Update: Wegmans has instituted measures designed to increase the distance between people at checkout. Customers are asked to stand behind a line on the floor as they approach the register, place their reusable bags and their groceries on the belt, then remain at this distance as the cashier scans and bags groceries. The only point where the customer and the cashier should be in closer proximity is at the time of payment .
Wegmans has instructed its workers to practice “social separation.”
“You are our priority,” the Wegman family says in online message to its employees, whom they describe as “our 50,000 heroes.”
According to Johns Hopkins, separation during the coronavirus crisis should be at least 6 feet.
In crowded supermarkets, that standard is nearly impossible to maintain. As John Swartzberg, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, Berkeley, told the New York Times, packed grocery stores could be the “site of the greatest risk to having social distancing work.”
Anyone who’s been through a grocery checkout knows how confining these aisles are. The line of customers is close by. The cashier across from you, hemmed in by the conveyor belt, the cash register and adjacent lanes, is well within coughing/sneezing/breathing range.
So what to do?
Use home delivery, curbside pickup or self-checkout if you can.
If you must go through a staffed checkout lane, you might mimic the steps taken by a doctor’s wife who recently came through my aisle.
She brought (recently washed) reusable bags, and offered to bag as I scanned. We did a sort of dance from opposite corners in a confined space. Standing at the far end of the checkout, she removed the groceries from her cart, then she moved past me, to the opposite end of the lane, and began bagging. The only time we were close together was during the moment needed to process her payment.
This sort of social distancing requires awareness by both parties, and I’m afraid it’s still a rare occurrence. Most customers, indeed, most cashiers, are not thinking this way.
Using the Purell dispenser above my register, I sanitized before and after processing the woman’s order.
As she headed out, she turned to me and said, “I hope they’re giving you breaks to wash your hands.”
They are. But I worry it’s not enough.
BTW, this customer had a packed cart. She wasn’t hoarding; she was taking groceries to a local food bank. Her heightened awareness extended not only to me, but to the larger community.
🦠 I just played the #SocialDistancing game and saved 29,829 lives. Now we just need to play it in real life. 👉 https://t.co/co0lbgERX0
— Thomas #flattenthecurve Fuchs (@thomasfuchs) March 15, 2020