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Most of the shelving looks like normal. Aisles that didn't:
No paper towels today.
The pasta section looked badly picked over and the pasta sauce section looked worse than it has in past weeks.
My favorite kinds of ramen are not in stock, and as usual there is plenty of the ramen I won't buy.
There are still one or two items I haven't been able to get since the general shutdown began. There hasn't been any Kleenex brand tissues, but most weeks there have been both more expensive brands and generic. I broke down and bought some generic today. I'd like to get some potato flakes. But either there haven't been any or I just don't remember where they are kept since I don't buy them very often.
None of the staff last week was wearing masks. This week because of a new corporate mandate, they all were. Unfortunately, with masks on, many of the workers have decided they don't need to worry about social distancing anymore.
For the first time I saw cars picking up groceries without going in. The pickers were coming up to the car and going through the lists, explaining the bad news on items that were missing or had to be substituted. It looked like the customer had the right to refuse items, which is nice but it slowed the process down. It no doubt was faster than picking stuff out themselves, but kind of indicated that at large stores the idea of not letting customers inside would end up being a disaster. Going back to the days before supermarkets, when almost everything was behind the counter, probably is not an option for most of the country. The pickers' carts, which have stacks of plastic-milk-crate-like baskets to protect everything till it's sold, are twice or more than twice the size of ordinary shopping carts, becoming a nuisance to normal shoppers now, and by themselves the practical number of just those pickers' carts inside the store would be reached fairly quickly.
No paper towels today.
The pasta section looked badly picked over and the pasta sauce section looked worse than it has in past weeks.
My favorite kinds of ramen are not in stock, and as usual there is plenty of the ramen I won't buy.
There are still one or two items I haven't been able to get since the general shutdown began. There hasn't been any Kleenex brand tissues, but most weeks there have been both more expensive brands and generic. I broke down and bought some generic today. I'd like to get some potato flakes. But either there haven't been any or I just don't remember where they are kept since I don't buy them very often.
None of the staff last week was wearing masks. This week because of a new corporate mandate, they all were. Unfortunately, with masks on, many of the workers have decided they don't need to worry about social distancing anymore.
For the first time I saw cars picking up groceries without going in. The pickers were coming up to the car and going through the lists, explaining the bad news on items that were missing or had to be substituted. It looked like the customer had the right to refuse items, which is nice but it slowed the process down. It no doubt was faster than picking stuff out themselves, but kind of indicated that at large stores the idea of not letting customers inside would end up being a disaster. Going back to the days before supermarkets, when almost everything was behind the counter, probably is not an option for most of the country. The pickers' carts, which have stacks of plastic-milk-crate-like baskets to protect everything till it's sold, are twice or more than twice the size of ordinary shopping carts, becoming a nuisance to normal shoppers now, and by themselves the practical number of just those pickers' carts inside the store would be reached fairly quickly.
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