With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, community members are becoming stressed and seem to be unintentionally taking it out on one another.
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The Lithgow Mercury was contacted about another incident involving shopping for essentials, which involved a local school staff member being abused by a supermarket employee.
While trying to do something nice for the local school she is employed at, an anonymous support staff worker visited ALDI Lithgow on Monday, March 23 to purchase some chocolates and cakes for her coworkers and students to enjoy.
"I wanted to do something nice for everyone who is struggling with stress and anxiety during these uncertain times," she said.
When she reached the checkout there was a couple in front of her who she recognised as local residents.
"They had three bottles of milk they wanted to purchase and the checkout operator told them they could only purchase two.
"I did notice that there was ample supplies of milk on the shelves in the milk section as I shopped for my groceries.
"I'm sure any intelligent person knows that milk is not an item that can be hoarded as it only has a short shelf life," she said.
She said she knew the couple were not purchasing the milk for any other reason than for it to be consumed within the next several days or so.
"If the item was anything else like toilet paper I would have understood, but I offered to put the milk in with my items so I could buy it for them.
"What a mistake that was," she said.
After offering a kind gesture she was yelled at by the checkout operator who said, according to the anonymous shopper, "You can't do that! It's people like you that have caused things to be the way they are! Because of people like you, someone else is going to miss out on buying milk".
The anonymous shopper said she was just trying to be nice and help someone out, in which the operator responded with "What you are doing is wrong. If you give that milk to those people that means someone else misses out. I'm so sick of people like you doing this. I have to put up with this cr*p all day and you're making it worse."
The anonymous shopper continued to purchase the milk and handed it to the couple who were extremely thankful.
"I thought what I was doing was 'Australian'.
"I was so shocked at how rude the operator was, and their tone and level of abuse. I also felt embarrassed as several other shoppers witnessed the incident," she said.
Despite the abuse she copped she said she understood that many supermarket workers are under a lot of stress at the moment.
"I know we are all anxious, stressed, uncertain and frightened, but surely we can still be kind, thoughtful and nice to each other?"
ALDI were contacted and declined to comment.
