Why do people panic buy bread when it snows

[Plun]

There is more food than bread. Yet bready things like English muffins and crumpets don’t get a look in.

Plus tins of soup. Don’t people have store cupboards anymore? I have enough food in for about a month. Though run out of FnV but at the end of the period, it will be any food for any meal

Last night I watched a tv documentary on BBC4 from the 1960s about the Big Freeze of 62/63. Anyone who is mid 60s or older will remember this. Devon, Dorset and Cornwall were the worst affected. 14ft snow drifts, villages completely cut off.

People now can’t cope with a single snowflake ❄️

I vaguely remember the big freeze, it was the year I started school and I'm sure I still went to school, they didn't shut.

Schools shut nowadays at the sign of the first snowflake, it's pathetic.

I've not seen the panic buying of bread and soup, have the supermarkets run out?

My DM lived on the Essex coast - she didn’t go to school for a week. DF lived in South Yorkshire. His school was still open. Had to
walk 1.5 miles (always walked in all weathers) and in shorts! He was in what we call year 9 and that was the final school year for wearing shorts. Year 10 onwards, trousers.

It’s because teachers live 20 plus miles from schools. Gone the days of teachers living in the village. When I was at primary school, all but 3 teachers lived in the village - 2 classes per year.

My friend is now one of the office staff at the primary school and teacher that lives the nearest is 8 miles away.

My parents’ neighbours are teachers and work in schools in neighbouring counties

I think a lot of people have longer commutes, which is probably why schools sometimes shut as they can't get enough staff in safely. Dd's school is the opposite, it never shuts!

Many also don't have even a small shop in walking distance nowadays, so perhaps that makes a difference.

Do they? Where is the evidence?
We have light snow here and all schools fully open.

Schools shut because staff can’t get in, or buses won’t run to get the kids in, or the site can’t be made safe. Gone are the days when we all made icy slides on the playground and hurled snowballs at each other, parents now will cheerfully go nuclear if their child falls over on an ungritted path. Not all parents, by any means, but the sweary, shouty ones who think schools are trying to kill their children and ruin their lives (there are a surprisingly high number of these).

I recall my DC's primary closing 25 years ago due to less than an inch of snow. London Borough. It was utterly pathetic and did nothing to engender in the children any grit or commitment to get to work - a dreadful example and very few teachers lived a distance away. Most parents were expected to get to work - there was no cognizance of that.

A couple of senior teachers lived a 40 minite drive away. AFAIAC those senior teachers needed to make arrangements to get themselves to work: overnight at an hotel, park on the closest gritted road and get some snow boots, get a blow up bed and camp out at school.

Funnily enough when the DC transferred to the independent sector, the only time their schools closed was in 2010 when there were significant snowfalls.

It's an ethos that explains GenZ more than parental actions.

I wouldn’t say it’s pathetic. Most teachers live a decent distance away from their schools and aren’t always able to get there.

😂😂

10/10 rage bait.

The trouble is, having had decades of warm winters, no one knows how to drive in snow anymore, during the 60s and 70s we all went to school and work and just got on with it, we had to walk through a park to get our school bus, with snow coming over our wellies.

This is v true. Some never miss an opportunity to teacher bash.

Panic buying may be because of the fear you won't be able to get out easily in a day or two. Weather forecasts seem more accurate than say 30 years ago, but are never 100% trusted.

As for the closing of schools, I expect part of it is because of the fear of being sued. I have long argued that there should be law that defines certain things as genuinely being accidental and for which no one can claim any compensation.

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.

Well, if you experienced London during snowfall you will be familiar with the traffic and complete collapse of the public transport. I once spent over two hours on a bus getting to work. A journey which typically takes 25 minutes. I don't expect people who live further out to spend half the night on busses getting in. Private sector so actually none of the clients showed up for the same reason. Could have all taken a day off (and those of us who did make it were sent home as, luckily, my boss is a reasonable human). And before you accuse me of having no grit, I grew up in a country which sees snowfalls every year from late December to late April. And yet, the first snow often puts the city in chaos despite everyone switching to winter tires by the end of October. So it's not unusual even there to cancel plans and appointments on the day of a first snow. Although, we do then manage to get our shit together for the rest of winter.

I’ve not seen any panic buying in our very snowy town, but obviously when people can’t get out to other shops and deliveries can’t be made, even small changes of behaviour can rapidly clear shelves. We saw during Covid that supermarkets run a very lean model to minimise waste, so it doesn’t take panic buying to disrupt the stock levels, just slightly changed behaviour across a lot of people.

The shelves are getting bare but no one is walking out with armfuls of bread or anything like that here. I usually get a supermarket delivery but they can’t get to us so I have to buy what I would there at the smaller local shop, along with everyone else. Deliveries to the shop are also disrupted.

There is advice today in one of the papers, to get in bottled water, foods in packets (which can keep without a fridge), a mobile power bank, torches and blankets in case of an imminent snowstorm and power cuts.

While that may be more applicable to the West coast of Scotland than the SE, I believe that’s been Europe wide advice anyway, in case of an attack by Russia.

YABU - bread doesn’t need a fridge and lots of people would make sandwiches for a few days, without power?

Is that in the UK ? Must be unusual, trying to organise with lots of unknowns I can't see how it would work particularly well.

Because soup and crumpets are a comforting and quick hot meal on a cold day

Welcome to the real world teachers! Everyone else has to drive to work in it.

Well not quite everyone else has to drive in.

If you have food in for a month why does it bother you what people buy? Maybe they want to be able to have bread and soup if they can’t get out? Maybe they don’t have space to store the same volume of food you do?

Do they ? Our schools are open today and there is some snow, whereas schools further up the country have heavier snow and their schools have quite rightly have closed.

Do you normally exaggerate for dramatic effect ?

To make sandwiches if the power goes off, who wants a crumpet sandwich.
i haven’t seen panic buying where I live but the bread shelves have been bare as deliveries aren’t getting through due to snow road closures