The Coronavirus Panic Thread

[Trixie]

Tonight I had a woman tell me that she was "discriminated" against for using our store instead of our competitor because I told her she needed a rewards card to get the sale price. I could give her a break because she was wearing scrubs but everybody working out here now is under stress.

Another woman got pissy with me on the phone because I couldn't tell her when we were going to be more 24 packs of water in. We're out of almost all of our 12 packs of soda and they deliver the water, too, soooo we get what we get when we get it.

Then a coworker and the shift lead were discussing if our store closes do we get paid. I told them to change the subject because I'm just tired of all of the talk. Coworker told me that it was an important conversation and I could just go somewhere else. So I did.

Then the topper was finding out that not one but two coworkers were telling customers that our truck is at 5 am tomorrow and the store opens at 7. Now there's gonna be cops at the store while the truck gets unloaded. I come in at 11 and we'll see what the damage is then.

But as a bright spot, people are saying thank you for working and they do seem happy the store is open. I'll take what I can get.

[dalesys]

Peasant! I finally got a bidet attachment for my crapper...

Time to rework the royal plumbing so it squirts chilled brine at about −20 °C.

[Ghel]

At Mart of Wall last night, the paper products aisle was nearly empty. No toilet paper, almost no tissues or paper towels. It was eerie. They were completely out of eggs. Nearly all the bread was gone. The soup and canned veggies were picked clean.

Some of the things tell you what part of the country we live in: All the frozen tater tots were gone, but there were french fries. All the pizzas were gone. All the hot dogs were gone, except for the jalapeno cheddar brats (yummy!). All the kielbasa was gone, but they had Andouille sausage. Nearly all the rice and dried beans were gone, but they had cajun-style rice and beans boxes. The ethnic foods section was still fully stocked.

Some sections, there were particular things that were cleared out. A certain brand or style was empty, but others were still there. Like the store brand Italian bread crumbs were all gone, but other brands and plain versions were available.

[Mental_Mouse]

At Mart of Wall last night, the paper products aisle was nearly empty. No toilet paper, almost no tissues or paper towels. It was eerie. They were completely out of eggs. Nearly all the bread was gone.

Well, living on French toast for the duration of a disaster has... consequences.

[Ghel]

And now my bank has decided to close the lobby, starting at noon today. The main branch is working on making up signs that we'll post on the doors. We all still have to work. The tellers will rotate running the drive-thru. I'll be working via phone, email, and mail. And our ATM will be available. I'm working on a message to put on our phone system. Our branch manager is like, if we run out of things to do, we can organize a disinfecting wipe party and go around cleaning everything.

[dalesys]

... we can organize a disinfecting wipe party and go around cleaning everything.

Toddler says, "No! No! No! Not my ears!"

[Arcus]

Around here all restaurant dining rooms are closed (take out is still open,) bars are totally shut down, and this morning the earth itself decided we didn't have enough trouble and hit us with a 5.7 mag earthquake.

[dalesys]

... hit us with a 5.7 mag earthquake.

It also took Moroni's trumpet, so the Saints won't be marching for a while. I'd been up for about 2 hours before the rock & roll.

[Dreamstalker]

We did a few errands, bought some shelf-stable soups for an elderly friend and discovered that the "mini" Whole Foods store a few blocks away is the best place to go; that space is small to begin with so they're not doing numbered lines yet. All other grocery stores are. I did need to pick up a new keyboard; good thing I reserved it online a few days ago as the store is limiting customers and when I entered the manager asked what I was there for (he seemed surprised and thankful that I said I was just picking up a web order).

For all her pontificating about our moron-in-chief mom's watching all his "press conferences"...

[Ironclad Alibi]

Well, living on French toast for the duration of a disaster has... consequences.

Check out the National French Toast Alert System.

But it is only indexed to temperature, not to virus scares.

[Ghel]

So... loan rates. We use a third party for fixed rate mortgages. The loans get sold on the secondary market, and we get a fee in exchange. Usually we get an email once a day with the new rate sheet. Once in a great while, they'll re-price in the afternoon.

Today we've gotten 3 emails (2 re-prices) and the rates have gone up with each re-price. You'd think that mortgage loan rates would be really low what with the Fed lowering rates to rock bottom, but no. They haven't given an explanation, but I suspect they're overwhelmed between the number of people who've been refinancing hoping for a lower rate and short staff due to sending a large portion of their workforce home to work remotely. So they price their rates up hoping to slow the number of applications.

[Javarod]

Not much to say on my side, aside from the fact that I'm glad to be an introvert right about now. My job likely won't closed until forced to by the government or sales drop too low, but since I work in auto parts, that's not likely to happen, after all, if you're not quarantined, but can't go to work, why not catch up on projects like car repair? Nothing really changed at work, just increased cleaning and disinfecting, after all these days people aren't exactly packing auto parts stores. Likely my were's job will switch to work at home, but he'll still have to go in, property side works with a lot of paper, so he has to go in at least a couple times a week.

Oh, one funny thing at work, one of the stores ordered all the TP in the distribution center. No idea what they plan to do with it, the SKU is non-retail after all.
Lets see, a north county brewer is switching to making sanitizer to donate with the help of an all natural soap company I think it was. Sequential Art's latest post is a funny comment on the TP situation. At my end I have enough, but not the kind of stockpile Pip has.

Oh, someone mentioned the legality of mark up. According to a thread on r/StLouis, Missouri has a law against it, as does the federal government, basically it's illegal to over profit from essential supplies during a crisis.

[notalwaysright]

My work has not been ordered to close, but the cases in my state are crazy high (though NY has us beaten, finally) so they decided to drastically cut our production. A lot of people were having a hard time getting to work because their kids are all out of school. We have a decent number of people calling in sick when they probably wouldn't have before the virus. That's good! I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying that our call outs are very high. Normally we'd just operate on a skeleton crew, but the owners looked at the current situation and said basically "shut it down." I'll be okay for a while. We're still working a couple days a week, and they are letting us use sick time.

It's been interesting to see people's concern make a shift from worry about getting the virus, to worrying about making rent. I think because my county only has like 7 cases and nobody has been affected by the actual illness yet.

[LadyofArc]

It's been interesting to see people's concern make a shift from worry about getting the virus, to worrying about making rent. I think because my county only has like 7 cases and nobody has been affected by the actual illness yet.

Over here that's been everyone's fear from day one.

On the flip side, I've been informed by my boss that we're going to get busier over the coming months since a couple of the public hospitals are sending their major elective surgeries to us. Which of course is going to mean dealing with the asshole neurosurgeons a lot more unfortunately . So my job at the hospital is fairly secure for the time being.

Having said that, I'd be lying if I was coping OK. Three times this week I've had a breakdown either at work or at home, to the point where i had to take a day as a work from home day to try and isolate what was actually triggering it. That has actually resulted in two other departments including mine doing a rotating work from home system where everyone does one day a week working from home (mine will be wednesdays). I'm seeing my GP tomorrow to see if we can fast-track me getting back to my psychiatrist or if I can expand on my psychology visits a little.

[mjr]

We had to do grocery shopping twice over the weekend. We went Saturday, and the produce section was wiped out. We were told that there was some kind of "incident" or delay at one of the distribution centers and they couldn't get things out on time, so they missed a truck.

We went back Sunday Morning, and got the produce we needed. Over the weekend I also bought a brisket that I might need to smoke. I also bought a whole chicken and some rice and stock so I can make risotto if I need to (that can stretch, so I can make a good amount of it).