The Coronavirus Panic Thread

[jedimaster91]

Well, (expletive). I'd been feeling minorly ill, but thinking most of it was my allergies acting up (happens this time of year). Symptoms got worse today. Advice nurse informs me symptoms are consistent with coronavirus, DH and I are now required to quarantine for 14 days. At Hades Annex, we're within 3-4 feet of our neighbors, and two who sit near me are over 60 with chronic health problems. Lovely.

I'm in a similar situation. A couple days ago I had fever, chills, aches, and nausea. By the next morning I was feeling much better and popped in a doc in the box for a flu test (after calling ahead to see what their protocols were). Flu test negative, but as the day wore on, I started getting some chest tightness. Nothing that would have worried me at any other time (allergies suck), but in combination with everything else, I called my primary care doc. E-visits and Telemedicine are awesome, y'all; use 'em if you can. Because my symptoms were consistent with coronavirus and I work at a hospital, she recommended I self quarantine for 14 days and go to the ER if symptoms get worse. Although she doesn't think I actually have (had?) coronavirus, without a test there's no way to know for sure.

[Food Lady]

My store is now open 12:00-6:00 so no going from one job to the other. (Office work is done at 5:30 and I used to work in the store from 6:00 to close a couple of nights a week.) Monday-Friday I work at home literally in pajamas all day. Boss Lady admitted that she, too, showers on lunch break.

Anyway, on to today at the store where we sell nothing anyone actually needs. Nothing. I came in a little later and the opener told me a woman in her 80s or maybe 70s was in. "I just can't stay at home anymore. I can't do it." Look, Gertrude--your group is the one we're all trying to protect from this plague.

And Opener also told me people have been asking "Why are you open??" Oh, the irony! I guess the answer should be "Gert's bored."

Today in the afternoon a couple was in and the woman was coughing all over the place about 7, 8 feet from me. I get that people might need to go out sick to get food or medical care but we sell tchotchkies. Go home.

[Smapti]

Today I got to witness the most glorious thing I've ever seen in my 20 years in the service industry, in the form of an exchange between the Store Manager and an SC who decided the line to get into the Store didn't apply to him;

SM: Sir, you need to go to the back of the line.
SC: I don't care about your line.
SM: Well, I don't care about you. Get out of my store and never come back!

SM and corporate have our backs on enforcing the line - it's there to protect the health and safety of our customers and employees, and if people aren't going to respect that, we don't want or need their business.

[Dreamstalker]

*airhug/elbow bump to SM* If every manager did that, do we think SCs will come out of this mess changing their behavior, or at least somewhat humbled?

...naaaah. As my mom said "sure, we'll pull together and be kinder to one another for however long it takes, and then most people will go right back to being assholes".

[EricKei]

FWIW, for those seeking bread:

Walmart makes their own bread in their bakery, so they seem to always have some. $1/loaf for French/Italian bread (in their case, same thing, shaped differently). They'll slice it for you if you ask nicely I mean, it's not New Orleans french bread *sniffs with nose pointed up in the air*, but it's soft and dense. Not bad at all!


My town, as our state is still dragging its feet: Restaurants doing drive-thru/curbside only now enforceable by law. Nightly curfew 10pm to 6am, $1,000 fine, and they are just begging for someone to violate it so they can make an example of someone. Public gatherings banned, including church services (many have gone the Youtube route). Many places where people tend to congregate must shut down by 5pm daily. This in response to three confirmed civilian cases (publicly reported) and at least one doctor at the local hospital (not publicly reported but I know a guy...)

[Android Kaeli]

Nightly curfew 10pm to 6am, $1,000 fine, and they are just begging for someone to violate it so they can make an example of someone.

I'm just wondering how they're going to enforce the nightly curfew, will those who work at grocery stores need something to prove that they **need** to be out on the road before and after those times? I don't know what the hours of operations those stores in your area/city/state have, but I'd be worried about getting to and from work/home if I was supposed to be at work before 5am or after 10pm.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

This past week has been a repeat of the previous madness from Friday . . . and of course, our warehouses are out of quite a number of items and we're now on allocated orders, meaning we can't adjust our dry grocery/bread/HBC deliveries for the time being due to the massive number of items not available.


For example, I order the front end cigarettes, which come on the grocery deliveries on Mon - Wed - Fri. Usually I'll get anywhere from a half a tote to a full one, depending on how much I order.


With the ability to adjust taken away - my "big" cigarette orders have become 2 cartons. Two cartons of smokes and no way to get Newports (one of our biggest sellers.)


Entire sections of the store are still wiped out, such as rice. But we have plenty of the ethnic rice items that came in on Thursday from one of our Hispanic food vendors.


Same with dried beans . . . those are sporadically coming in. Need to start steering customers to aisle 3, where we've got plenty of dry beans from same Hispanic company.


Milk has also been in short supply . . . our dairy is trying to produce more of the core varieties (whole milk, 2 percent) so if we're out of fat free or buttermilk or chocolate, there's not much we can do for the time being.


I had my weekly egg delivery Tuesday . . . a pallet and a half, which was sold out by Thursday. Not sure if we can get an emergency order as the vendor company that provides our eggs is located outside Charlotte (Monroe, NC) and our truck is only set up to visit one day a week (Tuesday.)


With the restaurants closed and only doing takeout/delivery, we're selling a ton of beer and wine. I had a 5 pallet delivery Thursday from Bud and it still wasn't enough - Babyface could have ordered another 100 cases and we'd still have room in the case.


