I’m writing this at about 1:10 pm on Saturday afternoon. What I’m speaking about happened at 12:30 p.m. and, while perhaps not newsworthy, it speaks (screams?) loudly to the complete loss of “community” that has obviously overcome people in the Santa Clarita Valley (and likely elsewhere) over the hysteria surrounding the current COVID-19 epidemic.
I placed a not-unusual order for some standard food items three days ago for pickup today at 6 p.m. at (a grocery store), thinking I’d avoid the reported hysteria of the hoarders in the stores. At 12:30, I received both an email and a personal phone call that my order was being canceled.
Why? I was told by a very respectful employee that it was because the store shelves were EMPTY (again, keep in mind, this is a huge big box retailer) and that my order could not be fulfilled.
I asked if ANYTHING could be fulfilled and was told, “No, the shelves are bare except for a few items like alcohol (the beverage variety) and other items of a ‘non-household’ variety.”
So, my order for a few individual yogurts, a couple loaves of bread, two containers of orange juice, two packages of cookies, one bunch of bananas, etc., (nothing I thought would be a “hoarder’s choice”) were not available because, as the employee indicated, people are hoarding anything and everything on the shelves.
Has this community (and others) gone mad? My wife and I will get by but I got to thinking about others either less fortunate or elderly with limited access to markets large or small, or with limited resources with which to buy even necessary staples for survival, and my heart literally sank.
These hoarders have in one way or another got to be stopped!
No, I don’t have a readily available answer, but I DO know what’s “right” and it sure as hell isn’t right that people can simply strip the store shelves bare to satisfy their selfish greed to hoard staples that they can likely never use in the near term while others without either the will, or the ability to stand in long lines or even potentially face altercations with obnoxious hoarders whose only concern is for themselves, go without!
Yeah, we have a medical emergency in our country, but it’s neither Armageddon nor anything close; what we face in light of COVID-19 is exponentially made worse by the selfish lack of regard that some have for others in their community or elsewhere.
God help us were we to ever face a REAL catastrophic disaster.
I can’t even imagine what the people of these communities would do to one another to “get what they want for themselves.”
Boy have things changed!
Chris Anderson
Santa Clarita
