Day two of the stay at home order was pretty interesting. Traffic was a little bit lighter than yesterday, but not by much. I do think less and less people are out and about in town. More companies, even those deemed “essential,” are cutting back on employees. Seems companies are managing day to day and even hour by hour through this crisis.
I stopped to get gas at QuikTrip today and used the bathroom. There was a double sink to wash your hands and both were open and I took the left sink. A guy was finishing up and rather than use the sink next to me, he stood back at a distance and waited for me to finish washing and drying my hands and exiting before washing his hands. Social distancing! To be honest, I’m not sure I would have done the same thing, but I probably will now that I’ve seen someone else take that precaution.
After work I stopped by a couple stores. I eat hard boiled eggs every morning for breakfast and I am running low so I wanted to get eggs and some distilled water and some Airborne, which is a multivitamin that I take to prevent getting sick that I am also running low on. I know Walmart has the big bottles of Airborne so decided to stop in there first.
While I was there I decided to walk around a bit since I am writing a blog and need some material. It was around noon on a Tuesday and the store was pretty empty compared to how busy is usually is. I checked the toilet paper aisle and it was bare. They did have dish soap, laundry soap, paper towels and napkins. Most all of the food aisles were stocked up. There were plenty of cartons of eggs, milk, water and most everything else you may have heard some stores have been out of. It appears like they are getting stocked back up fairly quickly.
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| Toilet paper aisle at Walmart |
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| Paper towel aisle at Walmart |
After visiting Walmart I stopped by the Metcalf Discount Liquor nearby. For one reason, I am out of beer, and two, I was curious to see if they were busy and how the store was manned. They had a parking spot reserved for pickup orders, which I didn’t know they were doing. They also had a sign at the entrance to let everyone know they are on the “essential” list!
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| Sign near the front of the liquor store |
They had four employees working the registers and the owner/manager was mopping the floor near the back of the store. This is usually how they’re staffed on a Friday evening so I was surprised they were all there on a Tuesday afternoon. There were only a couple customers in the store. I asked my cashier how they were doing and he said they were doing really good. That was good to hear.
I saw someone post on social media that the Payless Foods near me had toilet paper so I wanted to check in there on the way home to see if they still had some. I don’t need any, but I stopped out of pure curiosity. They were out again. While I was walking out of the store I noticed that they got hamburger buns back in stock so I grabbed a package. The other night I wanted to make hamburgers before I realized I was out of buns, so this is something else that I needed that I didn’t think about when I was at Walmart. I went to check out and one of the regular cashiers there, Marge, was working. The last time I talked to her, sometime last week, she was very stressed out and looked exhausted. Marge is probably in her 60’s and I doubt she has had a day off in a long time. I struck op a conversation with her when I saw her last week and mentioned the fact that she didn’t look too good and even said that I didn’t mean to be rude but she looked stressed. We had a brief conversation at the time about what the store is going through right now. Anyway, she is always really nice as are all the cashiers that work there. They have name badges and I always greet them by their name because one, I think it’s funny the store makes them wear name badges, and two, it is a personal touch and they in turn give you more personal service. I have never told Marge what my name is, but today she saw me walk up and smiled and said “hi, Joe. How are you?” She must have gone out of her way to learn my name and must have looked at my debit card or asked another employee there. She was in much better spirits today. I told her the story about needing hamburger buns and she got a good chuckle out of that and said she was glad I could have a hamburger now. I was just glad to see her smile. It’s a good time to be extra nice to your local grocery store employees! They’re going through stressful times right now.