Fed Up with the Food Fight

Forced to queue endlessly for supplies, the Poles are boiling

As Warsaw's bosses and leaders of the Solidarity union federation squared off for another possible showdown last week, millions of Poles waged their frustrating daily battle, waiting in lines up to half a mile long to buy food and basic necessities for their families. TIME Eastern Europe Correspondent Richard Hornik reports from Warsaw:

It is 4 a.m. The sun will not rise for almost three hours, but already the line has begun to form in front of the austere, dimly lit shop. A panel truck pulls up to the rear entrance, and two burly workers, their white smocks spattered with red stains, deliver their precious cargo: a day's supply of meat. Within three hours, the choicest cuts--pork chops, ham, boneless beef--will be gone. The late arrivals will have to make do with sausage, soup bones or chicken. Or perhaps nothing at all.

Those waiting in line, mostly working women or elderly pensioners, stand grim-faced, speaking little and frequently checking the time. If they wait too long in the meat line, they may find no fresh bread, milk or cheese. Some shoppers solve this problem by having someone hold a place for them in one line while they scurry over to another shop and queue up for something else. That tactic has its risks. If the first line moves too fast, the shopper might find that he has lost his place when he gets back.

The mood in the queues, once one of good-natured resignation, has soured in recent months as the food shortages have become more acute. As far back as anybody can remember, invalids, pregnant women and mothers with infants always received unquestioned priority. No longer. Now those who head for the special "line on the left" are often pelted with insults--or worse. "Who told you to get pregnant now?" snapped a middle-aged woman last week as a young mother-to-be entered a butcher shop in downtown Warsaw. "Here comes the little cripple," muttered another shopper as a handicapped woman hobbled toward the counter. "She'll probably skip home when she gets around the corner."

The government officially maintains that the average Pole spends four hours queuing up each day. That estimate drew derisive laughter from most shoppers. Says one retired woman: "I spend half my time in lines. I do all the shopping for my daughter and her family." Indeed, the elderly are one of the Polish family's most valuable assets, since they have more free time for waiting in line.

But working people, too, must make time for shopping. Maria, 44, a clerk in a Warsaw office, explains that she and her five co-workers take turns in the lines throughout the day. "We buy for each other," she says. "If someone does not come back in two hours, then another person goes out and takes his place in line." Such creative absenteeism, however, hampers the nation's productivity and thus aggravates the problem of shortages. Moans Zygmunt Szeliga, deputy editor of the weekly Polityka: "People cannot work because they have to stand in line, and they have to stand in line because people are not working. It's a vicious circle."

Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of the whole maddening charade is that all the hours of queuing do not begin to satisfy the shopper's needs. In the first place, purchases are limited by a strict rationing system that allows the average Pole a monthly allotment of only 6 1/2 Ibs. of meat, 2 Ibs. of sugar, 2 Ibs. of flour, 10 oz. of detergent, twelve packs of cigarettes and a pint of vodka. That, as a gray-haired Warsaw pensioner wryly notes, is "too little to live on and too much to die from."

Moreover, the shopper who hands his 2-in. by 3-in. ration coupon to a clerk is never sure whether even that meager allotment will be available. Many Poles never got their full share of meat last month. In spite of rationing, supplies of detergent and cigarettes have also fallen short of demand. Says one Warsaw woman: "I am 75, and I remember rationing under the Nazis. At least then you could be sure of getting what you had coupons for."

With the state-run supply system on the verge of collapse, most Poles must turn to alternate sources for food and other scarce items. Those with friends or relatives abroad may get some of what they need via parcel post. Others resort to barter: a mechanic might trade two quarts of motor oil to a salesgirl for a pound of coffee; in Silesia, the miners are reportedly trading coal to farmers for meat. For exorbitant prices, or hard Western currency, almost anything can be gotten on the black market. Sample prices: blue jeans, $180; one pint of vodka, $24.

More affordable to the average Pole are the so-called free markets, which the government traditionally has ignored. These extralegal bazaars are operated as private enterprises by farmers or nimble entrepreneurs who offer abundant quantities of fruits and vegetables at prices slightly higher than the state stores. A free-market egg costs about 40-c-, for example, compared with 30-c- for one in a state store. The more wealthy city dweller may drive out into the country and buy meat directly and illegally from a farmer. One Gdansk bureaucrat admits that he and a neighbor buy whole pigs and then salt the meat down in barrels. Such stratagems have become so common that the government last month prohibited the sale of meat outside state stores. Reason: farmers were refusing to sell their pigs to the government at the official price of $1.30 per Ib. when they could get half again as much from individuals.

By dint of sacrifice and subterfuge, the Poles scrape by somehow, and no one is starving. Families save their coupons for ham or pork on Sunday or buy on the black market. Says Stanislaw Szczepanski, Vice Minister of Agriculture: "To Poles, a meal is not a meal without a piece of pork. It is a matter of status." Those who cannot get meat make do on Sunday with pierogi, pastry stuffed with a kind of cottage cheese.

But the Poles are becoming increasingly angered by the unending struggle for food that dominates their lives. Snapped one middle-aged woman waiting outside a Warsaw fish market last week: "I am sick of talking about these lines. That is all people do. When is somebody going to do something about them?"

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