Supporting the Economy

[mommyatty]

I’m lucky in that I still have a job and we haven’t had pay cuts. (Yet.) Looking forward, I know we can pretty much kiss bonuses next year goodbye, which sucks since more than half my income is in the form of bonus. But at least for now, all is well. So I’m trying to figure out what impact we as a family can have on others, other than for example donating money to shelters and food banks, which we are also doing.

But now I’m conflicted. Because I was buying stuff and ordering from restaurants, thinking I was helping people keep their jobs, but now I’m wondering if maybe I’m just making people work and put themselves at risk. For example, I was getting fabric for curbside delivery at Joann, thinking I was helping the workers at Joann keep their jobs. But is that really ethical? (Our local quilt shops are closed, so shopping local wasn’t an option.) Same with Amazon purchases. Or stuff from Target. Is it better to go in the store myself or have them deliver it to the car or deliver it to my house? I just don’t know anymore.

Thoughts?

[waverly]

I don’t know the answer either. I am still buying things that are not strictly 100% essential. It gives me pause when I hear of outbreaks at various Amazon warehouses and food facilities. But like you said I’m also supporting the economy and many of the items are listed as essential under our governors order.

I don’t know how it all works at restaurants in terms of cooks being too close together, but hopefully for those doing curbside they have a big enough restaurant to socially distance themselves.

With vendors that are not Amazon that we speak to directly we are able to tell them we don’t need this item or service until they feel it is safe to do so. I am partially relying on the businesses’s judgement in regards to safety for their workers, but I can’t know how every organization is handling things. In terms of large companies where I am just buying an item and can’t relay that mentality to get it to me when it’s safe to do so. Many websites do say delays in shipping for safety which I’m fine with.

When I see a grocery store or restaurant that is crowded we don’t go back to them and we choose another place but yeah household goods are hard.

[twinmomma]

I'm also feeling conflicted about this.

One thing I'm making a concerted effort to do is buy food or gift cards from local businesses that I want to support. It's not so much to "support the economy" as it is "throw cash at people who I know are broke and I don't want them to close." Now that I have insight into Beau's world, I realize that the pick up orders are the only thing keeping a lot of places barely afloat right now, so I'm ok with restaurant take out. I think most local places are keeping staff very small and trying to social distance in the kitchens. His sister is going to run an online cooking class from her restaurant and I'm getting a group together to do that too. I'm trying to find those creative ways that businesses are changing their model to bring in cash, rather than go to big box stores and spend money on junk from Target's clearance end caps like I normally would.

I've ordered some stuff from Amazon and some stuff from Target curbside pick up, but it's all food/household supplies that I needed anyway and normally would have run out to grab. But I don't want to go to a physical store right now. I just ordered a new swing set from Target and bought the supplies I needed to paint my living room from Home Depot. But it's all been online orders and curbside pick up. I am really, really avoiding physical stores right now. I think I've been in a store twice in 6 weeks.

[rere]

Its all very confusing. People are yelling for everyone to stay home, but there are advertisements from all these stores asking you to come in. I know they are probably desperate, so it's hard to know what to do. I saw all these car ad this morning, and I was thinking, who is buying a car right now. But they had all of these perks to do so, so trying to grab the customers they can.

[mustardseed2007]

This is just me ok, and I'm biased so I'm trying to be very careful because I KNOW I'm biased.

I will shop take out or curbside orders at a book store or something like that. It's minimum contact and you aren't hanging out inside the building with the staff, exposing them to your germs.

Ideally a restaurant doesn't have you go inside the place - they bring it to your car and put the food in your passenger seat and don't have you sign a credit card voucher for example. Or a bookstore that has you order and pay online and brings your books out to your car.

I feel more guilty about ordering from a place with a warehouse distribution center like Amazon than I feel guilty about ordering from those restaurants. Because in an amazon environment they are necessarily pretty close to one another. I mean, I'm not speaking with real knowledge actually. I am sure they are trying too; it's just a lot more people in one building.

[Deleted]

I’m apparently in the minority in that I’m shopping online and not even feeling remotely guilty about it. We order take out from some small restaurants near us occasionally and also don’t feel guilty about that. I just don’t feel guilty about any of it. The thing is I work for a can manufacturer, our plants are still open and running, but you probably don’t feel guilty about buying canned goods and, in fact, have probably bought more of those recently (because sales of canned foods and aerosol cleaners like Lysol are up). People don’t feel guilty or badly about the employees working in those types of plants. So why the disconnect?

