So..."Let Elderly People Shop Early" - what's "Elderly"?

[Ready]

These stores are going to need to come up with better solutions. You could reserve a time slot to go shop and bypass any lines. Or you show up and get assigned a number, then you go back to your car and wait until your number is called and texted to you to.

But we need to do something to prevent these long lines from forming. It’s happening every morning at Costco. The goal was to keep the stores from getting too busy so people would have room to shop, but the lines they create waiting to get into the stores are even worse for keeping people apart from each other.

 

[Another Reader]

I did the senior early shop this morning at the local mini Whole Foods imitator. It was so pleasant. No screaming kids or people having work conversations on their cell phones pushing by you or holding up the line. Milk was in stock, same price as Safeway. They were out of leaf lettuce, which was my main goal, and the meat selection appeared limited. Everyone was pleasant and friendly. Plus 10 percent off for senior day. Will do it again next week.

 

[harley]

Maybe they can take a number, like back in the deli section. Or they they can leave their phone number (an app?) and go wait in their cars. They'll get a text when it's time to go in. Iguana Mia can do it, why not Costco?

 

[Amethyst]

Old people in Florida have always congregated outside stores, waiting for them to open. I used to see it when I was a teen. The only differences in that photo are a) standing in line, b) they do not all look exactly alike. Oh, wait, that's because I'm one myself, now!

 

[Pellice]

Presumably if they could only wait a few days, there would be less of a line. Another observation: "the elderly" in New Orleans look pretty darn fit, compared to the general population!

 

[audreyh1]

Exactly what happened to DW last Friday. She left her fully loaded cart in isle 5 and went back to pick up a bottle of ketchup from isle 6. When she returned her cart was gone..... The store manager found it in isle 12. An honest mistake or someone attempting to save time in a crowded store?

I had to warn DH about leaving our cart unsupervised in another aisle a couple of times. We had one of the three remaining packages of paper napkins in our cart. Yes, we were quite low on paper napkins.

 

[audreyh1]

These stores are going to need to come up with better solutions. You could reserve a time slot to go shop and bypass any lines. Or you show up and get assigned a number, then you go back to your car and wait until your number is called and texted to you to.

But we need to do something to prevent these long lines from forming. It’s happening every morning at Costco. The goal was to keep the stores from getting too busy so people would have room to shop, but the lines they create waiting to get into the stores are even worse for keeping people apart from each other.

We stopped by Costco in Montgomery on our long road trip a couple of days ago. It was late, after 7 pm. They had barricaded the entrance to control access, but there was no line and they handed us a cleaned shopping cart. I was actually quite impressed with the whole operation. No TP of course but lots of other paper products. I forgot to check the cleaners or soap aisle - or maybe I glanced at the cleaners aisle but didn’t see much. They only let us take one carton of 24 eggs at checkout. I saw the person ahead of us had a big thing of Clorox cleaner refill with bottle, and said I hadn’t seen those. They pointed out one sitting on the nearby closed register that had been set aside due to one per customer and said we could take that one. Nice, as we needed some backup in case we need to supply Dad’s room.

It was nice having an uncrowded shopping experience.

IMO grocery stores are going to be much less crowded soon. There were few cars and people in Publix at 9:30-10:30am yesterday. The store had already been raided previous days so some things were completely unstocked and others very low.

 

[statsman]

If you have good water coming out of your faucet consider yourself lucky. That is definitely not the case everywhere. My water has stuff floating all over it. I have refillible gallons of water that I pay $.39 for(filtered water from the supermarket) and I occasionally get a pack of 500ml water bottles as well when they are $.10/bottle or less.

The tap water we received back in California (Silicon Valley) was like this. There were days you could fill a pot to boil water, and a white cloud would prevent you from seeing the bottom of the pot. Bathroom and kitchen fixtures quickly became marred with whatever was coming from the tap, which included an excessive amount of what smelled like chlorine. So, we never drank the Bay Area water.

