Food

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I had to pop out to the local Sainsbury’s today to stock up on main meals for the coming week. The local bus service is still running, so I hopped on one with my big Sainsbury’s Bag-For-Life and hoped for the best. The car park was completely full, but in terms of people, it wasn’t that much busier than a regular Saturday shop.

ALAS!

Evidence of stockpiling is very evident in the following areas:

  • Toilet paper
  • Soup and tinned goods
  • Biscuits
  • Most cleaning products
  • Non-fresh/long life pasta

(Click on the image, but not text part, to expand pictures below)

  • People are clearly not willing to share their biscuits..
  • All the tinned goods have gone..
  • All the soup has gone. So why do you need all that toilet paper?
  • No toilet paper, but you can wipe your bum on Easter eggs.
  • The wipes have all be swiped.

However, fresh produce was plentiful, as were a lot of other fresh/refrigerator-based items. So I stocked up on bread, sandwich fillings, some ready meals, some toilet supplies (not toilet paper – thankfully because it’s just me at home, I’ve been buying a 9 pack each week since January and have a fairly decent store of them – for now) and some chocolate.

Checkout was painless. I used the Sainsbury’s Smart Shop app on my phone to avoid having to use/touch Sainsbury’s own scanner – and it meant that I could skip the very long queues (both regular checkout and the self-service checkout). It took about a minute to complete – though I did have to get some help as I managed to procure some bleach for the toilet (and one packet of paracetamol (just in case) – I can’t remember what they check you for these days).

At the time of writing, an Amazon Prime Now delivery has actually been accepted (via Amazon’s warehouse – not that of Morrisons) and is the process of being delivered. I attempted to place a delivery order on Tuesday for Wednesday delivery, but Amazon/Morrison’s cancelled the order 2 minutes after it was due to be delivered. Effectively I’m getting more sandwich fillings and enough soda to last about a week – possibly two.

I do hope Sainsbury’s and the other supermarkets ramp up their home deliveries. This is going to be important if there is an official edict to prevent people from leaving their homes. Otherwise people will still need to leave their house at least once a week to go shopping.

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They came for our toilet rolls, because for some mysterious reason, people are pooping a lot more than they used to. Then they came for our hand sanitisers, because suddenly hygiene is seen to be super important now. Then they came for our pasta, because people suddenly find carbs super attractive.

Now that the coronavirus pandemic is escalating to the point of insanity by the Great Unwashed Public, supermarkets are struggling to keep stock of key foodstuffs and toiletries.

I thought that maybe I should book my regular Saturday morning slot with Sainsbury’s Online and add all my regular, not-at-all-panic-buying quantities of foodstuffs (there’s only me – I don’t need much). Alas, there are absolutely no available slots for at least two weeks. Tesco is the same. Ocado put me into a waiting queue just to get to their home page:

(We do this kind of virtual queueing at work for one client who sells shoes – and at this point of time, nobody is going into a frenzy buying shoes mainly because they’re stuck at home, can’t eat them, sanitise their hands with them (unless they wear shoes on their hands for the next several weeks), or use the shoes to wipe their arse.)

That said, I have plenty of food to keep me going for several weeks, and assuming that the local shops don’t close, there shouldn’t – providing people are sensible (oh please be realistic, Martyn – of course they won’t) then things like bread and tinned something should be fine.

Sainsbury’s Online delivery schedules fully booked for three weeks

This ain’t Supermarket Sweep, people. It’s not about filling your carts with everything you can find. Just do a normal weekly shop, and nothing should run out as quickly.

You know the ending to The Day The Earth Stood Still in which the alien leaves us a warning to mend our ways? If I were that alien, I’d have had the Earth blown to smithereens. Humans are the worst. (Hopefully the dolphins could facilitate a mass evacuation of dogs, cats, birds and other decent animals before the Earth is destroyed.)