It felt like a heist, or a movie scene depicting a heist... car parked, mask on, gloves on, loot bags in hand. Yeah, this was a trip to the Stop-and-Shop near my workplace, visited after the graveyard shift. It feels strange, kitting myself out as if I were going to rob a liquor store before entering the supermarket.
Other bandits had hit the place before I did. The paper goods section (visited just for 'journalistic' purposes, I bought a twelve-pak a couple of months ago, by which I mean centuries ago) was still bare, and the frozen vegetable aisle reminded me of a piranha-skeletonized cow from a lurid old travel film. There was cheese to be had, but not much, and I was able to score a couple of packages of chicken thighs and a small pork roast (made into Philly style sandwiches with sauteed spinach and provolone cheese). As always, the cashier was cheerful, though overworked... the girl on duty is a sweet-faced Dominican-American lass who told me that, in the initial craziness and panic shopping, she took off a couple of weeks due to stress, but that finances necessitated a return to work, and cabin fever made it endurable. Generally speaking, I didn't see any churlishness while shopping, everybody seems to be resigned to the new abnormal. I suspect that we have learned patience from lives involving waiting on lines, waiting for public transportation, living in crowded neighborhoods.
At any rate, everybody was well-behaved, we just looked like a bunch of criminals.
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Flour is the big missing item here. Both major name supermarkets are all out bar about 3 packets of cake mix. I have no idea why. Also white vinegar, which I use for my towels. None in stock for weeks. PLenty of toilet paper though. Mountains of the stuff, limited to one per transaction.
People mostly looked scared and stressed when I walk around looking for my shopping. (Wait, that sounds as if I'm the one scaring them.) No one smiles or chats, like they used to. I find the entire experience worrying enough that I become short of breath. It's not like here in Queensland we have a massive outbreak or anything. It's just that we've been taught to fear every small interaction, everything we touch, the very air we breathe.
Can't imagine why that's making people less cheerful.
Flour is in short supply because people are concerned about bread shortages and have free time, so they are baking, often for the first time. Lots of people are tweeting pictures of their new sourdough starters.
We live in strange times.
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