Panic buyers

[Idliketoteachtheworldtosing1]

Aibu to think that it's damn ridiculous the way people have been panic buying?
Personally I think that all the supermarkets should take a leaf out of our co ops book and allow one 6 pint per person! Yes it caused a few rows but surely that is the fair way when stocks are running low.
It's always milk and bread, some people are so selfish and buy ridiculous amounts of the stuff.
It drives me mad.

I know I was the same, the poster had put a picture up of them all, one looked like an adult which wouldn't surprise me around here, but then unfortunately a lot of the kids and adults around here are scum, two of the local teenagers are in prison for kicking to death a homeless man, I love my house but hate the area.

I bought wine, Tesco near us had NOTHING yesterday. No veg, milk, bread or alcohol. Someone was pushing a co op shopping trolley past our house.
I like to think I can feed us with what’s in our cupboards if there’s an emergency, although we’d be eating pasta and rice for a while

I remember the bread shortage as a child in the late 70s - the local shops would only let you buy one loaf at a time in order to be fair to everyone. We were a very big family but somehow managed without starving.

I do remember one woman in the local grocer's being so upset that she actually destroyed a bunch of loaves, on the "if I can't have them then nobody else can" basis. Bonkers.

We're in a bit of a weird situation at the mo with not much food storage space - living a bit day to day. Under normal circ's though i like to think i have a well enough stocked larder to keep us for a few days in the event of local shops running out.

Not sure though. And it happens so rarely you don't get much practice. That's the trouble. I think it's years since any shops last run out of food round here.

I think people forget that it's not necessarily about individual households running out of milk and bread - which are staples in most homes - but it's the problems the snow and ice can cause to the supply chain, ie getting the food to the shops to re-stock.

To those people who rely on a village shop - if the shop is snowed in, or delivery lorries or vans can't get to them then an entire village is likely to run out or run low.

Milk and bread both freeze so people saying the milk will go off makes no sense.

Yes it's very selfish to buy 20-odd pints of milk but at the same time the people who did t bother buying anything extra because they live within walking distance of a shop we're perhaps being a little shortsighted.

It is utterly deranged to behave like that. We are a family of four living in rural Wales (in a small bungalow) I permanently keep at least 6 cartons of longlife milk and powdered milk in the cupboard, plenty of pasta, lentils, tins and flour, dried goods,along with a couple of packs of part baked baguettes. (Long dates on those!)

We have a small full freezer containing one and a half frozen loaves and all the usual fish/meat/veg etc. I reckon we can go at least 3 weeks, may have to eat some weirdo meal combos and think creatively but it's only a temporary situation! It's not hard to be prepared and 'make do'.

I walked down to our local Tesco on Friday, more because I was going stir crazy than from pressing need. Apart from some gaps in the vegetable aisle it was pretty much business as usual and I got everything on my list. Apart from champagne. They had run out of champagne. Now that is a crisis.

Our local co-op had no milk yesterday. I assumed it was a supply issue, but maybe it was down to panic buyers! I never even thought to stock up.

I guess and hope that most of it can be explained by everyone going for their bread at once because they know they might have difficulty the next day etc, but it really does seem silly.

The example on the first page of a large family whose kids drink milk is a bit silly because kids don't NEED to drink milk every day, and a day or two (which is realistically what at least half the country are facing, not endless deprivations) of eating what's in.

I don't think there was panic buying where we are. The delivery trucks didnt get through for at least two days. Then milk wasn't getting picked up from farms and workers couldn't get to bakeries.

There WAS a supply issue too.

Clearly we have our priorities right in this part of the UK as the only things Tesco ran out of was frozen chips and Coors light beer .

Plenty of bread and milk

Miss Mouse is right. Like her idea about part baked loafs.

I think this thread shows that some people think being sensible and less selfish doesn't apply to them, I have a big family, I like to do packed lunches with lots of bread, god forbid anyone in MY family goes without and stuff everyone else.

Our local Tesco was cleared out... but had beer and wine.

The not quite so local Sainsbury's, 1/2 a mile away, was fully stocked. So we just shopped as normal, when we could get the cars out.

Shops in our small town were cleared out - but that was because we had made food parcels for all the elderly bods and sent parcels out to the most remote houses (very rural area and town has a lot of purpose built retirement flats and a town council that forgets to supply salt, or workers to clear snow).

We had people on Coop and NISA delivery watch

There was no milk in our Co-op last night either fresh or long life.

I have been ill for a few days so I had no chance to go out before.

The skimmed milk powder I just reconstituted isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Cows milk was all gone, but soya and coconut milk etc were all still in stock, people don't realise it's just as good if not better

But Soya & coconut milk taste RANK.

When I lived in Singapore I learnt a word they use for this sort of behaviour - it is "kiasu" which means "afraid to lose"

I'll admit to panic buying biscuits, wasn't too bothered about much else.

We just did our usual shop before the weather got really bad. We’ve always got a couple of cartons of longlife milk and a loaf or two in the freezer.

I bet loads of food is going to get chucked out in the next couple of days.

Husband works in Tesco. We haven’t been badly hit by snow in our little bit of north Devon but he got into work on Friday after 2 nights off to be told there had been no deliveries for those 2 days and nothing came in on Friday night either. They normally get 2 or 3 deliveries a night. They had 1 delivery on Saturday and at least 1 last night but fresh stuff is coming in on date or out of date.

Think it will take a while for things to get back to normal tbh

Our group of villages got completely cut off due to snow drifts so no deliveries could get through for several days. We also had power cuts. Our local shops ran out of most things, meat, bread, milk, veg and tins. We are very rural and there is a mix of families and the elderly. We had snow start on Monday and it was only really possible to start driving on it over the weekend as there were 5ft snowdrifts on the narrow roads. Even ambulances couldnt get through. For our shop it wasnt panic buying that was the issue, it was the sheer number of people using a very small shop and the lack of deliveries.

Generally we rallied round, shared out what we could and the shop owner made a trip partially by tractor and then 4x4 to a wholesaler with a shopping list for the whole village. We all keep essentials stocked up but even hardened locals who have lived here their whole lives hadnt seen snow in such volumes or known the roads be so inaccessible. As soon as they were cleared the high winds blew fresh drifts across roads, it was scary and dangerous.

Normal service has resumed now thankfully!

I buy at least 24 pints of milk a week. This week, because school was closed for 1.5 days, we've got through 32 pints of milk. It's my teenage son who gets through it all. Milk was the only thing I was worried about running out of this week.

I think this thread shows that some people think being sensible and less selfish doesn't apply to them, I have a big family, I like to do packed lunches with lots of bread, god forbid anyone in MY family goes without and stuff everyone else.

This. It's a bit like the reduced-price aisles. When I am on a low income - as I have been from time to time - I depend on them. But if I come across a big stack of reduced-price [insert essential, freezable item here], I might buy multiples, but I won't clean out the entire stock, even when it would help me to do so, because I know other people rely on reduced-price stuff, too.

My local shop reported panic-buying of wine.
I bought a bit of extra wine and some bread flour. I know you can pop the milk onto the doorstep in a power cut but foxes would eat any bread stored the same way.

we've got through 32 pints of milk. It's my teenage son who gets through it all

But he's a teenager, not a toddler. Having a drink of water or a cup of tea instead won't leave him malnourished. (And he's old enough to be told "don't drink all the milk, otherwise the rest of us won't be able to have a cup of tea".)