The Coronavirus Customer-Service Crisis

Early on Saturday, at the bakery a few blocks from my apartment, the barista didn’t quite have his new coffee-order spiel down. That morning, for fear of hastening the spread of the coronavirus, all the milks, sugars, and disposable lids had been moved behind the counter. He was nervous, he told me, because orders would take longer to dole out, and every request for “just a little sugar” or a particular type of milk had the potential to go wrong. He hoped people would be patient, but the rush had yet to come.

At the neighborhood grocery, people were starting to get irritated that this store, like virtually every other in the city, had run out of disinfectant wipes. The women running the checkout lines were gloved for the first time, spraying down conveyor belts and debit-card keypads as thoroughly as they could before the next customer piled toilet paper and canned food into their lanes. The one who scanned my seltzer and pasta ingredients said that