Collected Item: “Unprecedented wiped-out store shelves”
Give your story a title.
Unprecedented wiped-out store shelves
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Photograph
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
As I remember now, around mid of March 2020 my undergrad school pushed all students and faculty to an immediate break while college administration had figured out the transforming in-person classes into online ones. Meanwhile, I was thrown into a new reality of Covid19 lockdown in NYC. As a part of it, there were empty shelves in supermarkets and grocery stores. On the first days of the officially declared lockdown, supermarkets became rapidly overcrowded by New York residents who had to rush to buy essential food supplies that could be preserved for a long time. The atmosphere of common panic at the beginning of the pandemic and lockdown seemed to be everywhere in New York. Hence, supermarket shelves naturally turned to be aisles with wiped-out shelves. Besides the essential foods, toilet paper and disinfection items (sanitizers and wipes) also run out with the speed of light. During the lockdown times, I remember challenges in finding these sanitizing wipes and sanitizers in the stores which were extremely needed. I made a joke once in my conversation with a store employee that I would have a time machine to travel to the recent past and buy all needed things and return. Supermarkets’ management decided to limit the sales items to avoid the absolute lack of necessary products in their stores. I could never imagine seeing such a lack of necessary food products in an economically advanced country like the US. In contrast, today and in pre-Covid times I did regularly head to do shopping in supermarkets, and I was able to view fully packed shelves and fridges with all types of various foods and products.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#lockdownstatenisland
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Faruh Davletov
Give this story a date.
March 2020