people, too, but people pass each other all the time with the one-way aisles, I don’t really think this is helping anyone keep distance. I guess it means I can’t be trapped between parties coming at me from opposite directions, but I hold my breath when passing or being passed, and I don’t find it stressful to walk past people from time to time (nor to have them walk past me.)
This, exactly. If the idea in part to make people less stressed, it’s failing that miserably too.
California now allows reusable bags, but if you bring them you have to pack it yourself, which works for me.
I want to minimize my time in the store. Wearing a mask doesn’t take any time, and everyone does so and does so correctly. Going through an entire aisle to pick up something five feed in does not. Waiting for the checker to pack your bags does not. Congestion from the person examining every damn can in a display does not.
Yes, I do not disagree, that’s why I stated in my post that it might cause stress instead of relieving it. I wanted to explore both sides of it. It seems like a wash to me.
Yes, because in addition to the arrows, they expected people to “socially distance”, i.e. try to remain 6 ft apart. If the lane is too narrow to pass with 6 ft of distance, people were expected to wait.
Sounds familiar- in the college building I’m mostly based in, if you follow the arrows and you step out a classroom to go to the bathroom, you have to exit the building via the common room (which often has a closed door), then re-enter via the main entrance. Meanwhile, in several of the other buildings, they’ve marked out corridors with a dividing line down the middle and arrows on each side. Apparently they believe the virus is going to pay more attention to a bit of tape than students are.
The college has also hired a nice young man to go round wiping all the door handles and light switches with disinfectant, put sanitiser everywhere and stuck signs about everything from the number of people allowed in one bathroom to barring anyone from walking through the library aisles, and they have decreed that all windows must remain open (which is obviously not going to happen once the typical winter horizontal rain starts up) but there’s not even a fecking recommendation for students to wear masks except on the bus and in exams.