[mustardseed2007]

Apr 21, 2020 10:19:18 GMT -5 @mrsgreeko said:

I’m apparently in the minority in that I’m shopping online and not even feeling remotely guilty about it. We order take out from some small restaurants near us occasionally and also don’t feel guilty about that. I just don’t feel guilty about any of it. The thing is I work for a can manufacturer, our plants are still open and running, but you probably don’t feel guilty about buying canned goods and, in fact, have probably bought more of those recently (because sales of canned foods and aerosol cleaners like Lysol are up). People don’t feel guilty or badly about the employees working in those types of plants. So why the disconnect?

this is very true. Everything we use comes from some place. 

[waverly]

I do feel guilty for food workers. There have been reports of outbreaks at meat factories around here, and then I feel guilty about eating meat or buying meat and reports of deaths of grocery store workers. The reality though is that people have to eat.

Also, I think there is a difference in the feelings of an individual and society as a whole. I think there are some in society who are still treating grocery workers like trash. I don't agree with that and have never agreed with it, but there are jerks who hoard and if they can't hoard will take it out on people. My friend got covered in bleach because someone got mad they couldn't buy more bleach and opened the cap and left it there. I mean how much bleach do you need? I'm not out there judging what people have in their carts because I am not out there or trying to judge. But being a jerk because you are limited to 5 lysol cans is like WTH.

[sdlaura]

My sister and BIL own 3 small food service businesses (a Jimmy Johns franchise and two Italian Ice franchises), and a girlfriend of mine owns a neighborhood pizza place, and all of them want people to still buy from them. Their employees want to work and they want to stay open. So I think it's pretty safe to say that if a small food service business is still open, it's a good thing to spend your money there.

[covergirl82]

We are ordering take-out 3-4 meals (sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner) a week to support local restaurants. I've bought a few things online from local boutiques/small businesses to help them maintain sales. DH and I are still earning our full pay, so we feel it is the right thing to do to support local businesses. I've bought some stuff online, but my focus is to buy locally as much as possible.

[mommyatty]

@mrsgreeko- I work for a transportation company, so for a long time I had no guilt because we are moving every single product anyone is buying and OMG I want people buying stuff so we have stuff to move so all my people have jobs. Most of me still feels that way. And we are moving stuff no one ever thinks about, like the chlorine that makes your drinking water potable and the items that make the fabric that masks are made of and, yeah, the food and agricultural products that we eat.

Part of why I’m feeling bad is we have had a couple of experiences where CLEARLY we were given the message the workers resent being there. We ordered from a local barbecue place, and my daughter’s lemonade had a crumpled up coin wrapper in the bottom. Clearly wasn’t accidental. It made me wonder if the same person spit in the food, and we didn’t discover the wrapper until we were cleaning up after dinner. More than half the time our restaurant orders are wildly off. And sometimes when we order stuff, every single item comes separately and over the span of weeks. So now I’m left wondering if not everyone values their essential job like I do. But my essential job can be done from home, unlike a significant portion of my company’s workers. (Who average almost 6 figures for blue collar work, so again we are a different animal. They are mostly really happy to be there, and our absenteeism is at record lows.)

[186momx]

mommyatty, I know most of my business clients that are still working are very happy to be working. My two independent truck drivers have more work than they can handle the one operates flat beds and haul cardboard, soil, wood while the other hauls logs. I have a couple restaurants that are trying to make it. My donuts shops are doing okay. My mom and pop sit down place is staying open and trying to do take out and is making maybe $40-100 a day the owner is working alone and I really worry about him because he is in his 80s. I know the restaurant is what is giving him something to live for and he is a guy who needs to stay busy but I still worry. I have couple small retail shops which are closed and they both wish they could still operate as their shops normally have a slow traffic flow anyways.

We've ordered take out from our small mom/pop Mexican place a few times. I'm planning on buying my flowers from the farm who has amazing greenhouses but are $$$ instead of the big box stores. The farm opened last week and are trying to do curbside pick up for those who don't want to come and have placed tons of limits on the farm stand and greenhouses. This is the normal farm we frequent during the summer/fall anyways but I will start going earlier for flowers and garden starts.

[shakinros]

I’m doing restaurant takeout from our usual places. Feeling a bit guilty about all the other mom & pop shops but I’m trying to tell myself to focus on the ones I frequented before.

I’m not buying from amazon any more. When I have something I want or need to buy, I’m trying to get it from a local store or even on the company’s website instead. (Like I bought our Easter baking supplies from Wilton.com) I don’t know if that’s better or not for the people who have to work.