Corona #10, it goes on

I no longer check the weather forecast because it is completely irrelevant. I won't be going anywhere except work anyway.

A customer had a go at me today, twice, and I lost my cool a bit and told him that it won't help being rude to me. I'm not pleased with myself and wish I'd been more patient. People are scared and it's making them snappy and it's making them do stupid things.

Our plastic screen is in place and while it's a good thing, it also makes life difficult as people can't hear well through it and can't easily stack their baskets, pack their groceries or collect their bags through the hatch.

35,000 people have now died.

My co-worker R is self-isolating for at least a week, leaving us scrambling to rearrange staff hours for cover. I start at 6am tomorrow and since J & I were both originally supposed to begin at 8, I'll collect him on the way - he can sit in the kitchen and eat cereal and my bet is that they just tell him to log in and work.

On the plus side there's plenty of work for us. And I did get a free ham & cheese sandwich today, some yoghurt, a chocolate sundae, jam on toast for breakfast and a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes for my lunch (£2.20).

I'm making chicken burgers for dinner with potato toaster waffles.

I Am Tired. Coronavirus #9

It doesn't make for a very interesting post, but this is where we are.

Today was my 11th day working in a row and I have three more to go before I get a day off (one day off only).

At this point I remind myself that I am very grateful to have work at the supermarket. They are also paying me a bonus pay rate which was unexpected. The hotel will be officially furloughing me which is very much appreciated as I'll get a part payment while they are closed.

Today a customer kept trying to stand too close to others, who eventually shouted at him to get back after he ignored them twice. He then complained that I was "standing around chatting to customers" and that four staff inside were "messing about with boxes" and why didn't we open another queue since everyone had to wait? Unfortunately this idiot didn't seem to have any understanding of why he had waited in a queue outside, why people were keeping 2m apart, why I was dressed in hi-vis and marshalling the queue to enforce spacing and control how many people entered the store, and nor did he have any concept that the staff were unloading a delivery onto shelves as fast as they could so he could actually buy something, nor did he realise we couldn't open the extra till as it was too close to the tills beside it.

He got a polite mouthful off me which resulted in applause from people patiently waiting in the queue. As he stormed off I thanked him for coming.

There's always one...

I have ordered UNO from eBay for son and I to play and to stave off boredom for another hour. (£2.60)

They're supplying us with breakfast cereal and bread for toast, and drinks, and we are all making each other endless cups of coffee. As they say, we are all in this together, and every little helps ♥

Corona #8, Queue Time

"X" marks the spot. We now limit customer numbers in the shop at any one time. They park themselves on crosses outside and mostly are content to chat as they wait. It helps that it wasn't raining today. We also need to police their distancing inside the shop, as despite all the signs and all the squares marked out on the floor, they still wander into each others' very close personal space.

Idiot #1: I must confess I got really annoyed at a whole family of five today, the little girl was COUGHING and for some unfathomable reason the idiot parents brought her into the store. I lost patience and asked them all to step back away from me - the mother says, "Oh, she's only five and doesn't understand." I said, "Yes, but she's coughing and I need you all to step back. It would be better not to bring her in here, one parent really should stay outside with the children - just to keep everyone safe." She was nice about it and agreed, but I was fuming. What an irresponsible thing to do. If it had been me on the door I would have told them the kids couldn't come in, but it was too late by the time they got to the tills...

Idiot #2: On my remarking about the lovely sunshine, one customer said we should all be out enjoying the sunshine. I say, no actually, everyone should be staying home. And he says, "Why?"

As the manager said, there's always one. Our area apparently has several.

My hands are red raw from the hand washing. My feet are killing me. I've lost count of the hours I have worked.

Nothing going free again today, and I haven't done raffle entries in well over a week.

Small Things. Coronavirus #7

Some changes are big, some are small. I can't wear my mala beads anymore because of the gloves I now need for work - the bracelet has fallen off twice and I worry that next time I won't find it again.

