Don’t go to the grocery just because you have cabin fever during pandemic | Letter to the editor

I work in a grocery store. During the first few weeks of the pandemic people came in and bought weeks worth of food with plans of staying home and keeping safe. Good job. This week i am alarmed to see that people seem to be interpreting the essential nature of the grocery store as their one, safe place to get of the house.

Increasingly I am seeing people come in and buy just an item or two, or groceries meant for the short term. One young woman came in today just to buy a single tub of Cool Whip!

The grocery store is far, far from a bubble of immunity. Please continue to treat the stay at home orders as genuinely meaning STAY AT HOME. You wouldn’t go to the emergency room every time you needed a band-aid, don’t go to the grocery store just to get Cool Whip or to get out of the house.

Your break from boredom or cabin fever makes a mockery of the genuinely serious risk that every grocery employee takes to make sure that the essential food you need is available.

Stock up and stay home please.

Shan Davis

Bradenton

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 11:13 AM.