Why do people panic buy bread when it snows

You do realise that teachers themselves have no say in these decisions? Management and department of education (in Ireland) are the ones that decide.

If a school is a teacher down, that class can't just be left unsupervised though! They can't just be in the library or 'do craft stuff' on their own. Schools don't have random adults floating around who can step in. We have 30 children to one teacher, some 1:1s for extremely high need pupils with EHCPs, and that's about it.

The whole "bread and milk" thing always makes me laugh.
Two products that go off fairly quickly.
Bread doesn't even go stale these days - it goes mouldy 🤢
Surely it makes sense to get longer life things like crackers and bottled drinks.
If I was to write an emergency food list perishable foods would be waaaay down the bottom. I'd maybe get some of the long life milk cartons or powered milk.
I always find it bizarre. You can survive easily without eating bread for a few days. Why are people so obsessed with stocking up on it?

How do you know when someone is panic buying? There are 9 people in my house and we shop twice weekly as a minimum. My trolly would have 3 loaves of bread and 12 pints of milk plus lots more.

Not everyone. I’ve chosen to wfh today. Which I hate but I hate snow more.

I remember well the freeze. Where I used to live, you entered & left the town with hills, the traffic was idle on both of them, lorries & cars were just left stranded for ages & people just made the way into the centre of town. You just bought what was going & got on with life, certainly didn’t starve. People just seem to panic at the slightest thing thing nowadays, but you survive

Aberdeenshire!

I assume it must be done differently in different areas but here, if the weather is bad enough, the teachers go to their local school rather than the school where they normally teach.

Where do you live?

This was talked about as a solution when I started teaching in the 90s, but never actually happened-when it snowed, the local schools all stayed open or all shut anyway.

Now, with DBS checks and schools belonging to different MATs, it would be a safeguarding nightmare just allowing random teachers to pitch up. Head teachers have to make a decision at 6/7am as to whether they are going to close or not, and would base that on safety and staff numbers, not an estimate of what local teachers might decide to swing by.

True, but by the early 1970’s, during a bread shortage, people were physically fighting over grabbing loaves of shop bought bread.

I do find myself pondering how the decisions to shut schools are made in my part of the UK. We don't have snow. A tiny smattering. Not even enough to measure, just a few flakes on the ground. My kids comprehensive school is shut though. Now it doesn't bother me, I'm quite happy to see her get a bonus day off but I do wonder why. The roads are gritted and I can hear there are plenty of cars on the road. Maybe some teachers who are further away have had more snow and can't get in but I'd be surprised if that's more than a minority.

Is it that they're more risk averse these days? Before I get attacked, I want to reiterate, I'm not bothered, I certainly don't blame the teachers who won't have even made the decisions, I just wonder why.

Years ago it was more normal to bake your own bread so a bread shortage in the local shop if the delivery couldn’t get through was less of an impact.

Store bought bread was a convenience back then, not a necessity.

Lots of snow and ice where I am and all schools are open as normal even though the roads have not been gritted.

I think some people on here are making vast assumptions about what and how people can cope. It’s a massive overreaction to claim people can’t cope with a snowflake. Then again, I also don’t see bread being panic bought.

It’s a bit of snow. We had plenty of warning and it will melt before long. The bigger concern should be for those who don’t have the mobility to go out and those who can’t afford to heat themselves up.

People should just learn how to make their own bread. Its much easier than many think, way tastier and cheaper as well. If you have bags of flour in the pantry then you'll never run out of bread.

You are clearly not where I am, north east of Scotland, haven’t been out since last Wednesday so starting to run out of fresh food. Deliveries can’t get through either due to the amount of snow we’ve had

Only once our school was closed because of snow which was 1982. It was a lot of snow and the village was inaccessible, so was everywhere else.

I remember going in to school other times when the heating had packed in, sitting in class wearing coats, gloves and scarves. There was no social media in those days and once everyone from outlying villages were bussed in that was it, pupils had to stay.

I don't understand the bread and milk panic though. A warm meal instead of sandwiches or toast would be better and milk for tea and coffee.

I good feed us for a month. Meals would be a bit weird but this is a luxury many people don’t have. Storage, money to buy more than you need…

I don’t currently have any bread in but my tween will run up to the local shop for me when he rises from his pit!

It's because lorries stop delivering. And if you have bread you can freeze it. And eat it with the canned soup.

Where are you @Clefable ?

I remember it as well - we all went to school, despite outside frozen loos, and adults went to work. Mainly on public transport, which also ran pretty well. The councils cleared main roads pretty quickly.

Now, an inch of snow seems to create chaos. 🙄

I’m in my fifties now and when we were at primary and secondary school the only reason the schools closed was if the heating wasn’t working!
If a teacher couldn’t get in it was a bonus as we got to do crafty stuff, library, joined classes etc etc.
I remember walking to school (about half a mile) in my wellies and the snow deep enough it was over the top of my boots!
And at break times we still went outside and played 🤣 It was brilliant!!!!!!!

I am in central Scotland we had snow yesterday.

Are people panic buying bread or are the deliveries just not getting in/ delayed?

Depends on how much of a backbone the organisation has.

I think it’s fear of no deliveries making it to the shop if the snow gets worse so they buy extra ‘just incase’ also if the electricity goes off then bread is an easy meal as you can make sandwiches.
During the beast from the east I had to trek all over to find milk as we ran out. The big Tesco across the road was fully stocked but closed due to snow falling off the roof near the entrance.
I’m in central Scotland and we haven’t had any snow yet this winter. I tend to have a decent stock of tins in so we wouldn’t starve if we had a big snow. So long as we have one loaf of bread in I wouldn’t buy another as we don’t usually get through that much anyway and it would be a waste to get an extra loaf.