Customers are now standing behind the floor lines of their own volition. It's only taken them three days to learn. Asking them to step back has taught them that this disease is serious.  It has all moved them up a level in their internal "taking things more seriously" meters. We now have a "cleaning station" for their shopping baskets and their hands. Almost nobody is using it. But that will change in a day or so, I am sure.

We are getting perspex screens around the tills at work any moment now. This move is so in-your-face that I expect it to prompt people to ratchet up another level, ie, they'll start wearing masks and wiping their basket handles down with anti-bac.

Major supermarkets have reduced their opening hours. We expect ours to follow suit shortly.

Son and four other new staff started today, I spent the whole day training them on the tills. Trying to listen to three tills at once, my brain is now leaking out the side of my head. I'm mentally shattered. Still, it is nice to be useful.

More and more it is sinking in that we are key workers. The bakery has closed, the takeaways are all on the brink. But people need supermarkets. We need to keep our work ID with us in case we're stopped by the police - who are now cruising the main street and dispersing anyone out without a valid reason.

The footpaths are basically empty save for an occasional dog walker. The lack of people outdoors is eerie.

I think that fines and a tougher lockdown are coming this week. And possibly no more cash transactions.

Stop Press: we now require every person to use the sanitiser gel on their hands as they enter. Very few of them even hesitate. I have been referred to as "the hand gel police", and by one amused customer as "a bully that he wouldn't dare argue with" 😅

Surrealism, or Coronavirus #6

It is becoming more eerie. Whereas last week, a fair few customers argued that it's just a virus, or made fun of people in gloves, or behaved as if they didn't care, we now have almost 100% compliance in the supermarket. Not a single argument over the restrictions, not a single complaint about missing items. We now ask people to place their groceries on the counter and then step backwards from us, behind the line on the floor. I had at first thought that people would find it very rude - so at first I was apologising - but to my surprise, it's making people see that this is serious. And to my absolute astonishment it is EMPOWERING people. They now have something concrete that they can do, something constructive, where before they had been on tenterhooks of anticipation, tense with expectation but feeling utterly powerless. So now, they feel like they are "doing their bit", just by looking at a bit of tape on the floor and moving their feet to the other side of it.

The manager of my hotel job called me from her personal mobile tonight, they've been ordered to close completely, effective immediately. I am absolutely gutted for her and gutted for the ladies I worked with. Their hearts and souls are in that place and now they are also unsure about paying bills. I feel fortunate and also guilty that I will still have work elsewhere, for at least a few weeks.

Speaking of which, son has gotten a temporary job at the supermarket, which is good news. It is a day of mixed emotions.

We have also been ordered this evening to stop socialising outside our homes for any reason. But son and I each live alone. For the moment we agreed that we'll still eat dinner together every few nights. We already work in the same place so I can't see that it adds anything to each others' exposure.

Good: New board game arrived, Santorini, which is so great that we played four games in a row today, straight after unpacking it. I am going to write a review. Well worth the £16 purchase price.

Meh: Since shelves still get stripped bare, almost nothing actually goes out of date at work, meaning there's almost no free food on offer. I did manage to get some packaged apple slices, some lettuce and a few smoothees (which go in the weird soda water).

Corona #5, Life Twists

Humans are an adaptable species but you wouldn't know it. You would think that someone had ripped up the rule book, with the way people are acting. Item restrictions are now in place on every product line, to stop individual lunatics emptying the shelves on their own. Today's "comment of the day" was a woman who moaned that she has a family of five so what's she supposed to do if she can't buy five items all the same to give everyone the same dinner? The best reply was basically, shut it love, we're in a global crisis right now. I mean, this is where we are at, a parent seriously thinks that it's more important that she buys five matching instant meals than to bloody well explain to her kids that the supermarket has a limit and that one of them might need to eat instant lasagne instead of instant spag bol.

Hotel job has switched to cleaning everything with bleach. I spend most of my time trying not to get it all over myself and not breathe it in. Amazingly, people are still holidaying. I don't know whether to be glad or horrified.

