Shopping During Curfew – Here’s How

I haven’t gone shopping in a supermarket properly since this whole pandemic started. Just being around so many people and waiting in line with people who don’t understand social distancing just gives me a lot of anxiety right now. I now do most of my shopping at the tiny Coops in residential areas and for things like A&W Root Beer, or other treats, I pass by a Sultan Center Express or a Trolley.

But, when I found out you can now book supermarket appointments after curfew, I decided to try it out.

Getting An Appointment

The website you need to go to is https://www.moci.shop/

You enter your Civil ID number, Civil ID serial number, email and phone number and you will be then be allowed to choose an appointment for the following:

– Slaughterhouse
– Fish Markets
– Cooperative Societies
– Grocery Markets

Depending on where you live you’ll have different options and places available since the options are related to your home address.

I live in Salmiya so under the “Grocery Markets” section it’s like hitting jackpot since I have the options of like 3 or 4 Sultan Centers, Carrefour, Oncost and Wholesome Food. Sadly none of them were working, I think it’s a coming soon thing. The only option I had was Salmiya Coop located under the “Cooperative Societies” section.

I wasn’t expecting any dates to be available but oddly I found a bunch for the same day and more for the next couple of days. I decided to book an appointment for 6:30PM which was around an hour later. Once you’re done booking you’ll get two QR Codes. One is for the supermarket and one is for the cops patrolling the street. The QR codes are connected to your Civil ID so everyone out during curfew needs to have a separate QR code and everyone entering the supermarket needs to have a separate one as well. I don’t believe you can get one QR code and just pack the family in the car and head to the Coop.

Curfew Pass

They don’t give you any information but I remember hearing or reading that you can’t get a supermarket/curfew pass and then head the opposite direction. Since I was taking the Alfa out I figured I’d plan a scenic route to the Coop.

Obviously I didn’t take that route but I thought it would be a funny thing to tweet. The thing is cops on roads give me a lot of anxiety even when I’m not doing anything illegal on a normal day. So driving to the Coop during curfew turned out to be super stressful because there were cops EVERYWHERE! Like every intersection and corner had a cop car plus cops driving up and down the roads and cops in unmarked cars. All with their flashers on so you can’t tell if you’re in trouble or not, you just feel they’re all flashing their lights cuz you did something wrong. Or maybe it’s just me cuz I get stopped a lot and guess what? I got stopped on my way to the Coop, and on my way back! If that wasn’t stressful enough my QR code gave errors both times with the cops. I guess because I had just done the booking? No idea but when they’d scan the QR code it would tell them it wasn’t valid. The first cop told me it was fine and I could continue on my way to the Coop, the second cop when I was heading back home wanted to investigate the error further so I ended up parked on the side of the road for around 5-10 mins. In the end, he also let me continue home.

The Supermarket

I got to the supermarket early at around 6:15. The first thing you do is sign up at the desk and give them your Civil ID. You get it back on the way out because I think it’s how they keep track of whos inside because every group is allowed 30 minutes of shopping. Our group was around 20-30 people. At 6:30 they told us we could go in and right away there was a rush of people crowding up wanting to get in because nobody understands social distancing or the fact that this wasn’t an episode of Supermarket Sweep. A friend who had an appointment at the same Coop but at 6PM told me they had let them inside in small groups of 5 people at a time so it depends on whos in charge I guess.

You are only allowed to get an appointment once a week FYI. So if I try to get another appointment now I get the following message:

Tips

Firstly, I doubt I’m going to get another shopping appointment again. I can’t deal being in a place with so many people right now. If people understood was social distancing was then yeah I could do it but a lot of people don’t get it. While my items were getting scanned at the cashier, a guy who works at the Coop came between me and the lady behind me (who was social distancing correctly) and started emptying her cart onto the conveyor belt. But like dude, I’m still AT the conveyor belt, I still haven’t paid, why did you have to squeeze up next to me to unpack her stuff? We were doing so well without your help. I had to tell him to move away and give me some space and he got bothered by it. Like, come on. So personally I’m gonna stick to smaller mini-markets for now.

But the first tip I’d give would be to take your time going in. If you can shop in less than 30 mins then you don’t have to get in right away. Just take your time, wait till the crowd leaves the first area (most likely the veggie section or whatever the first section at your supermarket is) and then go in. You’ll have fewer people around you and you would be visiting sections when everyone before you had finished from it and left.

My second tip is don’t register for an appointment if its an hour or less later. Not sure how long it takes for the QR code you get to work with the cops, but it’s annoying to get stopped and it’s even more annoying not to have a working pass. Next time I’d book for the following day just to be safe.

If you want to get a shopping appointment, here is the link again https://www.moci.shop/
(for English press the white box drop-down box on the top right)

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