Power To The People

A massive winter storm has knocked down power for 90% of the town for several days. Fast food places have run out of food, stores don’t have the power to even open, and most people don’t have enough supplies to last as the whole area was unprepared.

My store, however, has some generators, which makes us the only major retailer that has remained open. We have enough power to operate some of the lights and the registers, but we have no heat and there’s nothing powering the fridges and freezers, meaning that not only did we lose all frozen and refrigerated food, but an entire truckload of new food, as well. Despite this, most people are thankful that we are open at all and come to either just kill time as there’s not much else to do or grab items that can be cooked on a fireplace or things like bread and peanut butter. I am working in the beauty section when a woman storms up to me.

Customer: “Excuse me, but this is completely unacceptable!”

Me: “What can I help you with?”

Customer: “You have literally no food in your coolers. At all! How am I supposed to grocery shop for my family?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but with the storm, we don’t have enough power to operate the coolers, so the food went bad and we threw it out. We have food items on the shelves, though, that can hold you over until the power comes back on.”

Customer: “I actually have power and can store stuff in my fridge.”

Me: “That’s good to hear, as most people still have nothing, but like I said, we threw out all of our food because it went bad. [Well-Known Town] is about thirty minutes away, though, and they have power. You could probably do your grocery shopping there for now. And even then, I would be careful. Some people that had power yesterday lost it today, so you don’t know if you could lose it, too, and then buying all those groceries could be a waste.”

Customer: “Power outages only affect poor people, though. I’m better than that!”

She ended up leaving. She was by far the most childish person we had during that whole situation. Most of the other customers were just upset that we had run out of lanterns and flashlights.