A Shopping Update During a Slow Rolling Apocalypse

Hasn’t your pantry run out of room?

You’ll at least not need to buy toilet paper for the next 6 years.  Friday I stopped at Winco for a few small items.  You would think the stampede at some point would subside.  It hasn’t.  A sign explained hand sanitizer is limited to one bottle for each customer.  There were no bottles on the shelves. 

A couple ahead of me reserved their place in the long, snaking checkout line.  He started with an empty cart.  She would go grab an item and then walk past the cart and dump it off.  Then she would vanish for a few minutes and then repeat the drop-off.  I watched her grab a bag of tavern snacks.  She had a look of guilt before dropping the salty food into the basket.

Paper products were mostly again cleaned out.  I stood in line a very long time before I could see the self-checkout was open.  It hadn’t been the previous Saturday morning.  On that day I had to go all the way to the back of the line after making the discovery I couldn’t checkout by myself.

Friday at the self-checkout the monitor told me she has never quite seen anything like the previous week.

A friend in Arkansas tells me the rush continues there.  And it picked up again Friday as many people got paid.

Saturday morning there was a crowd outside Smith’s.  A young man who opened the door at 8 o’clock told me the store was going to be closing at 8:00 P.M. starting on Sunday night.  I smiled and told him I would be asleep.

The tomato sauce is nearly stripped bare from the shelves but a new shipment is expected at Smith’s on Sunday.  There was ample chili and a good supply of canned beans and pears.

I was amused by the display of Corona Beer.  A man stacked 4 large cases of the Keystone in his cart.  He explained he doesn’t plan to go dry if he’s confined to his house for an extended period.  Smith’s didn’t have hand sanitizer Thursday or Saturday.  I wasn’t there Friday, so I can’t tell you if a shipment arrived and then quickly vanished.

I’m considering a trip to Kimberly.  I’m curious to know if the country people are a bit calmer when shopping at Ridley’s.  Oh, and unlike last week I found bananas were plentiful.  A guy told me Friday there was a lot of spoiled foods in garbage cans.  Some people apparently just learned bananas have a short life span.