Selfishness in a crisis

The natural reaction to a looming threat is to take care of yourself and your family.

I get that.

You don't go and donate to Goodwill and do a Locks-of-Love ponytail when a huge ice storm threatens.  That's understandable.

When a weather system is on it's way throngs of people go to Walmart to make sure they've got diapers, salt, canned foods, and other essentials (read: alcohol and sweets) to make it through a potential stranding.


I am one of those people.  I went to get milk and a few other things to make it through - veggies, summer sausage, hot dogs -- things that don't REQUIRE cooking to nourish my family.  I don't ever buy more than a week's worth of goods in these situations (1) because SERIOUSLY I'll walk to town before then and (2) if the power goes out I don't want to have to deal with all of that food.  Winter storms have less of a threat of spoiling food - but if your power is out...you likely won't be sticking around to eat your body weight in cold pizza snacks.

I was joking about going to town to elbow old ladies to get to the last loaf of bread at the store.  I went - there was some elbowing - but because of my limited carb intake I skipped the bread isle.  Thank goodness.  It was empty except for a few of visibly damaged loaves.

What I did notice was not a SINGLE CART with only one loaf of bread.  Most had four or five loaves!

What IN THE HELL are you going to do with five loaves of bread??  You're going to end up freezing them and keeping them until LONG after the storm is done.  While others who need a loaf will go without.

That pisses me off.

I simply don't understand why you need to be able to make triple stack French toast enough to serve a football team when you know that others will be looking for the ability to make sandwiches in case of a power outage as well.

Maybe I'm not taking this storm seriously enough.  Maybe I'll be without power for weeks without the ability to go somewhere else.  Maybe I won't be able to find dry wood to start a fire in the fire pit to MAKE bread in my dutch oven.  Maybe this snowstorm is going to render the Midwest breadless for WEEKS after the storm because of the acute demand.

Or maybe people are just selfish and think they are being filmed for a Supermarket Sweep: Ice Storm Edition.

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Also, if I'm in line ahead of you to check-out, and the person in front of me has a bunch of stuff (including SEVEN loaves of wonder bread) and my stuff is not close to being scanned but is all loaded on the conveyor.  I'm not moving up and crowding.  Don't breathe on my neck because I will turn around and tell you to back off.  You're the asshole on a Chips-a-Hoy single item run.  You should have gone to CVS and avoided the Walmart panic.