Corona Madness

Okay, this Corona thing has gone way too far.  It's one thing to see this stuff on TV and quite another to experience it in real life, or what passes for real life these days.  I went to our local Walmart yesterday and they were out of toilet paper and paper towels.  I mean dead out, right to the bare wall.  I knew there was a wall behind that shelving, but I never saw it completely bare like that, and it was kind of spooky.

Now our local Walmart has been experiencing empty shelf syndrome since long before that Corona thing was invented, but nothing of this magnitude.  It seems that some of their temporary employees didn't return from one of the periodic layoffs that Walmart conducts to prevent their temporary employees from becoming permanent and, in today's job market, they are having trouble replacing them, so product might sit in the warehouse awhile before it gets put on the shelves.  What this means to the customer is that you can't always find a particular item and have to buy it in the Family Fare store, which is two parking lots away and more expensive.

As I was contemplating doing just that, along came a guy with a whole pallet of mixed paper products, and then another guy, and then another guy.  Some of the guys went to stocking shelves, and one of them pointed to the first pallet and said, "If you see something that you want, just take it."  I was reading the box labels looking for the two items that I needed without much luck when this nice lady came and started breaking open boxes and passing stuff to the customers gathered round.  "Who needs this?' she asked as she held up a package of paper towels in the brand and size that I was looking for.  When I accepted that package, she asked if there was anything else, and I told her about the toilet paper.  "Charmin Essentials, or the generic equivalent thereof, but it's got to be one ply because I have a septic tank."  She gave me something that said "Septic Tank Safe", but I wasn't so sure about that because it was two ply.  Then I heard somebody in the next isle asking the stocking clerk if he had anything in two ply because all he could find was this package of one ply.  I quickly negotiated a trade, making everybody happy including the clerk, who no doubt had other things to do.  To their credit, all the customers and staff remained calm and courteous through this whole ordeal, exhibiting a "we're all in this together" attitude.

Things kind of went downhill from there, but I suppose it could have been worse.  I had to go to Family Fare for eight of the remaining 24 items on my list, including eggs and flour.  Eggs and flour for Pete's sake!  I had to settle for some politically correct eggs, which were more expensive, and some generic flour that was actually cheaper than what I usually buy but, like I said, it could have been worse.  Both stores were more crowded than usual for this time of year, and it took me three hours to accomplish a 90 minute job, leaving me exhausted at the end of the day.  I am no spring chicken anymore you know.  At one point I ran into a lady I knew who is no spring chicken herself.  I said, "What's wrong with people? They see something on TV and they think it's real."  Yeah", she said, "And then they make it real."