Yesterday after a class I stopped by at the neighborhood supermarket to pick up a few items. The store was quite empty, so were the shelves in produce, dairy, meat, and bread departments. The sight of the empty shelves was quite shocking. Only then I remembered that we were going to have a big snowfall this weekend. The weather man predicted 16 up to 24 inches of snow, which would trump our December snowfall when we got about 18 inches reported.
I know that people in our area storm grocery and households stores every time when we have inclement weather forecast. But I usually try to stay away from those psychotic crowds. This time I saw the aftermath of that shopping rummage. Quite impressive, I must say.
At one point I was going to give a benefit of doubt, and discount the empty shelves to the “perfect storm” phenomnena. Maybe, I thought, people had to shift their routine weekend grocery shopping, because the stores are expected to be closed. Also, this is a Super Bowl Sunday, and people had to stock up on the party goodies in advance. My last doubt on whether it was just a collision of random events or indeed a manifestation of psychotic shopping behavior was cleared when I passed the paper goods aisle. Yes, you guessed it right: the toilet paper was all gone 
I knew then that the clean-sweeped shelves in perishable foods departments was not a result of randomness, but the irrational crowd was to blame for it. Here are the pictures of some of the departments:
Empty produce shelf at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
Empty produce shelf at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
Empty produce shelf at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
Empty cheese shelf at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
Empty milk fridge at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
Empty bread shelf at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
Empty meat fridge at Giant supermarket on February 4, 2010
The main tell tale of psychotic shopping-empty toilet paper shelf
Today on my way to work I stopped by at another supermarket from the same chain to pick up my breakfast donut. I had another big surprize in store. All the shelves that had been empty at the other store the night before were properly stocked. I looked at it in disbelief. I thought that may be the other store had had some kind of irregular gang of psychos to descend on it, but in general people kept their sanity in tact. I even told the guy who was working in the produce department about my experience the night before at the other store, and asked him if they had had normal shopping.
Re-stocked milk fridge in Giant supermarket on February 5, 2010
Re-stocked produce shelf in Giant supermarket on February 5, 2010
The store clerk told me that their store was also swept clean of produce and other perishables the night before. They had restocked the shelves from the truck delivery that was in the morning. That was a vivid illustration of “just in time delivery” model adopted by many grocery retailers. The store clerk also told me that in his 19 years of working in the store he had never seen anything like what was the night before. As for me, I got milk and bread that I had missed in the other store in addition to a donut. I guess now, as I write this at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon the store is rummaged again, as the crowd was quite exuberant in piling up their shopping carts in the morning :-) And it’s likely to stay that way when the store re-opens as “just in time delivery” will probably be disrupted by the snowstorm. It’s snowing outside now, and the best is yet to come. By the way, all pictures have been taken with a camera on my Nokia E71x Phone (AT&T)
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