How Covid Affected Eating Habits

When the coronavirus was initially announced I was working at Albertsons, a grocery store in California, and there was never a moment of rest on my shifts unless I was on lunch. As I would go through my shifts there were hundreds of people inside the store trying to stock up on everything they could get their hands on for fear they wouldn’t be able to get food later on. On many occasions I witnessed customers steal things out of another customer’s shopping cart, mostly younger adults stealing from elderly people who were practically defenseless in the situation. More times than I can count on one hand there were physical fights between customers over food items or toilet paper. With multiple of those fights, I had to get between them and end the conflict before removing them from the store where they sometimes had to speak to law enforcement after. 

While working you’re not allowed to shop for groceries because you’re being paid to work, not shop. On the multiple occasions I was the opening courtesy clerk there would be people lined up outside the doors waiting for us to open so they could get the things they needed before it got even busier. Generally within the first hour or so most of the shelves were cleared and all the toiletries were gone. The store had people restocking for basically their entire shift but at the pace, customers were grabbing things at they couldn’t keep up and eventually we reached a point where we set the boxes of items out and let people get their things like that. 

By the time my shift was over the shelves were cleared of every type of sustainable food and toiletries weren’t even an option at that point, regardless of if I had an opening, closing, or afternoon shift. As the days passed my parents would go to multiple stores (Costco, Ralphs, Albertsons, Walmart, Target, etc.) just trying to find food for us to eat at home because we were running out of “supplies” as my dad would say, but we never had any luck. Due to their age it eventually just became too dangerous for them to be in stores. Between fear of them contracting the coronavirus and being physically assaulted by other customers in stores if they had something another person wanted, we decided it would be better for them to stay home and I would do the shopping. 

After weeks of work being a complete madhouse, it slowly began to settle a bit as people realized they were hoarding for practically no reason because stores were remaining open. My store, thankfully, had begun giving employees a set time to shop for things they needed and to get toiletries for their families before customers came in and cleared it out. By this point limits had already been placed on almost every single item in the stores so that customers were unable to buy, for example, 15 cans of soup, now they could max out at 3 or 5, something low enough that they had enough to get by for a few days with their other items and other people had a chance to also buy soup. 

In my family, my Dad, Slenderman, and Goliath all have NASCAR fast metabolisms meaning they eat a lot more than most people and a lot more often. My mom’s metabolism isn’t as fast as theirs is but she still eats often throughout the course of the day, her proportions just aren’t as big. My metabolism is pretty down the middle. I eat as often as my Dad and siblings do, I don’t eat as much but I do eat more than what my Mom would. Because all of us eat so much so consistently we were constantly going to the store for food pre-Covid and once Covid hit we struggled a lot. We didn’t really have enough food for us to eat the way we normally would and that took a toll on all of us the longer it went on. We all had less energy and were all incredibly cranky and miserable. 

Before corona, our diets were extremely balanced and my Mom made sure that we hit all our food groups at dinnertime, breakfast, and lunch was generally up to us. After corona started we didn’t have the resources to eat meals like that and our diets became pretty unhealthy. Occasionally we would skip breakfast or lunch so we would have something to eat for dinner and partly to ensure that if things didn’t calm down soon we would have some food for a couple of extra days. Shockingly we didn’t reach the point of needing to aggressively stretch our time between meals although we came disturbingly close.

The result of not eating properly definitely put massive strains on my family's relationship with one another. Everyone had a temper and there were times where one of us would get mad at another person for simply existing even though that wouldn’t be the case on any other day. My parents were frustrated because they were practically stuck at home 24/7 to make sure they stayed safe and we didn’t have enough food or toiletries and there was nothing they could do about it. My Mom felt sick often because she wasn’t getting enough nutrients, my Dad and Clayton were set off by the smallest things because he wasn’t getting enough food to keep up with his metabolism, Rachel was crankier than normal and took it out on everyone else, and I was working constantly and when I’d come home from work I would be exhausted but the mixture of exhaustion, hunger and everyone else being a ticking time bomb didn’t lead to anything pretty.

This is what Albertsons looks like: Before Covid my store was open from 7 am through 12 am but once Covid started we opened at 6 am and closed at 11 pm. We set hours for the elderly to shop between 6 am and 8 am, which I always thought was insanely early but the rules are the rules. In real life the store is certainly not this bright, that would be intense.

This is me during one of my closing shifts: Mildly embarrassing picture but nothing I can do about it now so it’s alright. With Covid employees and customers were required to wear their masks 100% of the time while inside the building by law. There were many instances where people were told to leave because they refused to wear a mask and those conversations were never very exciting to have. Most of the time when a customer was told to put a mask on or leave they had a tendency to start yelling and cussing at the employee who was simply trying not to get in trouble with the managers. On the off chance it was a manager who told a customer to leave and they reacted poorly, which only happened once, they were physically removed by security from the store.