Tweet
My first post! Woo-hoo!
First a little backstory:
This takes place kinda 10 years ago. In my country it is determined by law that labor unions and employer unions every 3 years negotiate on minimum wages, maternity/paternity leave policies, general labor rules and so on.
Normally this type of negotiations go through as a formality, but not this time - the negotiations broke down, and the major labor union launched a GENERAL STRIKE!
This would affect that approximately EVERY worker in any form of work that had to do with industrial production (including the food business) would be urged to go on strike, which definately would affect the retail business (if no goods are produced, there are no goods to be sold).
Government officials made an assessment that the normal "Joe Taxpayer" would not be affected by this as all stores had plenty in backstock to accomodate all shoppers as long as the strike was on IF ONLY THEY BOUGHT WHAT THEY NEEDED AND NOTHING MORE.
Did that announcement ease the minds of customers who normally would shop before Xmas/Easter/other national holidays like Armageddon was upon us? HELL NO!
People started hoarding groceries as there was no tomorrow. The most "popular" items were milk, bread, flour and yeast (especially yeast, hence the title).
And now on to my sightings that particular week, while the general strike was on...
I and my SO had decided to try and get through the strike without shopping for groceries at all, living off fastfood and TV dinners that we had in our freezer. But alas, we found out that we were short of a few things that we HAD to visit our supermarket to get. (Bread, washing powder and fabric softener IIRC.)
So we went - and saw what Hell definately must look like....
Customers fighting over toilet rolls, customers attacking a "fresh" delivery of milk like hyenas, customers stealing goods from other customers' carts, people outside the store who had hoarded an excessive amount of baby diapers and now were selling them at double the price to desperate parents...
Even though American Football is not well known in my country, I managed to "pass" a loaf of the cheapest bread avaiable to my SO in a way that would be NFL worthy if only a NFL scout had passed by
After that experience, I'd admit that I had lost some fate in humanity.
Let me finish off with a semi-sighting (told to me by a friend who saw it, it was also mentioned in a couple of newspapers as "funny strike stories" - and here is the yeast reference!):
A couple was out shopping for groceries, the store was of course swamped with customers and therefore the lines to the registers were VERY long.
Suddenly the woman pointed towards the dairy section (which was in the other end of the store) and said in a loud voice: "Oh look, dear, they've just put some yeast on the shelf!"
Cue to hundreds of customers leaving all their carts at once and race over to the dairy section... and the couple in question just trotted up to the register now that the line was non-existant.
There was no yeast.
First a little backstory:
This takes place kinda 10 years ago. In my country it is determined by law that labor unions and employer unions every 3 years negotiate on minimum wages, maternity/paternity leave policies, general labor rules and so on.
Normally this type of negotiations go through as a formality, but not this time - the negotiations broke down, and the major labor union launched a GENERAL STRIKE!
This would affect that approximately EVERY worker in any form of work that had to do with industrial production (including the food business) would be urged to go on strike, which definately would affect the retail business (if no goods are produced, there are no goods to be sold).
Government officials made an assessment that the normal "Joe Taxpayer" would not be affected by this as all stores had plenty in backstock to accomodate all shoppers as long as the strike was on IF ONLY THEY BOUGHT WHAT THEY NEEDED AND NOTHING MORE.
Did that announcement ease the minds of customers who normally would shop before Xmas/Easter/other national holidays like Armageddon was upon us? HELL NO!
People started hoarding groceries as there was no tomorrow. The most "popular" items were milk, bread, flour and yeast (especially yeast, hence the title).
And now on to my sightings that particular week, while the general strike was on...
I and my SO had decided to try and get through the strike without shopping for groceries at all, living off fastfood and TV dinners that we had in our freezer. But alas, we found out that we were short of a few things that we HAD to visit our supermarket to get. (Bread, washing powder and fabric softener IIRC.)
So we went - and saw what Hell definately must look like....
Customers fighting over toilet rolls, customers attacking a "fresh" delivery of milk like hyenas, customers stealing goods from other customers' carts, people outside the store who had hoarded an excessive amount of baby diapers and now were selling them at double the price to desperate parents...
Even though American Football is not well known in my country, I managed to "pass" a loaf of the cheapest bread avaiable to my SO in a way that would be NFL worthy if only a NFL scout had passed by
After that experience, I'd admit that I had lost some fate in humanity.
Let me finish off with a semi-sighting (told to me by a friend who saw it, it was also mentioned in a couple of newspapers as "funny strike stories" - and here is the yeast reference!):
A couple was out shopping for groceries, the store was of course swamped with customers and therefore the lines to the registers were VERY long.
Suddenly the woman pointed towards the dairy section (which was in the other end of the store) and said in a loud voice: "Oh look, dear, they've just put some yeast on the shelf!"
Cue to hundreds of customers leaving all their carts at once and race over to the dairy section... and the couple in question just trotted up to the register now that the line was non-existant.
There was no yeast.
. If I had run out of bread under the strike I'm sure I could have whipped something up with baking powder or sourdough (and the flour I always have) or just made some unleavened panbread.
Comment