Lauren Pineda
Someone should pay Walmart for accidentally recording the sociological history of America’s buying patterns behind the coronavirus pandemic. Hilariously, in recent weeks, this multi-billion dollar company that has served as an all-purpose department store has seen a pattern in their products that they’ve sold out on. People have been panic buying because of COVID-19 to stock up. And I’m sure Walmart was planning to have a supply shortages of their products during the first wave. Specifically, these products. All Walmart CEO’s must have gotten a real fright.
Videos by Rare
Now, tell me, what consumable products do you think you would buy to stock up on in the midst of a global crisis? I mean, my first thought is food. I would ask myself, “What would need to be bought to sustain daily lives during quarantine?” However, Americans have truly outdone themselves in defining how we react to public phenomenons. Panic buying has become both a comedic topic and a serious issue in our economy. But I think it’s what we buy that tops the cake.
According to CNN business, first went the disinfectants, hand sanitizers, soaps, and basically all cleaning products. Okay, that makes sense. It’s totally understandable to buy these in the midst of a pandemic. But the items that Americans were panic buying after, however, were a little more questionable.
Next, the supply chain store ran out of toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper. Suddenly, you had to be aware of your toilet paper stock, especially if you needed to go number two and were running low on crucial bath tissue. Anytime you walked into any convenience store, hoards of people would be walking out with surplus amounts of toilet paper as if a major storm just occurred. Why did COVID-19 make us do this? Who knows, but it was a continuous ripple effect that even distancing measures couldn’t control.
Thirdly, back in early March, I noticed my fellow peers were suddenly master bakers. Everyone was baking all kinds of bread as if to prepare for a famine or something. Which didn’t make sense since other foods were never really out of stock like the hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and paper towel products, but Walmart reported accordingly with the buying patterns. They ran out of baking yeast and spiral hams. These seem to be more reasonable consumable products to run out of. And who knew baking yeast sales would be at an all-time high.
But what came next for Walmart to run out of is the most ironic thing to run out of stock for in a crisis: hair clippers and hair dye. Everyone knows a few people who have gone through these crazy hair color’ phases of crises giving themselves haircuts, using some crazy hair color, and/or both. Last month, Americans, in general, decided that they were all going through crises that demanded hair cut changes. Walmart has officially run out of hair clippers and hair dye, and it couldn’t be more appropriate.
First went the hand sanitizer, disinfectants and toilet paper.
Now hair clippers and hair dye are flying off shelves. https://t.co/y0PFSEdgqH
— CNN Business (@CNNBusiness) April 13, 2020
Of course, with quarantine making everyone stay at home, it might be that time for beard trimmers, hair cuts, the works. However, the coronavirus pandemic has caused hair salons and barbershops to close down, causing people to become their own hair stylists and resort to their own haircutting skills.
I think putting a sociological perspective on Americans’ shopping patterns versus Walmart’s increasing hand sanitizer sales, aerosol disinfectant sales, and baking yeast sales during this coronavirus pandemic is not only interesting but entertaining. Nevertheless putting Walmart’s sales of hair clippers and shortage of hair coloring products versus Americans’ shopping patterns is more than ironically hilarious.
If quarantine was to end within a short amount of time, our country might be distinguished as pink-haired for awhile.
[buy_now link=goto.walmart.com/c/152611/565706/9383?subId1=RARE&subId2=hairdye&veh=aff&sourceid=imp_000011112222333344&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.walmart.com%2Fsearch%2F%3Fquery%3Dhair%2520dye]
