I didn’t realize it until it jumped up and bit me, but COVID-19 appears to have had one positive effect on life, at least here in north central Georgia.
We appear to have stepped back from so many things being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
As I’ve written before, I grew up in a society — at least during my childhood — where stores were generally open only six days a week, and only on one or two of those days were they open in the evenings.
Even grocery stores and pharmacies were nearly always closed by 8 or 9 p.m.
And Sundays? At least into the late 1960s, so-called Blue Laws mandated either that stores were closed on Sundays or were at least limited in what they could sell. Even convenience stores like 7-Eleven got their name because they opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 11 p.m.
The longer hours, at least the evening ones, supposedly made it easier for people who worked long hours to get their shopping done. That may be all well and good, but where it really started getting nasty was when stores and restaurants never closed.
That wasn’t even for convenience. It was just a way of squeezing a few more dollars out of the day. The first time I worked at a 24/7 business was 1972, in the Jack in the Box fast-food chain. Except on weekends, business wasn’t that great after midnight or bfore 6 a.m.
That six-hour period was when a crew of two people cleaned the equipment, the tables and the restrooms and swept and mopped the floors. It was actually quite a bit of work, but the bean counters said we should keep the drive-through open and make some money off the few people who might want to order food.
Eventually grocery stores and Walmarts came to realize that since they had people working all night stocking shelves and cleaning the store, they might as well keep the doors open and wait on the few people who came in.
And of course there were the casinos, first only in Nevada and now almost everywhere. Casinos weren’t just open 24/7. They didn’t have clocks to let you know which part of 24/7 it was.
Eventually it became an annoyance for people to discover that the place they wanted to shop or eat or gamble wasn’t open.
When I was 21 or 22 and out drinking with my friends, we would close the bars at 2 a.m. and then go get something to eat. At that age, I enjoyed being able to get pizza at 3 a.m.
These days I rarely eat anything after 7 p.m.
Being retired, I can usually decide when to go to the store at a time that’s convenient for me. The only time it becomes difficult is when something is a semi-emergency, like discovering we’re out of Immodium when my wife is in desperate need of it.
Until a year or so ago, even when drugstores and Walmart were closing early, Kroger’s was open all night. A couple of months ago, though, I learned to my chagrin that they closed at 11 p.m. now.
So basically, it’s a question of planning better.
And sorry, but it is definitely more civilized.
Plus it isn’t that easy for me to drive at night anymore.