Post Y2K: Shopping Resumes

While many Americans have their pantries so stocked with bottled water and canned goods that they won't have to shop until February, Brian Caskey and Alan Spears faced quite the opposite problem on Saturday.

The San Francisco men were so unconcerned about the so-called millennium bug that they didn't even buy food for their New Year's Day breakfast.

"We needed some sugar to counter our hangovers," said Spears and they shopped at a Walgreen Co. drug store for English muffins, eggs and strawberry-flavored milk.

Fears of computer crashes when systems read 2000 as 1900 abated Saturday as it was apparent that most repairs were successful. Consumers, taking the news as an "all clear" signal, headed out to shop just as they would any holiday weekend.

"I feel like we missed a bullet," said Timmie Bailey, 44, an insurance adjuster, as she shopped with her mother at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Conyers, Ga.

She said she had stocked up on goods for fear of Y2K problems. But she added: "I don't feel like the wool was pulled over my eyes or anything, and I didn't get anything my family wouldn't use normally."

Major retailers from Wal-Mart to online bookseller Amazon.com and consumer electronics specialist Best Buy Co. said Saturday that they were open and weren't experiencing any Y2K-related problems.

"It's business as usual today," said Kmart Corp. spokeswoman Shan Kahle. "All of our stores, distribution centers and headquarters experienced no problems."

At the Sears store in Sanford, Fla., sales clerk Julie Connor said registers were functioning better than normal.

"There was not a single problem with the computers today, which is unusual," she said. "Maybe that's what the millennium bug did!"

Steve Rose, the manager of the Quik Sak convenience market in Nashville, Tenn., arrived before 5 a.m. to check out his computer system.

"Our gas pumps are electric, so we especially wanted to make sure we could provide gas to emergency vehicles," Rose said. Everything else was OK, too, he added.

Shoppers and merchants had mixed reactions to the relatively trouble-free transition to the new millennium.

At the Home Depot outside Conyers, Ga., Norma Dillon, a 52-year-old teacher, said she didn't go out on New Year's Eve.

"I watched CNN all the time and sort of expected an explosion somewhere," she said as she shopped for materials for a dog kennel. "But I was relieved when all the newscasts started saying everything was OK."

But Johnny Thompson, a 43-year-old construction worker, said he figured that computer companies had Y2K problems in hand long before the New Year.

"The way I look at it, if they can make it, they can fix it," Thompson said.

In Harper Woods, Mich., video store manager David Yarema, 45, said he thought the potential for mllennium problems had been overstated.

"I just want to know who profits the most from this. Computer guys like Microsoft probably," Yarema said.

In Denver, Keith Whiting, general manager of the Corner Bakery on the 16th Street Mall, said he thought Y2K was "the biggest nonevent of the year."

That conclusion was disputed by Kristine Vernier, spokeswoman for the Haworth Inc. furniture factory in Holland, Mich. There, computer consultants restarted computer systems early Saturday and determined that all was in order.

"People calling (Y2K) a nonevent is not exactly correct," Ms. Vernier said. "It was an event that - if you were prepared for at midnight - became a nonevent."