Pubs, clubs and restaurants have now been ordered to close, and not before time. The number of businesses (and patrons) who insisted on partying on as normal was just disgusting. I get that venues have bills to pay but apparently that matters more than the escalating deaths. And the patrons have no excuse, Auntie Jo will survive without her birthday meal for 20 people which you tried to rebook during the week after your original restaurant closed. And you'll just have to cope without going dancing every Friday night or buying your weekend latte. Get a takeaway or better yet just stay the hell home.

It's getting real, hospitals are now turning Coronavirus sufferers away, and still there are people who are refusing to get the memo. Maybe they'll take it seriously when they see the army deployed to control the supermarket queues (watch this space). Or maybe once people they know have lost a loved one.

I bought more staples today because son has struggled to buy any decent food and is sick of meal deals and tins with rice. I ended up buying more tins and rice... and hated myself for it. But at least we did share a "proper" cooked meal of mince on a nuked spud with an expired taco spice sachet plus cheese and sour cream. Also chocolate eclairs. And also a can of that weird soda water that was free.

Also I bought two lots of pasta sauce that worked out as 5p each after cashback, so that's something.

Mood: too much food in my house now.

Stepping Up A Gear - Coronavirus #4

Board gaming group is cancelled. Most of the group seems fairly young, but I've no idea whether some of them live with elderly or vulnerable people, and they all seemed reluctant to take the risk. Board gaming has a lot of handling of things. It makes me think about the fact that I am handling other peoples' money and groceries all day at work...

Other groups are setting up online gaming sessions with video sharing of the game board, and I am hoping someone will volunteer to do this. I'd do it myself if I had a proper table to do it and more than one game. The game I do have unfortunately relies on cards staying secret to the players, so it won't work for streaming anyway.

Son and I will get together and play our card game. I think I'll order a few more two-player games for us to play, since I can't see the group reconnecting in the near future.

Work is eerie. They've now closed the schools. It's all escalating faster than I expected. We sell out of the most random items now, for example I just do not understand how or why people are bulk-buying eggs, a perishable product that can't be frozen in any practical way. Or fresh fruit. It's quite silly, we still get deliveries, and the supermarkets will still be open next week...

By the time this publishes I am sure that some new strange thing will have happened.

Corona #3: An Exercise in Futility

So this week my son had a job interview and as I waited to drive him home, I thought I would pop into the nearby Big Supermarket™ to get some long life milk and a few other "large packet" items that I can't get at my own (small) store.

Big mistake. Why did I even bother? The whole store was in varying states of "stripped", for example the fruit aisle with absolutely nothing that wasn't exotic or pre-packaged. I found one lonely bag of pears in the wrong place, and put them into my trolley. There was no UHT milk so I now have a couple of coconut and almond ones for my cupboard. I couldn't get the normal tuna so I have two large tins. The large coffee tins weren't there. At this point I gave up on actual items I wanted - the irritating thing is that these were all things that I normally have at home but since I moved house I've used them up. And now they've been stripped out by stockpilers, grrrr.

I then went about finding things on my cashback apps and was annoyed to find many of those out of stock too. But I now have vegan hamburger patties and mince to try at a bargain price, and 48 cans of sparkling flavoured water.

As I handed him a 4-pack, my son asked me what to do if it's yuck. I told him he's welcome to throw it out, since it works out free. I wouldn't describe the flavour as quite "yuck". I would describe it as "Soda water with a hint of fruit flavour and overall a taste that I'll drink but which I would not choose to buy at its regular price". Which is not bad for free.

I have some cheese and some frozen hamburger buns for the patties, and I got several jars of free pasta sauce during the week so I can use it for the vegan mince. There's still some pasta in my cupboard, fortunately. The vegan products worked out to cost only 75p each so if they taste ok that makes them an absolute bargain. And if they don't, well they were still worth trying at that price.

Bad: bought son and I takeaway lunch. £9.00.
Mood: two weeks' worth of supplies here.

