New Lidl Store. Vultures Descend.

[Atheist]

New Lidl opens tomorrow at 7 am here in Twickenham. People already arrived to camp out in the car park. I'm not surprised, but very sad at the shameless selfishness of some people. We are in an affluent borough, and they've been stripping the other supermarkets for a week. Surely their freezers and garages must be full

[Jackdaw33]

High time the government reintroduced ration books.

[ToraToraTora]

i'd have hoped that would not be necessary JD but never underestimate the public's ability to turn into total cretins.

[gingejbee]

You've overlooked the fact that whenever a new Lidl or Aldi store opens anywhere at any time, there are always long queues of people wanting to see what they've been missing.

[Atheist]

A brand new store with presumably full shelves on the first morning is bound to be an attraction.

[Khandro]

The primary culprit is a cultural phenomenon that psychologists have called the 'bandwagon effect' (or contagion effect) a phenomenon in which the rate at which the spread of ideas, behaviour, and trends rises with the rate of others adopting the trend.

A large part of the blame goes to the media. I am willing to bet that if no articles on toilet paper had been published, there would be no "toilet paper crisis" now, similarly for certain food products. Once people got the impression that the next time they need toilet paper there won't be any to find, everyone rushed to supermarkets to buy some.

It however bears no relationship to reality, there is no evidence to suggest that manufacturers are unable to continue with supplies; as Boris has said, there are no shortages.