HURRY UP AND QUEUE UP

Like many New Yorkers, I have been hunkering down at home but yesterday I had to make my grocery trips.  I heard about the need to queue up outside the store, to keep the inside of the less crowded to maintain proper distance among the shoppers.  I finally experienced it and it was not so bad.  First it was the Chinese supermarket on my block.  It was rainy but there was an overhang outside the building to keep the people on the queue not as wet.  It was a good thing that the store had an employee at the sole entrance/exit to maintain order.  Some shopper, intentional or not, just blissfully walked into the store.  The people at the front of the store should be closer to the entrance but I guess there was no overhang there so they were some 20 feet away instead.  I recall when we lived under the Communist regime of Viet Nam, standing in queue was a new reality too.  Lots of things were rationed, we had to stand in queue to buy rice, sugar, etc.  As a teenager, I made a little money by getting in the queue to buy stuff for some of the neighbors in the apartment complex.  The queues then was a lot worse than what I experienced yesterday.  It didn't wrap around the block, even with people maintaining six-feet distance.

The queue at the Walgreen across the street from the Chinese supermarket was also short.  Maybe it had to do with the rain.  I don't mind rain at all and have this crazy idea that disease doesn't get distributed as easily when it's raining.  Not just because droplets don't stay in the air as long but many people don't like rain and rather stay indoor.  While I was standing in queue, some guy drove into the parking lot then asked if that was the line to get inside.  He then got upset and drove away.  You would think everyone knows this new reality by now but obviously some don't.

Even though the waiting, at both stores, didn't seem too long, it does add up.  When you need to make a grocery trip, allocate extra time for the queue.  It didn't happen at Walgreen but at Sun-Hing the line to pay was long, or at least longer than usual.