Coronavirus #2

It's starting to become somewhat of a bother. (Isn't that just a very British saying? For the uninitiated, that means it's making me furious.)

My son was due to sit a university entrance exam in Finland in just over two weeks, but their universities are all closed and the government has put a stop to gatherings of more than 10 people, so the exam isn't even likely to go ahead. Their government has today recommended all citizens return before they close the borders - as a citizen he would still be allowed back in after the close, but flights are winding down, so he couldn't get back here, plus he might then be quarantined and miss the exam he is returning for in the first place. It leaves us wondering what to do. Flights are very cheap but the reason is they're half empty, germy, and uninsurable.

It is the apocalypse and you can only
choose one item of value.
Do you choose loo roll?

People have regressed back into apes and I've heard stories of arguments and violence in the bigger supermarkets in our area. Pasta and paracetamol are out of stock, and people fight in the aisles. This is the evolution of our species, where people punch one another over toilet paper.

We are always short-staffed in the supermarket and none of us even has the virus. How will it be once we actually start getting ill? On the other hand the hotel job is slow as people avoid travelling. We sit and wait to see what our government will do next and whether we begin to host people who choose to self-isolate - or as the newspapers have suggested, we might be comandeered as a surrogate hospital.

A customer in his 70s bucked the trend this week. While most of them are saying it's just a flu, or moaning about the idea of being stuck in their homes for four months (the latest announcement of wisdom from our prime minister), this gentleman actually seems to read more than the Daily Mail. He said to me, "This is the worst I have ever seen. This will be worse than the war." While I am not sure it will be quite as lifestyle-harsh, I completely understood his sentiment. This isn't just the next sniffle we get every year. This is going to take out a quarter of our over-80s. I think a lot of young people need to take stock and consider what that means for nearly every family in the world. It's serious and it won't be over next week. And you'd think that rather than emptying the shelves of pasta they could start with changing their social habits as we have been asked...

Drink Corona Beer

No virus included.
Drink Corona.

Coronavirus hype is absolutely everywhere. It's even ruining Corona beer's business because aparently there are morons who think you catch the illness from beer. People are such idiots.

The hype in general has been building gradually over the last couple of weeks - we sold out of toilet roll temporarily in early March for a week, although people have mostly stopped panic buying. For now. Anyway, it's weirdly becoming less theoretical and more real. I am fairly philosophical in that I am very likely to get it eventually, so I haven't really worried too much before now, but even so I am using hand gel after "some" customers. I know it exposes my prejudices but some of them are absolutely filthy and clearly have something not right, based on the state of their hands 😟 And some are clearly ill, and don't seem to see any issue with coughing into their hands then handing cash to me 😟 Then you get the customers who hand me soap and start asking if it's soap, as if they don't quite know what soap is... did we need a pandemic for people to learn about washing hands?

If I didn't have to earn the money, I'd only be visiting a supermarket once a week. Sadly most customers do not seem to care about limiting their visits.

I do have two weeks' worth of most of the things I need, but I'm going to cave in and buy some long life milk.

The card game arrived and son & I played a round to make sure we remembered all the rules. Only it seems like the rules have changed. We quickly realised that a couple of the changes make the game virtually unplayable with two people - so we have adopted a blend of old & new rules as our house rules and the second game went smoothly. We'll take it with us to board game night this week :)

Good: two brand new cash-for-receipts programmes and two new cashback programs for groceries, which include prize draws. Check them out if you're in the UK. I got cashback on one item today already and that makes it free. Not a bad price!

Free: more cake, pasta sauce, fruit, bread, crisps (£2.98)

Loser For The Night

Me, at board game night, for one game anyway! I tied for the second game.

The first was Stone Age, a meeples and resources game where you trade to feed your people and build structures. I liked it a fair bit and could happily play it again. Second was Decrypto which is quite simple but really clever and a lot of fun. Essentially your team has four words, and a team member has to come up with words related to these words, and the team has to guess which word they were thinking of. Your opposition has to figure out what your original words were based on the clues. This is the second time we've played Decrypto and it's so entertaining that I suspect it'll be back out every few weeks :)

Pictorial representation of what we ate
for dinner on Wednesday night
(not to scale)

My house is filled with a stupid amount of cake. Not complaining, mind you.