I question the "safety" of tap water in the Bay Area. For the longest time, we gave our cats tap water. Given their dry food diet (at the time), they drank a lot of it. Over the years, we lost many of our cats to sudden health issues related to the liver and kidneys. These cats died between the ages of 9 and 12, which for indoor cats is a bit too young. About 10 years ago, we started giving our cats the same bottled water we drank, and about 5 years ago we started replacing part of their dry food diet with wet (canned) food. Two of our cats are now 12 and 13 (a 3rd is 8), and both had very good test results last month. It saddens me to think that the tap water back in the Bay Area might have been detrimental to our cats' health.

Here in central Texas, the water is fine, but it is very hard. Because of that, we have a water softener installed in the house we purchased last year. We actually used tap water a couple of days before the installation, and water this hard really dries the skin. While there are debates about whether it is safe to drink salt-softened water, it doesn't taste very good. So, we're still using bottled water.

I only wish we could find a store that sells steam-distilled drinking water to refill 3 and 5 gallon dispenser bottles. It works well for coffee and tea makers, making ice, for cooking, and for drinking. Alas, I have not found one like we had back in Campbell and San Jose.

 

[ivinsfan]

Yeah. That doesn't look like something I want to do.

do you have access to Wal Mart they have a great on line drive up service. on the phone app it might say no slot open for 7 days. But they really only book two days at a time, If you order as the clock turns midnight you should be able to get a pickup within 48 hours max.

 

[Rianne]

"But of the 508 patients known to have been hospitalized, 38 percent were notably younger — between 20 and 54. And nearly half of the 121 patients who were admitted to intensive care units were adults under 65, the C.D.C. reported."


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-people.html


Spring break is over. Now they're bringing it home to family and friends. Can't stop thinking of the video my DB sent from Ft. Lauderdale less than a week ago. Mashing kids, shoulder to shoulder partying on the beach. CV19 dangerous just for 60+? I don't think so.

 

[zwil]

Good idea!

 

[gwraigty]

They don’t look like they are standing 6 feet from each other. So much for social distancing.

Yes, it seems it's not really going to solve that problem. Another pitfall is that some items aren't stocked by outside vendors until sometime later in the morning, like bread. Then the bread, for example, gets sold out throughout the rest of the day and the shelves are empty again for the senior shopping hour.

Solution? Crackers. Lots and lots of crackers.

 

[Amethyst]

For bread, the solution is flour and yeast.

Yes, it seems it's not really going to solve that problem. Another pitfall is that some items aren't stocked by outside vendors until sometime later in the morning, like bread. Then the bread, for example, gets sold out throughout the rest of the day and the shelves are empty again for the senior shopping hour.

Solution? Crackers. Lots and lots of crackers.

 

[Nemo2]

For bread, the solution is flour and yeast.

For about six months now DW has been sourdough bread making, (even joined an international sourdough blog)..............the bread's superb, and we have lots of "fixins".

 

[gwraigty]

For bread, the solution is flour and yeast.

Not at my Walmart today. No flour, no sugar. I don't know about the yeast. Making homemade yeast bread has been a failing of mine. I just can't get it right. I can do quick breads though.

 

[Ronstar]

So..."Let Elderly People Shop Early" - what's "Elderly"?

We shopped senior shopping this morning at Jewel. The cashier said that they can’t stop non-seniors from shopping during senior hours - jewel is just requesting that shoppers honor a program by which seniors can shop more safely. Lots of folks in there. Almost all seniors.

 

[TrvlBug]

We shopped senior shopping this morning at Jewel. The cashier said that they can’t stop non-seniors from shopping during senior hours - jewel is just requesting that shoppers honor a program by which seniors can shop more safely. Lots of folks in there. Almost all seniors.

I encountered the same at my local 'super' grocery store. They can't/won't enforce the senior hours. The store was quite crowded with the shelves mostly empty or sparse that I left and went to a smaller store. Very few people and I got everything I needed except the couple of things I forgot. Was going to go back later in the day but DH convinced me the items were of no importance and I could get them when I went out next Monday or Tuesday to replenish the produce. He was right...this time .

