Wednesday, April 01, 2020

Safeway stops COVID19, for a reasonable fee

Is everyone baking? That's one of the questions I have when I go to the store. There may not be an interruption in the supply chain, but when you're at the end of it in Homer, Alaska, it takes a while for the stores to recover from being stripped clean for the Great American Bake-Off.
Homer has also struggled for a long time with the questions of re-usable bags. We banned plastic bags at our stores in 2012, then repealed the ban in 2013, then in 2019 we banned plastic bags again. Now the corona virus shows up and CARRS Safeway thinks it's a perfect time to rub salt into this hotly debated issue... and make a few extra bucks.
In an effort to "stop the spread of corona virus", they are allowing customers to bring reusable bags into the store, but the bags cannot touch the checkout counter-- ostensibly because the bags are full of corona virus. The person who carried the virus-ridden bag into the store may touch the counter, and they obviously touch all the groceries in their cart. Then the checker touches all the groceries in their cart to check them out, then touches the groceries of every other customer in their line, but, under no circumstances, will they touch that virus-ridden reusable bag.
Customers that bring reusable bags must bag their own groceries on the floor in the dirty pathway at the end of the check out counters, or in a communally used cart. Customers that don't want the coronavirus and would like to purchase a plastic bag for 25 cents each can collect it from a communal shelf and the checker will bag their groceries for them.
And, wa-lah! all the virus germs are stopped. Easy as that. Now that your problems are solved, get back to baking!

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