One-way is no longer the right way

Hy-Vee, our local grocery chain, has removed the one-way stickers from their aisles.

The first time I saw them, I was in the grocery store around 3 PM on a Monday afternoon. At most, there were one or two people in each aisle (or none at all). Every aisle I wanted to go down was the wrong way, so I ended up doing laps and walking four times as far to get the items I wanted. So had I been sick, I would have breathed four times as much virus into the air before leaving the store.

But seriously, have you ever gotten behind a car that had exhaust issues? You know, the kind of smell that makes you want to either drive 20+ MPH over the speed limit to get around them or find another route? Would you rather follow a car like that or encounter it as oncoming traffic? One-way stickers in the grocery store aisles mean if someone ahead of you has the virus but doesn’t know it yet, you are following them around the store, breathing more and more of the virus. If there are no one-way stickers, chances are you may encounter them briefly 3-4 times, but no more. Personally, I prefer the latter.