Grocery Shopping at Trader Joe's: Hadley, Ma, Crocker Park, OH

Some ways in which COVID-19 has reshaped the often mundane grocery shopping task experience (at Trader Joe’s): 

• Waiting in a line with 6 feet between each shopper, to be allowed into the store.
• An employee moderates the number of people in the store, and as one shopper leaves, they allow a shopper from the line to enter.
• Hand sanitizer stations by the shopping carts and at the door of the store.
• The majority of customers and employees wear masks; some wear gloves. 
• Customers are not allowed to bring reusable bags into the store in order to reduce potential contamination. 
• At the cash register, an employee bags the items and puts the bags directly in the customers cart in order to avoid close proximity and touch.

• Even after two months of social distancing, I still find it so unnatural to make detours around every person who I do not live with, instead of simply passing by them at close proximity. This practice is so against my social human instinct. Even though everyone is following these same rules, I still try to smile or say hello to people as I walk in an arc to give them space. I think this is an attempt to mitigate some of the sense of coldness, superiority, or disgust that, in times outside of a pandemic, would be indicated by such a blatant avoidance of social proximity with a person. Wearing masks additionally compounds my feelings of social distance, as seeing and reading facial expressions tells so much about an individual and is generally a way to share a nonverbal greeting or sentiment with another person.

-Terra Szuhay, 

 May 16, 2020