8 May 2020, Friday

I went to JI, Northern Blvd., to get food and see how they’re handling the lockdown. They had demarcated a rectangle in front of the cashier area where customers were supposed to order and retrieve their food, but apparently I had come too close to the edge of it and so the nervous manager motioned me to step back. When I ordered, however, he gestured indicating he couldn’t hear me. I inquired about the day’s specials, and they turned out to have been written on a small piece of paper adhered to the wall behind the counter, so this same manager ushered me beyond the barrier so I could walk to the counter. Even there, I couldn’t read it, so he read it aloud to me, asking me at least once if I could hear him when he was standing probably fewer than three feet from me. Once I had decided what I wanted, the risk of infection apparently resumed, and so I was gestured away back to the safe rectangle. Another customer came in behind me and, attempting to maintain a physical distance from others, quickly shifted a bit down the aisle to my right; it seemed a reasonable thing to do, but the nervous manager get annoyed he had moved to one place rather than another and this visibly and audibly annoyed the customer, who said “Just tell me what to do.”