cw: grocery run

[cimorene]

Yesterday was the first really annoying grocery store experience of the pandemic!

We went at about 8 pm, which is possibly the problem. It wasn't crowded by pre-social distance standards, but there were enough people that they failed to maintain social distancing in line to check out. The people in front of us were standing between the marks on the floor, so half again as close as they should've been to the person in front of them, and while we were standing in line far enough away - which required bending the line sideways to not block an aisle! - some young idiot came and stood blocking the aisle too close to both us and the old people... even though there was only one person at the far register so the line was shorter??? The old people took five times as long to put their stuff on the conveyor belt as they should have, the way old people sometimes do, which is, I guess, okay for that reason except that they shouldn't even have been at the store outside of the old people safe hours. And then when Wax was trying to pay, some other middle aged guy who had previously been behind the tape line on the floor decided it was fine to stand less than 2 feet away from her. I have yet to see a single face mask and I was the only person with a scarf over my nose and mouth.

One is tempted to say "What is wrong with people?" but I'm sure that, like people all over the entire world, what's wrong with them is that they aren't actually scared yet, because they think there's no danger, because there haven't been any hospitalizations or deaths reported in our town. But our town is an 18k-person suburb 20 minutes from Turku, and there's still traffic going back and forth to Turku daily, and Turku has had 52 confirmed cases of the country's 2300. (Yeah, the vast majority are in the Helsinki region; the government just announced that they're tightening the travel restrictions around that province.)

Comments

[vass]

except that they shouldn't even have been at the store outside of the old people safe hours.

Um, what?

[cimorene]

Our stores have (mandatory) hours when nobody but seniors can go in the morning.

[vass]

So do ours (but also for disabled people and carers.) It doesn't mean they're not ALLOWED to be there any other time, just that it's an option available to them, which not all of them can take since it's at incredibly inconvenient hours and many elderly or disabled people have transport issues which have only gotten worse since the pandemic.

Sorry, I have a bit of a hair-trigger on the idea that disabled (including elderly) people should just... stay in a corner somewhere where normal people don't have to see them.

[cimorene]

People 70 and up have been under a stay-at-home order, with exceptions for exercise and necessary food and medicine purchases, for several weeks now, and the grocery stores have delivery services and pick up times available, plus there's a free delivery service being run by the local football club via phone with bills afterwards on paper. We also have pretty good, albeit somewhat reduced, public transport in our county, that would enable people even from fairly rural parts to come downtown in early morning but when the sun is already high, and the weather has been quite fine.

The reason people at higher risk right now should be more careful about social distancing has nothing to do with whether anybody can see them - and certainly people can still see them from a couple of meters' distance - and everything to do with their safety and the strained capacity of the fragile peripheral medical infrastructure to care for them properly if serious respiratory failures start spreading among them.

[vass]

Yes, I understand that, I was apologising and explaining my reaction, hence the term "sorry", which means "I apologise". Sorry again for being snippy. Everyone is on edge, I know, not just me.

[stranger]

The local grocery stores vary: one has no distancing marks but also isn't usually crowded; one counts people in to prevent crowding and also has distance marks at the payment lines; the best one (normally most crowded, most attractive food, etc.) had an outside line of distance marks before any others did, people let in one at a time, and the clerks have a polite speech to keep people back instead of leaning toward the payment desk.

This is in California. Most shoppers are trying to keep distance. About a third had masks a week ago (my latest trip out). Also, after a huge push about 4-5 years ago for everyone to use and re-use permanent bags for groceries instead of plastic disposables, the stores are now asking or requiring *no* brought-in bags, and supplying paper bags for everyone. I clearly see the public good in this, but it's *another* turnaround in habits to assimilate.

The hours for seniors and vulnerable shoppers are mostly 7am, and I just don't get up that early. (It would mean getting up and driving in the twilight dawn.) So I shop with everybody else, but carefully at a distance.

[cimorene]

That is really unfortunate about the mixed messaging with the bags, and vulnerable people are being put in quite a bind by those circumstances - which must be really worrying given the state of the pandemic in California. I understand delivery and pickup slots are essentially unobtainable across much of the US now as well.

Here in Finland, while the senior hours are in the morning, they also don't have to go into the store - the stores offer a picking serfice where they can wait in their car in the parking lot and text the store to bring their food out to them. (Also dawn is several hours before the early morning shopping hour here because we're closer to the arctic circle, but the weather is both warm and clear, and public transport is already running for hours before the shopping hours as well.) But even given that they had those options, the stores could still be doing more to make it safe for vulnerable people inside. They have plexi shields but not gloves or face protextion for their employees, and the marks on the floor in our store are only present right in front of the checkout which doesn't cover the length of a normal line, and they don't have enough staff to open multiple checkouts to alleviate rushes.

[stranger]

Morning light... ha, life on a round planet. I do envy the long days you have in summer, but not the short ones in winter. It's a problem here because Daylight Time means that 7am is what would otherwise be 6am. The idea was to have longer light evenings in summer. Or something. The semi-yearly time change isn't convenient (everybody complains) but difficult to get rid of after so long.

The bag turn-around is just unlucky timing, more ironic than a real problem. A lot of fast food places have long since switched to paper wrapping instead of plastic boxes or bags and never expected you to bring your own, so it's a trending thing anyway.

The grocery store workers *should* have been wearing masks first for their own safety, even before many shoppers did. I think the plexi barriers are a good idea, but I haven't seen any here as yet. I'm actually seeing things in town at 10-day intervals and the rest is hearsay. I'm also making my own masks, which seems to be what everyone else is doing. (Best information I have is that a good cloth mask filters about 70% of what a N-95 medical mask would, and I should wear one for everyone's safety.)

[cimorene]

Yes, that's what I'm hearing about making masks too. The amount they filter can vary depending on the fabric and layers, and it's possible to put disposable bits of filter cut from vacuum bags and other sources, or made of layers of paper towel, between two layers of cloth for some added efficacy. I haven't tried to actually make one yet, although I've wrapped my scarf over my face the last couple of times I went out.

[phosfate]

My store has old people time, but it was immediately torpedoed when public transport cut its hours and nobody can get there in time.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that sucks for them. Not the case here though!

[bluesbell]

At the supermarket today husband and I were the only people with scarves over our faces and most people seemed really unconcerned wrt maintaining distance.

I believe the old people safe hours are more recommendations, in that other people are allowed to go but it's politely suggested that they don't.

[cimorene]

Oh, are they? I didn't realize at all. I just assumed they would be separate; it seems extremely cautious to ask old people to not leave their houses and then... only mildly cautious to not make that a rule.

I have been several times at times that weren't very crowded in the last few weeks, so the difficulties this last trip were very unpleasantly surprising. With few people in the store, it was easy to stay far away and I wasn't in a position to even notice if anyone else was careless about it.