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In store: you need to have someone stock the shelves, someone walk through the store and pick groceries, and someone handle the payment in person. Chance of inf
by klipt 7y ago
In store: you need to have someone stock the shelves, someone walk through the store and pick groceries, and someone handle the payment in person. Chance of infection: depends how long since someone coughed in the store.
Online: you need someone to stock the orders and wait for people to drive up for curbside pickup. Chance of infection: low.
Surely the second option is both safer and more efficient?
- 6510 7y agoIf you work in a supermarket you know exactly where each product is. Standing in line is also a huge waste of time.
- Swizec 7y agoA lot of online options send a person who goes into the store and walks around to get all your stuff. Instacart for example.
- PeterisP 7y agoAh, that's quite inefficient (and probably costly) because it's a third party without integration in the logistics chain. I've tried food deliveries provided by two local major grocery chains. As far as I understand, one of them has the stock-shelving people pack the deliveries (so, before hitting the shelf), and the other seems to pack pack the direct deliveries in the same logistics centres from which they supply their smaller shops, so that stuff never even gets delivered to a store; and the limited overhead means that they offer free delivery for non-small purchases.
- squeaky-clean 7y agoProbably different regions but none of my grocery stores do online like that. They have someone walk the aisles and shop like a regular shopper, and check-out at the cash register like a regular shopper. They will even give you their receipt to verify the order. You're just offloading the risk of infection to someone being paid to grab groceries.
- voodootrucker 7y agoThink of the systemic effects. If everyone ordered online, fewer shoppers would go to the stores, changing the topology of infection from a mesh to a star. Spokes would likely develop immunity, and would be less surface area to test, if we had any tests /s edit: not star, hub and spoke, sorry
- e12e 7y agoPartially I'm guessing this is an artifact of just-in-time delivery - almost no storage outside of shelves (there's no central storage location that could fulfill orders). Still, if the stores handle this themselves - it's much more feasible to take extra precautions - from using a locker room to change into a uniform (not bringing outdoor/home clothes into the store) - to using disposable gloves etc. Ideally, stores would offer only pickup and delivery - and not allow in-store shopping at all. Would probably make sense to increase staff as needed, as any additional staff needs would scale with increase in revenue.