I like toilet
paper as much as the next guy. But the
huge rush on toilet paper due to the coronavirus pandemic is unsettling to me. The human reasoning (or lack of such) underlying
the panic purchase of something that is neither wholly vital to life, nor likely
to vanish due to the pandemic, points to worse behavior to come.
Yesterday, I
needed to buy a few grocery essentials.
I stopped at two stores. Though I
have a pretty good supply of toilet paper, I whisked down the paper products
aisle of the first store just to assess the stock. I found the toilet paper, napkin, and paper
towel gondola empty save a half-dozen packs of napkins on one shelf and a stack
of about a dozen paper towel packs on another shelf.
Costco, my next
stop was out of both toilet paper and paper towels.
The big empty.
More telling? When I arrived at the store, I found a police
patrol car parked directly in front of the store entrance. Just inside the automatic doors, stacks of
empty shipping pallets formed a kind of canyon.
The wooden canyon funneled shoppers into the store at the entry and
prevented a mob from entering all at once.
Stranger yet, a police officer was stationed at the end of the string of
check stands.
Apparently, some
ugly brawls erupted at the store yesterday.
Are you kidding
me? Are we in Helena, Montana?
Just for fun, I
decided to check Amazon for toilet paper when I arrived back home again. Though I found a lot of brands and options,
most were overpriced and out of stock.
Hilariously (dubiously), a few “used” options for purchase were
available.
I am not sure
used toilet paper is, or should be, a thing.
For further
adventure, I clicked through a few of the available brands to see when I might
expect delivery if I opted to purchase.
Delightful! Everything I checked
showed a delivery date of somewhere between the last week of April and the
first week of May.
More than a month
out.
This is getting
weird and frightening.
—Mitchell Hegman
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