The water situation isn't much better . . . had one pallet of Dasani 24 pks come in on Tuesday and 6 pallets of Aquafina 32 pks . . .all of it sold out by Thursday morning.


On my Thursday Coke delivery, only 24 cases of Dasani came in . . . even though Miguel ordered a full pallet. Their warehouse ran out and didn't have enough left to completely fufill our order, so we got what they could spare.


Bread has been disappearing off the shelves . . . we can have all the bread guys come in and have it full by 9 and almost empty by the time I leave out around 2:30 or 3.


Don't get me started on TP . . .even though management finally put a limit of 2 on those (and paper towels and hand santiziers, among certain items) the shelves get wiped out too quick. Same for canned soup.



Yet Kitty Corporate won't follow the other chains around here and close early or offer certain hours for senior shoppers.



And our evening manager was sent home sick Monday . . . haven't seen him all week, so that's not a good sign. I hope it's not what I'm suspecting, otherwise our store may very well have to close and be cleaned thoroughly and we'll all be in quarantine.

[EricKei]

I have a 4-pack of that cheap Scott 1000-sheets-per-roll TP. I should be good through the end of the year >_>



AK - Local places have begun closing up shop as soon after dark as possible. I think the latest closing time I've seen has been either 8 or 9 PM; the latter is pushing it, especially for grocery stores.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

AK - Local places have begun closing up shop as soon after dark as possible. I think the latest closing time I've seen has been either 8 or 9 PM; the latter is pushing it, especially for grocery stores.

And that depends on the area and the particular chain.


Here in Greensboro, all the other chains are closing around 8 or 9, with the exception of the Litter Box, which is still regular time (most stores close at 11 - ours closes at 10.)


Kitty Corporate really should take a look at the situation and work out ways for our stockers to be able to get product to the shelves without being mobbed. Closing at 8 would give our stock crew an additional 2 hours with no customers underfoot - as well as letting them go back to overnight stocking (right now, the truck gets broken down and loaded onto floats and the crew comes in the next morning but with this situation, the floats are going out that same evening.)


There's got to be a better way.

[Android Kaeli]

AK - Local places have begun closing up shop as soon after dark as possible. I think the latest closing time I've seen has been either 8 or 9 PM; the latter is pushing it, especially for grocery stores.

I had hoped that the stores, both essential like grocery stores and non-essential, were closing early. If the Grocery Store ever had to adjust their hours to fit a curfew they'd be finding a lot of people not able to come in to do a closing shift -- I know that between me and one other person in the deli are the only two people out of five that would be able to come in before 7am and leave after 8pm [we both live less than five minutes away from the store]. The other three live, at best, 30 to 45 minutes away and some of the cashiers I've spoken to are in the same boat [one, I think, has to drive nearly an hour one way].


My Grocery Store opens at 7am and closes at 10pm, the deli officially closes at 8pm with the meat department anywhere between 6pm and 9pm [depending on the person and their schedule]. I haven't seen any toilet paper since Friday, but there were more paper towels and kleenex, and for some reason people have been buying a lot of potatoes and the last two days I've worked [today and Friday] said potatoes have been in stock after I've left for the night. I managed to snag some beef stew chunks on Thursday, only because I got off at 5, and made some beef stew for myself and my aunt. The meat section still seems a bit understocked.

But we still seem to have a lot of bottled water.

[Monterey Jack]

My store closed down the bottle return room a few days ago, and also removed the benches we usually reserve for customers, probably to discourage older people who tend to sit there endlessly all day scratching off lotto tickets and reading the paper. That's all fine and good normally, but we have to make people LEAVE once they've gotten their necessities.

[EricKei]

AK - Our curfew starts at 10PM, hence the 8/9pm comment


Taters I can kinda understand -- Cheap, they last quite some time, and they're easy to make into massive amounts of mashed potatoes. Just need some milk/cream (maybe canned condensed milk in a pinch??), butter, salt and BAM!

[Food Lady]

Anyone else have seasonal allergies but keep getting scared you have this virus or another? Even if I get coronavirus, knowing me, the symptoms won't be bad. But I don't want to give it to others. I guess it's good I'm laid off from the retail. We don't know when the store will re-open. I found out when I came in tonight. I have savings and a tax refund coming but still. So I'm working from home and wondering how to get groceries without getting sick or getting someone else sick.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Taters I can kinda understand -- Cheap, they last quite some time, and they're easy to make into massive amounts of mashed potatoes. Just need some milk/cream (maybe canned condensed milk in a pinch??), butter, salt and BAM!

You forgot to mention vodka. Taters can be made into vodka. Or is that just a Russian thing?

[KellyHabersham]

Just stopping to share a bit about how my workplace (public library) has been impacted by the Coronavirus.

As of last Monday, all buildings are closed to the public, and so are the bookdrop returns. Due dates have been extended on library materials, and customers are being encouraged to take advantage of our online resources.

The only staff members who are working are those in Administration, I.T., and those who handle the library's social media accounts. (the library's call center is also open, The rest of us are home on paid leave, but that's only been mentioned up until the end of next week......upper management doesn't know yet what happens after that.

What I'm concerned about is if I have to take large amounts of unpaid time off because of the pandemic.....I really can't afford to lose the money, and not sure filing for any sort of unemployment would be an option, as I'm technically NOT unemployed.

But, we'll have to see what happens.