What's a shopper to do???

Since things shut down, I've been doing a bit of socially distanced shopping.

I did a frenzied wave of facemask shopping, mostly on Etsy, so now I have enough facemasks to vary things up every day. Turns out I have ears that are like my feet: flat and skinny. So I struggle to keep some of the facemasks in place. This has helped slump-shouldered little old me maintain better posture, but it's a drag. The masks that fit the best over my pariticularly peculiar ears are from an Etsy vendor named Sewby. I ordered gray, but they send you what colort they have, and I got black. So when I put the masks on, especially in conjunction with sunglasses, I look a bit like Zorro.

I've also done some pandemic-related shopping for nitrile gloves. And some quasi pandemic-related shopping for paper hand towels for the bathrooms. I use these in the best of times, but these days, what with having to wash my hands so frequently, I'm going through quite a few of them. 

My other online shopping has been a bit more discretionary

Someone put out a call to order stamps from the Post Office to keep them from going belly up, so I did that.

I ordered a book - Don Winslow's Broken - from the Trident Bookstore Cafe, my local indie. They don't have curbside pickup for books, so I had to have it shipped. It cost more than if I'd ordered it through Amazon Prime, but I really want to keep Trident in business. So I'll be ordering from them again.

I have also ordered a book from Amazon. In a conversation the other day, it turns out my friend Gwen has never read one of my childhood favorite's, Adopted Jane. I was going to send her my copy, but I figured by the time I took it to the PO, it wouldn't cost that more to order a used copy from Amazon. So there I went.

My other non-essential purchases have included my spring order of undies from Jockey, a transaction usually conducted in person at Macy's or Lord & Taylor's. A few gifts for folks, as I'm figuring it's good for mental health to get the odd surprise in the mail on occasion. And two pairs of sneakers, which are really more essential than non-essential, given that I walk 5+ miles a day and trudge through more than a few pairs of sneakers in the course of a year. And a pandemic year is no exception.

There are a couple of things from LL Bean I'm looking at, but I want to do my winter-summer clothing swap first and figure out how many of last year's tee-shirts need to hit the rag bag and be replaced. It's been too crummy to do my closet switch quite yet. I always have a couple of transitional shirts and sweaters set aside for any out-of-season days, but we haven't had any string of spring to speak of. Usually in April we have one or two stretches when it's consistently in the 60's and 70's. Not this year. Lots of overcast, lots of cool, nothing that's made me want to pull out my sandals and capri pants.

Anyway, I've been feeling pretty good about my online shopping. Not overdoing things, but thinking I've been doing my bit to help keep the wheels on the bus of the consumer economy turning, even if they are leaking air. I've kept the warehouse workers and packers working and packing, and the delivery folks delivering. How can this be wrong?

Turns out that some of these workers are none-to-happy with the working conditions they're putting up with and would prefer to be sheltering in place with nothing to do but watch Netflix and repeat-washing their hands. 

Workers at Neiman Marcus (bankruptcy filing due any day now) are a case in point:

Dozens of workers arrive at 8 each morning, wearing masks and gloves and under strict orders to remain six feet apart. The lights are dim and the mood somber.

The Neiman Marcus employees had been summoned back to work at a shuttered store in a shuttered mall in Pennsylvania, two weeks after the coronavirus pandemic forced the luxury retailer to close all 43 of its U.S. locations temporarily. Their task: to fill hundreds of online orders for deeply discounted Moncler jackets, Dior sunglasses, Ugg boots and the like. (Source: Washington Post)

Moncler jackets and Uggs?

Talk about non-essential, although I guess you could wrap a Moncler jacket around your head and double use it as a facemask, as long as you cover your nostrils and chin with it.

While the retailers see all this as a way to hang on to some business by their fingernails, some workers aren't especially happy-dappy about things, as:

...it is causing workers to fulfill orders few need, with many resentful of the situation even if they need the paycheck.

In the case of Neiman, I don't believer there has ever been any item sold there that is actually essential. And if I were making a wage not far north of minimum, I'm pretty sure I'd be a tad bit resentful if my job was packing up a thousand-dollar puffer coat, however deeply discounted. (And if I'd ordered a thousand-dollar puffer coat, I think I'd be checking it for spit marks...)

 “It [has] not been easy emotionally or mentally,” said a Neiman Marcus employee at King of Prussia Mall near Philadelphia who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “Big businesses are willing to sacrifice low-level employees for their gain.”

True dat, but OTOH retailers are so cash-strapped, if they can't make any online sales, we may not have these retail businesses to kick around for much longer. 

“The tension for retailers is between staying open right now versus not, which becomes a bigger question of salvaging sales, staying in business and surviving long term,” said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst for Forrester Research. “There is this huge gray area: Do office supplies count as essential? Does apparel? The higher end you go, the grayer it becomes.”

Well, I don't go very high end, that's for sure. No Moncler jackets. No tiny cosmetics fridges from Sephora. (Who even knew there was such a thing.) No custom slingshots.

Custom slingshots, you migh ask?

“I call it luxury panic-buying,” said Tabitha Smutz, who works for a company that sells custom slingshots in Asheville, N.C. “You can tell that a lot of customers are just bored and browsing online, going, ‘Oh, that’s something fun I can do in my backyard.’ It’s been busier than the busiest Black Friday we’ve ever had.”

Panic-buying, I understand. Why else would I have ordered facemasks from 6 different places? But I guess I draw the line at luxury panic-buying, although I must say that a custom slingshot would cover not just luxury, but the end of the doomsday prepper spectrum that is all armed up in anticipation of the end of the world and hordes attacking their redoubts looking for Spam and Cheetos. Plus, I believe a slingshot can be used for hunting small game like pigeons and squirrels. I say this with confidence although the truth is, the only slingshots I've ever seen were on The Little Rascals or in Dennis the Menace. Peashooters I saw quite a bit of growing up. And believe me, it's plenty horrifying to get hit in the back of the neck with a spitball launched from the peashooter of some oogey 10-year-old boy. But slingshots were not something I ever saw in person.

The worker problems associated with the boom in online are  mostly not about Neiman-Marcus and custom slingshots, of course. It's mostly, of course, about outfits like Amazon.

The increased workload has led to discord among warehouse and delivery workers. Employees at Amazon have called on the retail giant to stop filing nonessential orders and loosen worker quotas during the pandemic.

Whether we're talking about jobs or goods, nonessential vs. essential has become quite a thing.

In France, Amazon can only fulfill orders for food, pet food, health supplies, and electronics, leaving me to ask why electronics are essential but books aren't. I suppose you need a lamp to read a book, but still. The lines drawn can be quite arbitrary.

In the meantime, I'll continue to do my small scale online shopping. 

Fingers crossed that companies do right by their employees in terms of accommodating their needs for a safe workplace. Not to mention upping their pay. We'll see.

Anyway, there's a pandemic on, and when it's over I still want to be able to go shopping somewhere, anywhere, whether it's online or in a brick and mortar store. Until then, what is a shopper to do?