10
votes
Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of May 18
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
My husband and I have been doing grocery delivery since this started -- once every two weeks. We put in the instructions for the driver to ring the doorbell after they're done so we know our food's out there and our perishables won't go bad sitting out in the sun for a while.
Today, we were expecting a delivery and assumed it hadn't come because the doorbell had never rung. I was surprised when I opened my door for something else and saw our groceries already there. Thankfully, the refrigerated and frozen items were still kind of cold, but we were a little miffed that we didn't know it had arrived and had clearly been sitting out for some time.
There was also a lot of stuff missing from the order. Usually we don't get some of the items we requested due to shortages, but this time we got maybe a third of what we actually ordered.
The lack of notification plus missing items made us wonder if something was amiss. Did the delivery person mess up? Did the people selecting items for our order mess up? Or, was there potentially a more sinister explanation, like the driver skimming items off of orders or someone from the neighborhood taking things from our porch while they sat there unattended? We normally get an invoice online that we can check our items against, but even that hadn't come yet, so we were in the dark as to what had gone on in this very unusual circumstance.
Just to be safe and make sure we weren't going to be charged for the ~$150 of groceries we didn't get, my husband called the delivery company's customer service. He talked with someone who went over our invoice line by line on the phone and confirmed that all of our missing items were in fact out of stock, so there was no mistake with the order. My husband also asked about the driver not ringing the doorbell and the representative said that many drivers have stopped notifying customers of deliveries since many of them have faced abuse in person when they've delivered incomplete orders like ours, or when they've delivered orders late because they got backed up. This made our hearts sink.
My husband and I already tip our delivery drivers well (they are working during an ongoing emergency to provide us with necessary sustenance -- they damn well deserve it!), but I think we're going to increase the amount we give next time. I also might post a sign or something letting them know we appreciate their efforts. Nobody deserves to be abused, least of all those working hard and facing risk in these very difficult times.
In the before-coronavirus times, my wife and I went to a breakfast restaurant near our house almost every week, and we've still been getting take-out from there pretty regularly. We know the staff fairly well since we're there so often, and when I go to pick up our food I'll usually stay and talk with them for a bit.
The last time I was there, they were telling me that they've had multiple people come in or call and get indignant and angry with them recently. Some people came in and tried to insist that they be seated at a table and served normally, when they're not open for that (and aren't even allowed to be). Others have called and been upset that they won't take a reservation for the upcoming weekend, because obviously they must be planning to reopen by then, even though there isn't even any set date from the city yet for when restaurants are allowed to reopen.
It's just completely bizarre—there seems to be a significant group of people that have gotten it into their heads that things like incomplete grocery deliveries and needing to get their breakfast as take-out are some kind of oppression that they need to protest. These are extremely minor inconveniences at worst, and like you said, we're lucky to have people still working to even keep providing these services. It's ridiculous that the people doing it have to put up with abuse from idiots as part of it too.
You've got a good dad if your wife is sad about missing his birthday :D
In my province, we've had just two cases since April 18th. Those two just recovered and it's been 14+ days without a new case (for the 2nd time).
Sounds like tomorrow things are going to progress to the next recovery phase with further relaxation of rules. Some businesses have already opened from the previous phase, some are still figuring it out.
The thing I'm most excited about is the "friends and family" bubble... we went from single-household bubbles, to dual-household bubbles with gatherings of up to 10 people allowed provided anyone outside of a household distances 6ft, and now the bubble is expanded to "anyone you would interact with normally". So on Friday I'll be allowed to go hug my mom for the first time since March. :)
Woman Who Blamed Trump after Giving Her Husband Fish-Tank Cleaner Now Under Investigation for Murder
[...]
In the WHO Director-General's remarks today, he said that the last 24 hours were the worst yet in terms of new cases being reported globally:
Another study published today shows no benefit to treatment with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, and likely detrimental effects including a lower chance of survival.
Here's a quick summary of the study on Axios, since it's pretty dense: Hydroxychloroquine linked to increased risk of death in COVID-19 patients