How are the supermarkets still so busy?

[UnicornMadeOfPinkGlitter]

I’m a keyworker and have two days off. Today is my birthday, however for obvious reasons all plans have been postponed.
I am the only driver in our family and so we need to get food. I went to the nearest supermarket at 10.45 and the queue was huge, all the way around the supermarket, around the back and on to the car park.
So drove to one a little bit further away. The same story. Stopped at a petrol station for fuel, bread and milk and went home again.

Went out about an hour ago and they are still queuing! We have food in the freezer so will try first thing tomorrow, but judging by the posts on social media this is happening all day every day. I obviously live in a highly populated area, but to be queues all day every day?

I’m not NHS or a care worker or vulnerable so no right to jump the queue and neither would I do so anyway unless I was physically unable to queue for that length of time.

Many reasons , which are very obvious 🤔
Difficulty getting online delivery slots .
More people are home and eating more food.
Stores are limiting how many people can go in at any one time .
There were / still are some restrictions on how many you items you can get , there for extra trips might be needed .
It takes longer in store because of social distancing I.e having to wait to get something of a shelf if someone is in front of you .
Stores are not open 24 hours like they used to be .

Just shows what a variation there is. Where I live (98% compliance with the rules, apparently), the supermarkets are virtually empty. I had to queue for Sainsbury's yesterday, but I was the only person in the queue. They have a cap on numbers (about 2, to judge by the number of people I saw).

I hate it. I want to see people.

Don’t go in the mornings. I went today at 3:30 to our massive Sainsbury’s and walked straight in. The woman at the checkout said it had been really busy in the mornings but the afternoons were much quieter.

It must vary a lot across the country. I went at 10 this morning and walked straight in, as I was leaving it was noticeably busier but still no queue outside. They even had 3 bags of flour left and eggs!

Slightly off topic but I'd love it if they enforced no families and no cuddling couples thing. Sick of trying to stay away from people when mum's half down the aisle, dad's stopped to look at something and kid is touching everything a their level at the end. It's like some computer game to get through without going near anyone.

My one aunt, 76, goes out of boredom/habit/loneliness.
She doesn't actually need much, but it gives her something to do.

We've had words over this.

George A Romero was spot on in 'Day of the Dead' and the shopping habits of society.

I have found that evenings are best, about 7pm. No queue at all then and most things available.

Yanbu. The queues are crazy - I've spent 50 mins in the queue for shopping today. The store itself was really busy as well and tricky to social distance. Most things in stock however no tagiatele, spaghetti or linguine in the shop. Also no courgette or aubergine. Very stressful and took hour to get round, will have to try waitrose on the way home from work tomorrow.

Went Aldi at 3.45 today, straight in with no queue, it was pretty much fully stocked apart from hand-wash and flour.

Was back home, shopping put away and drinking a cuppa within an hour.

If your husband is furloughed could he walk to the supermarket, queue up and get shopping and then you pick him up on the way home from work?

I walked straight into a large Tesco at 10am this morning.

I'm finding shopping takes much longer than usual - you have to follow the one way system, wait for people to move out of the way and do more thinking on your feet when items you'd planned to buy aren't available/are suddenly the new thing that's rationed. I'd normally expect to spend 40 minutes max on a weekly shop but it was more like an hour this morning.

Only half the checkouts are open so that you're not right next to someone else unpacking their shopping. No-one is in there for a few items, it's all big shops.

And everyone is dancing around each other!

Because of the number of people being allowed in, restricted opening hours. And no delivery slots available, people having to go more often.

Although having said that at my local Asda when I have had to go I've got there at 7.45 am for opening time of 8am and been in and out by 9am. And the shelves are mostly fully stocked.

We have had delivery slots but they miss out on a lot of things with no substitutions for some of them. So we still need to get food from other sources as well, unfortunately.

Best to go late in the day. I haven't seen any queues in the evenings.

This really seems to vary depending on where you are in the country. I live in a large town in the SE, I've been shopping three times since the lockdown began, twice to Sainsburys and once to Asda. Never queued more than 20 minutes. There's no one way system in the stores I've been in, but people were mostly being sensible and keeping their distance. Plenty on the shelves as well.

Key workers aren’t the only ones still working, there are a lot of people still working 5 day weeks and therefore needing to shop at the same time. As people have said as well, more at home eating and less people in the store will be making the difference. It’s really hit and miss when it’s busy, I got lucky on my two trips and walked straight in, but also seen pictures of people queuing round the car park. I went mid afternoon both times

I’m having to buy loads more than usual, no school dinners, no picking up lunch at work, no meals out (or at grandparents) and very little in the way of takeaways. And as dd said, we’re even washing our hands and wiping our bums at home 🤣

I’m in a suburb of a large town and work in the next town. Might try the Waitrose there on my way home from work.

The reserved hours would appear to be for NHS, carers and social work rather than teaching staff, education or supermarket workers, bin men etc.

Unfortunately the supermarkets are a long walk from our house and DH refusing to take public transport at the moment as he says the risk is too high. We’ve got buy with him buying things like bread and milk from the local small Londis and can keep the teens stocked up with crisps and cola from there but decent fresh veg and meat (Dd and I are veggie but have 18yr old ds and DH meat eaters) at least I managed to get our usual lentils and beans that had sold out everywhere.
I imagine there will be cupboards full of these for years to come from people panic buying that won’t use them.

Fingers crossed tomorrow will be less of a queue and be able to buy all that we need. We could actually do with toilet roll now as well!

Managed to get a shop today. Waitrose Weill has huge queue but Asda I walked straight in. Got almost everything except for some fruits that dd had asked for.