OUR VIEW: Only buy what you need

Published 11:30 am Tuesday, January 18, 2022

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It’s hard to gauge it when you throw in the curveball of snow with the ongoing pandemic, but there sure were quite a few grocery store shelves empty over the weekend.

We’re guessing the threat of snow — a rarity in Georgia — probably prompted many to get to the store for milk and bread. We’re also aware the pandemic continues to cause supply chain issues for stores at times, so the mixture of the two only complicated life for shoppers over the weekend.

Many of the shortages are due to labor issues and the cost of shipping, and it’s making some of the shelves at our stores look empty.

With that in mind, we’re going to flashback to the early days of the pandemic, and remind you of the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. Somehow, we all survived. But back then, we wrote in this space, asking shoppers to only take what they needed.

We’re going to ask you to do the same now. If you see five of an item on the shelf you haven’t seen lately, your first thought is probably to buy several.

But instead, we ask that you please only buy what you need. Leave a few for the next person.

Just like drive thru “pass it ons” where the person at the window pays for the person behind them, leaving a few items on the shelf at the grocery store can really help someone out.

Imagine if we all did that — only taking what we need.

Then, there’d be plenty left for everyone else to get what they need too.