Snow. The very word strikes fear in the heart of grocery store customers everywhere. With last week’s much-hyped blizzard striking fear in the hearts of consumers, all hell broke loose in the fine South Hadley grocery store establishment that I work in. You know all those articles that said grocery stores everywhere were empty? They were no joke. Let me guide you through my weekend.
Bright and early Saturday morning, I get up for work. Not at 8:00 a.m., or even 7:00. My sorry butt is out of bed at 5:15 a.m. (and people wonder why I don’t stay on campus Friday night), and I’m at work from six to three. That’s before the butt crack of dawn, as we say back in the hometown of Chicopee. Before sunrise, I’m on the road and prepping greens.
Never in my life, and in my almost three years in the store, have I seen such chaos as before last week’s storm. The funny thing is the way that the storm snuck up on all of us – everyone I work with in the produce department expected it to be busy because the store was running a ‘Buy One, Get Two Free’ sale, but nobody really knew about the storm coming, and the onslaught of people that goes with it.
It has been long joked in grocery stores that the weather guys and the grocery store front office brass are in cahoots. Everyone knows that when the weather report says snow or ice, the world goes to the grocery store and then fills their car with gas. It’s just the way things work. But this storm was ridiculous; it brought new meaning to the words panic-stricken and stocking up. Does a 75 year-old really need 15 pounds of potatoes for Monday and Tuesday between him and his wife Phyllis? Does a mother of two really need nine bags of salad? Nine bags!?? Who’s she feeding, the killer Easter Bunny?
The people came pouring in, shopping carts, pillowcases and dump trucks in tow to snag as much food as possible. Although the store opens at seven, usually it’s kind of quiet until after nine. Not this day, kemosabe. The place was buzzing at 7:30 a.m., and we couldn’t keep the food coming out fast enough. One customer after another commented that, gee, it was really busy today. Then they invariably would say that they never shop on Saturday but they want to beat the storm. Figure it out, geniuses. Maybe y’all just had the same idea. Rumors floated around that we were getting two, and then later in the day, at least three feet of snow. ‘Three feet!’ I cried out skeptically. Customers filled their baskets like it was a shopping spree on Billy Bulger, and the manager in charge of the store told me that they were predicting the end of the world.
By 11 a.m. on Saturday, things were insane. I couldn’t get to the cases to fill them, so people shopped out of the boxes that I was rolling out on carts. Amused, I rolled out 1,300 pounds worth of bagged potatoes on a pallet and loaded up the display. They disappeared in a half hour! Gone! That’s hardcore shoppin’, folks.
Customers grew weary as supplies started to get low in the afternoon. ‘What do you mean I can only buy fifteen pounds of salad mix?’ an eighty-year old customer asked me. ‘I need to feed my dog Fifi until it stops snowing on Tuesday!’ I’m guessing Fifi isn’t a poodle, but whatever. The limit on the sale applies to pets too, so I stuck with my guns on that one, let me tell ya.
Sunday I worked nine to five. Things were even more interesting than on Saturday, because the warehouse didn’t have any food left to send us. ‘Dan, we didn’t get half of what we ordered,’ the full-timer in charge mumbled to me as I walked in the door swaggering.
‘So what dude, we’re short on the scallions again?’ I ask.
‘Nooo, we’re short on everything. The potatoes are short, the onions are short, the salad is short. We’re screwed,’ he tells me.
‘Oh.’ Personally, I don’t really care as far as the sales go. I’m just a part-timer, I do my job and go home. But when a store orders 120 cases of something on sale and gets 10, there’s usually trouble. I have to deal with the irate customers with pillowcases and shopping carts and dump trucks and dogs named Fifi, so I don’t enjoy explaining why we don’t have what they want. It’s a part of the job though, so I’ll deal.
Sunday plods on just like Saturday, with the exception that we’re running out of ammunition and the people are still pouring in. What’s a brother to do? Nope, sorry, don’t have it. It’s about all I can say. Meanwhile, we’re getting wiped out store wide on everything from cucumbers to yogurt. Slowly but surely, the entire store is going to pot. On my way back from the other end of the store looking for a pallet jack, four customers stop me. Nope, sorry sir, no tartar sauce. Nope, sorry ma’am, no paper towels or toilet paper left on sale. Taking a walk through the store was nearly impossible.
By 3:00 p.m., I was making rain checks for onions, potatoes, baby carrots, oranges and scallions – all of which were on sale. Things got still worse: by five, there was not a single loaf of white bread to be had in the store and all of our bananas were gone. You don’t run out of bread and bananas in a grocery store! It just doesn’t happen! About the only thing that pisses people off more than that is when we run out of milk. I checked out at five, as a load came in and the limited amount of stuff on the truck went straight to the sales floor. It’s a good thing nobody went shopping on Monday, because the stores were bare anyway!
Dan Lamothe is a Collegian Columnist.
