Hoarding in a crisis |
Edition 34 2020
Words Anna Day Artwork Callum Muzyka
M
y fingers twitch towards it in the supermarket aisle. I make the snap-decision. The plastic wrapped bundle makes a satisfying thooft as it lands in my trolley. As I continue down the aisle, my chest untightens a bit. A tension I didn’t realise I was carrying around temporarily relaxes. All thanks to an extra set of toilet paper that realistically I won’t need until another two weeks. It’s not like I’m one of them, I tell myself as a go through the self serve. I’m not panic buying really, I mentally argue with myself as I bag my shopping. I just want the peace of mind that I’ll be able to wipe my ass for the short-term foreseeable future. “Is that too much to ask?” I wail into the skies in the Coles car park. Packets of pasta split and cans of beans roll under parked cars as I sink onto the asphalt. The world might actually be ending. What you just witnessed, dear reader, was a dramatised retelling of my experience during a shopping outing in early March 2020. While the supermarket shelves are looking comparatively more lush these days, it was only a couple of months ago that they were running on empty. Even though the coronavirus is showing signs of slowing down, the idea of our empty supermarket shelves still leaves me wondering: how did we, and in particular, I, get there? Well, it turns out it has everything to do with our psychology. In an article written in late March for The Conversation, psychologist Chris Stiff theorised that in the corona crisis everyone essentially falls into two very broad categories: greedy people or fearful people. Greedy people are the ones who were out in the beginning with trolleys full of toilet paper and pasta,
