Mysore/Mysuru: We must all make sacrifices in the COVID-19 Age. It’s the new etiquette.

Visit a supermarket or a medical shop or a neighbourhood store today and you’re likely to be greeted outside by a member of staff. But they won’t be helping you with your shopping. Instead they’ll be ensuring you stick to the new strict social-distancing rules. All shops, grocery shops, milk booths, medical shops, supermarkets have marked out boxes on floors so customers can keep a safe distance during Coronavirus crisis.

At supermarkets and shops you’ll be met by a staff, wearing gloves, called greeters. Their jobs are exactly the same: To ensure only a limited number of shoppers enter stores at any one time. They check if people are queuing responsibly and that shoppers wait patiently and stand two to three metres away from each other.

Some shops scan your forehead for temperatures through thermal scanners and will allow you in only if you don’t have fever and symptoms. And the doors are open only after your hands are sanitised and after you wear a mask. The rules are as much to protect store workers as shoppers.

Shopping is no longer a leisure activity. Instead, visits to a store — which you’re only supposed to make to pick up essentials — will be carefully regulated. 

Shops also no longer want your cash. Instead, they are trying to encourage shoppers to pay by contactless card to cut down on potentially virus-covered cash being passed around the population. You’ll see posters encouraging you to look after yourself and treat staff well.