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So, if you've been watching the news lately, you may be aware that the world is on the edge of a coronavirus pandemic. IMO, the media is seriously overhyping things - the virus is more aggressive than the common cold or flu, but the overwhelming majority of people who contract it are going to be fine. Seniors and immunocompromised people are dying of it, which is terrible, but most people are going to be OK.
However, this past weekend, it became known that the virus was circulating in This Particular Part of the Country, and the first deaths in this country linked to the virus occurred among several elderly patients at a nursing home. It's currently being speculated that the virus has been circulating in the wild here for at least a month. (It's entirely possible that I've already had it - I had a pretty nasty cold about three weeks ago that was worse than the ones I usually get, but not so bad that I felt like I had to miss work because of it.)
As a result, our customers have been losing their shit. You'd think the Black Death was upon us or that we're living in the opening chapters of The Stand. People seem to think the stores are going to go full Venezuela and/or they're going to be barricaded in their houses for months.
Since Thursday, we've been consistently beating our sales projections by ridiculous amounts. We were up almost $100,000 on Saturday. We've been sold out of hand sanitizer since then - the warehouse is limiting us to five cases per day, and we've been selling them within an hour or two of them getting stocked. We're having runs on Clorox wipes, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and anything else that could conceivably be used as a disinfectant. We're selling so much bottled water that our standard delivery of a literal truckload every two days is struggling to keep us stocked.
Nonperishable food is flying too. We've sold out of everything from cans of corned beef hash, to 20 lb. bags of rice, to MREs, to ramen, to dehydrated vegetables. It's literally gotten to the point that, even though we have plenty of product on backstock, we haven't been able to restock it because we've had to put everyone in the checkstands to ring people up.
I swear at this point that the panic is going to cause more damage than the disease itself. My co-workers and I have been joking about the madness to keep spirits up - my favorite sarcastic rejoinder at the moment is that if one more customer asks about hand sanitizer, I'm just going to start coughing in their face.
(Not that I'd actually do that - it's just funny to imagine.)
Anyone else out there having their job thrown into disarray because of the crisis?
However, this past weekend, it became known that the virus was circulating in This Particular Part of the Country, and the first deaths in this country linked to the virus occurred among several elderly patients at a nursing home. It's currently being speculated that the virus has been circulating in the wild here for at least a month. (It's entirely possible that I've already had it - I had a pretty nasty cold about three weeks ago that was worse than the ones I usually get, but not so bad that I felt like I had to miss work because of it.)
As a result, our customers have been losing their shit. You'd think the Black Death was upon us or that we're living in the opening chapters of The Stand. People seem to think the stores are going to go full Venezuela and/or they're going to be barricaded in their houses for months.
Since Thursday, we've been consistently beating our sales projections by ridiculous amounts. We were up almost $100,000 on Saturday. We've been sold out of hand sanitizer since then - the warehouse is limiting us to five cases per day, and we've been selling them within an hour or two of them getting stocked. We're having runs on Clorox wipes, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and anything else that could conceivably be used as a disinfectant. We're selling so much bottled water that our standard delivery of a literal truckload every two days is struggling to keep us stocked.
Nonperishable food is flying too. We've sold out of everything from cans of corned beef hash, to 20 lb. bags of rice, to MREs, to ramen, to dehydrated vegetables. It's literally gotten to the point that, even though we have plenty of product on backstock, we haven't been able to restock it because we've had to put everyone in the checkstands to ring people up.
I swear at this point that the panic is going to cause more damage than the disease itself. My co-workers and I have been joking about the madness to keep spirits up - my favorite sarcastic rejoinder at the moment is that if one more customer asks about hand sanitizer, I'm just going to start coughing in their face.
(Not that I'd actually do that - it's just funny to imagine.)Anyone else out there having their job thrown into disarray because of the crisis?
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