I decided to keep the finance arrangement in place. This means the loan repayments start in a few weeks, but it also means I can move immediately if a suitable property comes up.

Good: having son over for dinner every few days means that I'm being more creative and making more interesting dinners. And I am learning how to make things in the oven that I've never made in an oven before. Learning++.

Free food: Beef mince, pasta sauce, cakes, worth £13.91

Yellow Stickers: on hamburger patties, milk and bread, down £1.67
In: First payment from Shoppix for snapping receipts, £5.00

Enforced Meal Planning

This is me, of late. It's not entirely a bad thing. I have quite the #firstworldproblem in that I sometimes struggle to either store or use up all my food. So of necessity I need to keep evaluating what needs using up first before it ends up in the bin. Even while feeding son 3-4 nights a week, I'm still on a knife edge of wasting food... case in point, I brought home five punnets of cherry tomatoes a few days ago and tonight I had to sort through them to discard the ones already too soft to eat. I mean, I love cherry tomatoes but a girl has her limits!

We did share a yummy dinner during the week, of sausages, onion gravy, potatoes, baby corn, green beans and baby carrots, plus mango for dessert, which is not bad when you consider that every single item was free. (I paid for a bottle of Coke. I think such extravagance is allowed when your meal is free.)

More and more properties are appearing online (yay!) but none are in my price range (boo). I only have a few days left to decide on the finance and whether to go ahead - if I don't, it will be months before I'll qualify again, but obviously I'd rather not be stuck with repayments for a loan that I'm not using. Decisions, decisions.

Mood: will it ever stop raining?

Spent: £13 on Bohnanza, which is a simple but addictive little card game that we thought the board game group might like. It should arrive in a week or two.

I've Done All The Dumb Things

Like Paul Kelly would say. Brilliant song. But I digress. I am now busy being irritated with property agents who don't bother to return my emails. Surprise surprise, no wonder people think they're shady.

Leela. Looking clever.

The first dumb thing was me incurring several hard searches because I was impatient to see whether I could secure finance. I got a yes, but the flat in question is now clearly unsuitable for me. Oh well, no real harm done long-term.

I didn't enter quite as many comps in February as I could have, being so busy with trying to work overtime. I am going backards at the moment and not earning enough to cover my outgoings, which is a bit depressing when working two jobs. Ironically, if I owned rather than rented, my monthly bills would be lower. It's very expensive to be poor.

The second dumb thing was being late for work because I somehow got my starting time mixed up. Fortunately nobody was upset and I've picked up some more extra shifts for later in the week.

Sadly, the MySupermarket website seems to have gone kaput, which was my go-to when finding out what things cost. Boooo. So, based on the supermarket site itself I've been given free food in the past week worth £45.63. And that's on the prices I'd have paid for the cheaper brands and kinds of those foods. The retail price is over £80. Needless to say, son and I stuffed ourselves this evening.

In: my first payment from HuYu (£5.00 voucher for Tesco).

February £4 Challenge - Round Up

So the month has ended and how did I do?

£48.01 Free food and yellow sticker savings
£47.07 Prolific Academic
£2.56 Testable Minds
£13.48 Bank Interest
£3.03 TopCashBack

Total £117.75, or £4.06 per day. Not bad considering I was aiming for £4 per day. I think I've still probably missed some of the free food, too.

No competition wins - the only ones I enter now are the postcard ones and a handful of radio prizes that you can enter online.

I did a fair bit of extra work for both jobs this month and earned £304.98 before tax too. I relented in early February and thought I should include it when it became apparent I'd get quite a decent amount of work. But I still only average 30-35h per week overall, so I think I'll just note it and keep it aside from my challenge earnings.

Year to date: £286.29/2020 (not looking likely on current earnings!)

Next month I will stick to £4 per day. Wish me luck.