More and more local stores are asking customers to queue outside to limit the numbers of customers inside. Does it make things better or worse?

The United States is merely a few weeks into any serious response to COVID-19 and everyone, both public and private sector, is trying to come to grips with it. Unfortunately some institutions have been more helpful than others at maintaining order and providing good advice to Americans for their own safety.

Grocery Stores Respond, Some Better Than Others

Many grocery stores are instituting policies to respond to crisis. Here are a few:

• Institute Senior Citizen Hours. Many seniors are terrified  because they have a greater vulnerability to the virus and the death rate seems to be hitting those over the age of 70 particularly hard
• Limits on Purchasing. How many rolls of toilet paper and hand sanitizer seem to be all that is being controlled so far
• Outdoor Queuing of Customers. Limiting the number of people that can enter the store at one time

If you are a senior citizen, check the website of the store you want to visit to see when they have senior hours. Fred Meyer, Whole Foods and Safeway seem to be posting senior hours in Beaverton and Washington County.

Some Concerns About Queuing

Queuing seems to be the right idea. Limit the number of people inside the store and you limit the congestion of people that should be staying six feet apart from each other.

This isn't enough.

Sidewalks and parking lots are not set up to handle long queues, and unless visitors are conforming to social distancing, the queues end up creating more opportunities for people to contaminate each other. If stores are going to require these queues then there needs to be employees managing the queues and providing the 6' warnings.

Store employees also have to show more caution. For example, while waiting at Trader Joe's in Beaverton on March 20, there was an employee that hung around and gossiped with the cashier. This employee was not doing any work and was (based on the conversation) off work. All they did was create another unavoidable element within 6 feet of the cashier and the customer.

Stores need to institute limits on children in stores. This is a very complex issue because small children cannot be left alone at home. On the other hand, many parents (including two or more adults) continue to bring children into stores, allowing them to run around. At several stores including Fred Meyer and Walmart, I have seen obviously sick children running around stores. There is no easy solution to this problem.

Would you like to share ideas on how to make our stores visits safer? Feel free to discuss on Twitter, Nextdoor or Facebook.