OT: Walmart

Our Safeway has a single entry/exit now, with a guard who checks for masks. That sort of crowds the parking at one end.

I keep going to my old exit with a cart full, and find it closed, and have to trek to the other one.

At least there's no heat. The parking lot of the Diamond Heights Safeway is legally part of Antartica.

We oogle women here, as "Wow, she looks hot in a parka."

I went on Tuesday. Not only were masks required, but they closed off the e ntrance at one end of the building. The manager brushed it off as no big de al, but the disabled and elderly were furious. The nearest parking space wa s past the closed entrance. I had to go to the other end, walk back to the closed entrance to find what I needed was out of stock. Then two more trips the length of the store to return to my vehicle. I was sick from the heat. I had to lean against the outside of the building for about 15 minutes bef ore I could finish the long walk. What are they thinking?

I haven't been to Walmart in a couple of weeks, but I feel your pain about the walking. Before my hip was fixed it was a literal PITA to go in a door only to find I can't exit that door and after walking all through the stor e having to walk the length twice more.

I suggest you contact the store and Walmart corporate, even if it doesn't r esult in any direct action, at least it let's them know there is a problem. If enough do that it will get noticed.

I understand many elderly and/or disabled people perfer to make their own way but if there's a time to leverage the curbside pickup hour many Walmarts are offering now's probably the time.

A local chain in MA and CT founded back in the heady days of 1936 is one of the nicest supermarket chains I've been to anywhere in the US. Little smaller than most other chain stores, no fancy automatic checkouts, but they run a tight ship and employee retention seems very good and never hear about any labor disputes (unlike the new england behemoth Stop & Shop.)

Also, electric car chargers at most stores! cool

When C-19 hit other supermarkets were still scratching their heads but the local big Y store within days had reorganized half the store with a new entrance and exit plan, lane markers, Lexan cashier-shields and re-organized the cafe as an indoor staging area with employees in special vests directing traffic, like something out of Japan more than the US.

Gotta move fast and do the value-adds as a small player up against Wal-Mart and other big-timers and it looks like they have an on-the-ball management.

Is that the real extent of your problem?

My mother is in a worse way than you (zimmer frame in the house), but she can manage to get around such "sheds". She uses a lightweight electric scooter that I can lift in and out of the car.

The scooter also enables her to go many other places, albeit not along a sandy beach.

For heavier scooters, lifts can be retrofitted to cars.

They can, if you have the money out of pocket. There was a huge scandal about scooters in the US, so Medicare no longer provides them.

I went on Tuesday. Not only were masks required, but they closed off the e ntrance at one end of the building. The manager brushed it off as no big de al, but the disabled and elderly were furious. The nearest parking space wa s past the closed entrance. I had to go to the other end, walk back to the closed entrance to find what I needed was out of stock. Then two more trips the length of the store to return to my vehicle. I was sick from the heat. I had to lean against the outside of the building for about 15 minutes bef ore I could finish the long walk. What are they thinking?

Having folks enter and exit thru the same entrance seems rather stupid.

Since they are more people closer to each other, the risks of infection go up.

Andy

k? I went on Tuesday. Not only were masks required, but they closed off the entrance at one end of the building. The manager brushed it off as no big deal, but the disabled and elderly were furious. The nearest parking space was past the closed entrance. I had to go to the other end, walk back to th e closed entrance to find what I needed was out of stock. Then two more tri ps the length of the store to return to my vehicle. I was sick from the hea t. I had to lean against the outside of the building for about 15 minutes b efore I could finish the long walk. What are they thinking?

o up.

Not if they are spaced out appropriately. Have then coming and going in a single door and spacing will be hard/impossible to maintain unless the door s are much wider. Even where they have multiple doors like at a Walmart, i t is hard to manage traffic once through the door.

Think about the routing. People are not unlike cattle where they run them through snake chutes on the way to slaughter so they don't see what is comi ng.

Are you eyes open?

In the case of Walmart, note that "entrance" is a set of double doors adjacent to ANOTHER set of double doors that are *an* "exit". (there's ANOTHER pair of entrance/exit doors at the other end of the building. and, yet another even farther along in the "garden center". there's probably even more down by the auto center)

In some of the other stores (e.g., grocers), it really *is* a (pair of double) doors. But, you can see the traffic on the other side and pause soas to ensure you don't pass close to each other. A "monitor" located by the door acts as a "traffic cop", of sorts -- enforcing occupancy quotas and metering folks in.

As re: proximity... Home Depot has a long "cage" structure that folds back on itself for folks to queue at its entrance. People in one part of the "fold" are only separated by those in the other "fold" by a few feet (and a chain-link fence). Obviously designed to manage an artificially lengthened queue (6 ft intervals) -- but not maintain distancing side-to-side.

Air diffuses pretty quickly in the near-field, yet moist air exhalation remains airborne for followers to breathe so the crosstalk attenuation of moist air is always going to occur following others that increases with congestion and air circulation.

Anything helps, but nothing compares to a pressurized filtered air suit used by virologists.

A scuba tank is even better.