 

[FIREd_2015]

Local Costco to offer senior shopping

I stopped by my local Costco today and was told that they will offer seniors only (60+) access to the store starting at 8am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

 

[stepford]

I just had a rude awakening. I was planning to do curbside pickup of my grocery order today. All emails said everything was fine, but on arrival found that all online orders were cancelled.

So I went to another store and found the "25 customers at a time" protocol in place. Fortunately this was a not-as-traveled location and the line outside remained orderly and well space (6-10 ft between me and my nearest neighbor). After 10 minutes they let our little group in. 25 at a time seemed about right as I never ended up having to get near anyone else. A couple of aisle passes led to transient 3-4 foot separation (for maybe 0.5 sec). I can live with that risk.

That said, many of the shelves were fairly bare. Of course paper products and disinfectants were gone, as were eggs, most bread and most canned goods. Frozen foods and, most crucially, fresh fruit and vegetables were well stocked, however. So the trip (my first venture out of the house in 4 days) was worth it.

The new normal is kinda scary.

 

[Corporateburnout]

We didn't go to the early morning senior shopping time, this morning. But, this was a photo of it. It apparently wrapped all around the store and down the block. I was surprised.

There was no line outside when I went for seniors shopping this morning but produce, eggs, meat and poultry were non existent. I picked up some milk, juice and a few other items and when I got to checkout the lines were ten shoppers long. I was about to leave the store without purchasing anything when I noticed the self checkout area was clear. I checked out and decided the experience wasn't worth it.

 

[harley]

There was no line outside when I went for seniors shopping this morning but produce, eggs, meat and poultry were non existent. I picked up some milk, juice and a few other items and when I got to checkout the lines were ten shoppers long. I was about to leave the store without purchasing anything when I noticed the self checkout area was clear. I checked out and decided the experience wasn't worth it.

I went shopping at Walmart this morning, and the meat and dairy departments were pretty slim pickings. No ground beef, but for some reason the $25-$50 packages of steaks were well stocked. I wandered through the store and eventually found everything on my list except hamburger and, for some reason, sauerkraut. When I went through the meat dept there was no chicken either, but I wandered back that way before I left and they were putting out packages of boneless breasts and bone-in thighs. I got some of each and left. But even though the stores are opening later and closing earlier to allow better stocking, they obviously aren't getting the store stocked overnight.

 

[Ready]

I went to Trader Joe’s this morning at opening. There were about 100 people in line. They said they could only let 60 people in the store at one time. People in line were standing really close to each other. The woman behind me was standing about 12 inches from me. I reminded her we are supposed to stay six feet from each other. She said Oh yeah...and then moved another 6 inches further back. People just don’t get it.

 

[Bamaman]

About the only place I see the truly elderly is at Aldi's. They love to put their carts up against the glass fridges and freezers blocking us younger retirees from getting around them. That's the store I'm into speed shopping at.
It takes too much walking to get to the electric shopping carts at Walmart. You'll see a few at Dollar General, however.
It's okay for the old folks to go in early to do their shopping--if it'll mean I can breeze thru the store at 9:00 am without'em clogging up the checkout stands.
Wait a minute. I'm going to be 70 next month. But I'm certainly not that kind of elderly.

 

[RobbieB]

Yeah, the water thing is weird like the TP thing. The local water here good, really good. I had a person from Tahoe tell me it was good.

But the water shelves at the super are empty. Lotta fear.

And that makes me rejoice as my lost dough will flow back to me just like the water in the city pipes.

 

[Amethyst]

I just went onto walmart.com and put in "flour, home delivery" and got nothing but weird types of flour that aren't really flour.

So, yeah, $#!+ is getting real. In FL I'm wary of customers who could be carrying concealed weapons.

Not at my Walmart today. No flour, no sugar. I don't know about the yeast. Making homemade yeast bread has been a failing of mine. I just can't get it right. I can do quick breads though.