Grocery Lines and Social Distancing

"Social distancing"

Photo: Ileana Johnson

I was shopping in our neighborhood grocery store chain and found out accidentally that employees have their own stash of merchandise in the back from which they can purchase what they need without having to fight the crowds for the items in high demand.

Some stores, to their humanitarian credit, have made it easier for senior citizens to shop by opening up early for an hour for their shopping convenience without other customers knocking them over in the race to get an item. It was so bad that rude and rapacious customers even took items from the carts of much slower elders.

This reminds me of the lines we had to stand in daily in order to buy our necessities. The deliveries for the day ran out rather quickly, sometimes before we made it to the front of the line, but communist loyalists, friends, families, and those willing to bribe the salespeople were always able to buy what they needed, sometimes they did not even have to stand in line, they could show up earlier in the day, before the store opened and the lines formed.

As the supply of goods is disrupted by the government-imposed lockdown for our own collective good, and to save our lives, grocery stores have been trying to provide a modicum of normalcy and controlled order in the constant fear and panic driven by the media and by public service announcements.

While in a Food Lion store, Lynda van Liew Fairman complained to the manager about the constant repetition of the PSA intercom announcement made by “a creepily calm woman” to keep six feet of space between shoppers. “I told her they need to stop running it as it is belittling and keeps the fear building. We’re not 3rd graders having to constantly be reminded to walk in a single-file line on the right side of the hallway on the way to the cafeteria. This is absurd and offensive. It’s like we’re in a bad sci-fi movie or a Twilight Zone episode! We are not mindless automatons.”

The manager replied that she had no control over what was played on the Muzak, it came from [the ghost entity called] “corporate.” Obviously we are controlled by the unseen “corporate” and the bureaucrats in government. Perhaps it is insurance companies requiring the intercom message for those stores that are deemed “essential” and must remain open.

In my neck of the woods in the commonwealth of Virginia, made more draconian and socialist over the Easter weekend by more executive orders of the Democrat governor with a medical degree, grocery stores and Walmart are half-full. They have cleverly spaced out what other merchandise they do have that is in low demand right now, but shelves are still bare and hoarded items are not there very long. They get swiped and disappear before they are even taken out of boxes.

The supply disruption in the economy is barreling down the tracks at high speed. What else can possibly go wrong when dairy farmers are dumping milk in the fields as their contracted customers, restaurants and schools, are closed, six meat packing companies are shuttered due to employees sick with the pandemic coronavirus, a quarter of the labor force is unemployed and rising, and the national product is not made in necessary quantities to match demand, while grocery stores, anticipating shortages and slow deliveries, are limiting the number of items that can be bought, or are price-gouging customers.

The need for food drove us to a larger urban area but then, as we were 20 miles away from home, the realization hit us that we had no place to go to the bathroom. Everything was closed or open for curbside delivery only. Luckily we could drive back home rather fast as the major interstates were unusually traffic free.  

At least in local parks, even though the public restrooms were closed, port-o-potties were brought in. We were told that bathrooms were too hard to clean properly and people could not keep six feet of “social distancing.” I always wondered how they came up with six feet of “social distancing.” Why six feet and not five or seven? A sneeze travels at speeds of roughly 250 mph.

The experience brought back the memory of visiting Italy where we had to buy something in a store or restaurant in order to go to the bathroom. There were some pay restrooms but there were few and far between if we walked in urban areas. The auto grills were great on the Italian autostrada.

As evidenced by comments on social media, many naïve Americans have tremendous confidence that the President can handle the economic problem. He is a smart and knowledgeable man but there are limits to his power, he certainly cannot control the economy, it is driven by supply and demand and invisible pricing forces, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”

And the other half of America criticize him for being “a dictator and a fascist” for either not having responded soon enough to the virus crisis or for having exceeded his powers. No matter what he does, the discontented half of America, who happens to be progressive and anti-American, blames him quite irrationally for everything, including the existence of the Covid-19.

The lack of proper information and unnecessary government control gone-berserk have made Americans leery of government control and have adopted and started to believe in various conspiracy theory scenarios which gave rise to even more irrational and rational hoarding and uncertainty.