I went shopping and did some errands on Tuesday.

The Auto Club was helpful and easy to work with. This was a new one for me, I’d been going to the one in Victorville and honestly hated it. I tried one near Rancho Cucamonga and had a much better experience.

I suppose that’s why we always went “down the hill” instead of to the closer towns in the area. It was just a nicer and more civilized experience.

After the Auto Club, I dropped by what used to be a great Best Buy…

This experience was not as nice. The shelves were bare, horribly disorganized, and over all the store was dark and dingy. I was completely ignored by all associates. This was particularly clear when I asked an associate to scan something so I could know what the price was… I was told, “I gotta clean up, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” as he walked off.

Let me be clear, this was not a janitor. This guy had been helping another person literally moments before, he hadn’t even logged out of his computer terminal yet. WOW! What fantastic customer service!

If I hadn’t really needed the item, I’d have bailed. Instead I finished my shopping, picked up a couple more items then went to the cash register.

I had the lady scan the questionable item before we began the transaction. I had a backup selection if the questionable item had been too expensive. It turns out the price was acceptable, so I left the backup selection at the register. They can restock it or simply throw it on some random shelf as it appears they’d done with most of the rest of their inventory.

There were employees wandering around in masks and it was a very unpleasant shopping experience. Best Buy will probably go the way of Frys. The employees are acting just like Fry’s employees acted near the end.

Then I headed over to Ralphs. I was able to find all but two items including a ton of stuff that I hadn’t been able to find at my local Stater Brothers for months.

The aisles were neat, people polite, and they had two doors to get folks into and out of the store easily without a traffic jam. Also I wasn’t being shocked every time I touched a freezer or shelving unit. I spent less at the Ralphs than I do at the Stater Brothers. That was surprising too.

As I was driving home, I was thinking that COVID panic really screwed up a lot of things. My local grocery store is much like the Best Buy. Dark, poorly organized, and with plenty of bare shelves and more than half the staff running around with masks on. It’s like they never recovered from the COVID mentality.

Then I thought about shopping in Florida. The Best Buy in Tampa is well lit, well stocked, and the employees are helpful. The Publix grocery store is like the Ralphs I was just in. I suppose Kroger owned stores in Florida would also be to the same standard although I haven’t, to my knowledge, shopped in a Kroger owned store in Florida.

Now with the Fall season upon us, we’re hearing about COVID again. “Mask Up”, “Get Jabbed”, “Be prepared for lockdowns” Why? COVID is technically endemic. It’s like the flu. Are the “Powers that Be” just trying to squeeze another year out of COVID panic, or are they really concerned? How can we know? They’ve lied so much, and been caught in their lies often enough that I, and apparently a lot of other people don’t trust them.

Is this too part of the “New Normal”? Once trusted organizations within and outside the government sphere are to be nothing more than noise, conflicting information, and lies?

I don’t like it one little bit. The “New Normal” SUCKS!!!

I suspect that nowhere does it suck worse than California and New York. Both will be stupidly compliant with whatever suggestion the government pulls out of its collective ass.

If Sniffy Joe said that we should all wrap our heads with Saran Wrap to ward off COVID while in our homes, and that it was mandatory. You can bet your ass that California and New York would fine anyone who disobeyed. No one would wrap their heads…

Well maybe there are some incredibly stupid people who would suffocate themselves with Saran Wrap, there were people who used aquarium cleaner as a cure for COVID and nearly died. Yeah, the aquarium cleaner has ivermectin in it, but the OTHER chemicals were completely ignored by these rocket scientists! Ya need to read the whole label morons! Honestly, they should have been allowed to Darwin themselves in peace. I digress…

We know the fines would go right into the stupid pile of money California and New York “BURN” everyday providing their respective citizens such lovely services as tattletale hotlines, and drone surveillance of our homes and yards.

The “New Normal” is new to us in the United States. But it’s old hat to folks from the former Soviet Union.

I suppose that’s why I don’t like the “New Normal” it feels a bit like what I imagined living under Soviet rule would have felt like.