Some California stores were experiencing toilet paper and other product shortages as early as last Friday afternoon.
Toilet paper shelves had cleared by mid-afternoon Friday at Dollar General, while Cal's and C&R Supermarket made it part of the way through the weekend before shelves were stripped clean. Hand soap was also in short supply at some locations, and hand sanitizer was bought out even earlier last week.
"I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime," Tracy Brizendine, assistant manager at Cal's, said. "It's weird. I just don't know what's going to happen."
Brizendine said foot traffic picked up in the store starting Friday night and continued throughout the weekend. She said the store typically receives shipments every Tuesday and Friday and had already confirmed with the warehouse, as of Monday morning, that it would not be receiving a replenished supply as the warehouse was out of toilet paper, too.
Customers also bought out all of the store's Clorox wipes, and just a few baby wipes remained as of Monday morning. Potatoes and other produce were totally bought out as well.
Brizendine said the staff at Cal's is working to serve customers as best as possible.
At C&R, store manager Rick Winter said the store ran out of toilet paper Sunday morning, despite having a good inventory on hand. Winter said there was a delivery due in Tuesday morning but would imagine short supply would be a mirror of the situation with Cal's.
"It's unprecedented," Winter said. "I don't understand what the excitement was over toilet paper."