A Germaphobe's View of Grocery Shopping in the Age of the Coronavirus
Corona-Ville, USA
8:30 AM Saturday; March 13, 2020
Grocery Shopping: Shop-Rite
Bloomfield, NJ; USA
Grocery shopping in the age of the Coronavirus has become remarkably hard; especially in Bloomfield, NJ. As the Coronavirus has taken hold of the US populace, supplies are becoming scarce, if not extinct. At my local Shop-Rite, the police are here keeping the peace as grocery shopping, has become a disciplined activity. As ‘The Law’ is controlling the crowd. I proceed to grocery shop, aware that the item I might pick up could lead me to a life or death situation.
CoronaVille, USA (New York Times Map)
As I enter the food hub, at first it looks great, I say to myself, ‘the vegetable aisle looks good’, I look to my right, I view the registers… empty slots; ‘oh this looks promising’! As I walk towards the back of the store, I see the hidden truth; Shop-Rite’s organizational lie; they placed the lines at the back of the store hidden away from the customers coming in.
Shoprite: Bakery Section
By the bakery, there’s a stockpile of Bowl and Basket water and Poland Spring. The water is still a plenty, however other items I didn’t think would go have gone extinct here. Items made by the Goya brand are gone, specifically all the rice and beans; who knew. Additionally, the pasta and tomato sauces are gone as well. Apparently, carbs take on the dominant role of survival during times of crisis and the apocalypse. Healthy diet disappears altogether.
Walking through the aisles; the coffee is gone, but the cereal is still present. I guess it’s still too expensive, but as I head toward meat valley….most of the chicken is gone followed by half of the beef population. As I’m S.O.L. on meat and proceed even further, people are talking and wearing appropriate PPE. Some are using it wrong and I’m noticing; People coughing in their hands and touching their carts, kids running around sneezing, grabbing groceries, in the age of the coronavirus, this is detrimental…. the food hub is starting to get contaminated. Covering their mouths with their hands is improper. Safety precautions are not being respected and are royally getting violated in here. Face masks are being worn and they are leaving a lasting impression and a growing hypothesis: ‘Are they infected?, are they trying not to become infected?’ While I deliberate these questions, I see more and more people with gloves touching surfaces and touching food items. Some don’t understand that ‘gloves’ serve a purpose, when they are done with that purpose, gloves need to be put away in the trash, all they are doing is increasing the amount of fomites on the surfaces. I proceed to checkout.
The police are directing checkout traffic. Aisles 12, 13, and 14 are the new checkout lanes towards the register. As I wait for my place in line to purchase my supplies, the crowd is being greatly controlled and patience is commonplace…for now.
I wonder, as time passes by, will that temperance stay the same….
A couple is in front of me; a husband and wife with two kids, the kids are sneezing and coughing, sometimes covering their mouths, sometime not, improper safety precautions are still going on as they are coughing on the cart and the bread at the same time. As one son is in the cart touching the handlebars, coughing, the other just wiped their nose and is touching the doors that lead to the ice cream. I’m getting nauseous…I need to leave.
As I’m in lane 2 of 3, I count 50 people ahead of me. Registers 1-17 are open, the security guards; the workers of the store, advise me to go to register 14 and another customer to register 13, I adhere to the directions as the other customer tries to follow his own destiny and skip to my line. His wife corrects him; the restraint in people is starting to lessen.
At register 14, I start to think about the rules of not catching the coronavirus: wash your hands, reduce the amount of contact with your face, do not be in groups of 50+ people (10 people now). I look around, I see more than 50 people here, I start to think about the incubation rate of the virus and how, in this crowd greater than 50 people, someone might have this ‘bug’. This mass public gathering is starting to give me hives.
As the customers, who came in early this morning, are doing the best they can to gather the last of the remaining rations, the virus is developing, spreading and could lead human civilization to a ‘viral apocalypse’.
As I place my groceries on the conveyor belt, I proceed to do small talk with the ‘gloved’ cashier. She’s using the ‘hand barriers’ slightly correctly. She’s collecting money, limiting her movements and giving customers their change with the gloves. The only problem with this is that she’s protected, the customers that receive their change are not; myself included. I need to leave…now. I say something funny, she responds back with a smile. She’s not too worried about the virus, she needs to make sure that her money is on point, so she doesn’t get fired. Opposite of her is the baggage handler, collecting my groceries, making sure that my eggs don’t break under the orange juice’s weight. I start to speak with her….she scared.
FROM (WHO): There are several measures you can adopt to protect yourself against the new coronavirus.
As I’m speaking with the handler, she explains to me that she’s seeing all this panic and that in turn has her alarmed. I ask for her age. She’s 43. It’s possible that she might get sicker than the others, or that’s what the research says anyway. I say nothing about that….
‘There’s nothing to worry about’, I reply, ‘you’re going to be okay.’ It’s the least that I could do, the most I can say. I’m not bringing any more panic into her life. I’m just as scared as she is. She starts to cry a little, I try to provide her a silver lining in all this, by saying, ‘At least you’re getting overtime!’, She starts to smile.
Humans have been through stuff like this for years; Spanish Flu, SARS, EBOLA, HIV; My goal is to be on the winning side…Apparently that’s her goal too…
