Everyone who has visited a supermarket of late or dipped their toe into social media will have seen the chaos that has ensued as our communities have besieged the shelves.

As some among us have stretched the word 'essentials' beyond its true meaning and corralled enough toilet roll and food in to last until 2025, supermarket staff have stoically endured it all.

Diplomatic skills par excellence have convinced customers to step away from trollies full of single items, introduced reason where there was none among those keen to corner the market in hand cleanser and left bewildered those who cannot understand others also need supplies too.

Shelves have been stripped bare, shop assistants have seen trollies emptied before they reach the shelves to restock, those on the tills have been shouted at and managers have been challenged by our single mindedness.

All of which has been going on while many of the smaller independent have shelves full of stock!

We here at Punchline take our hats off to those supermarket staff - for their patience, their fortitude, and their willingness to carry on in all the madness.

Tributes aside, it seems those who run the supermarkets have finally had enough of our inability to shop with decorum and see the bigger picture.

Some, like Iceland and Sainsbury's have introduced special shopping times for older and more vulnerable customers, but too make that work they also need stock on their shelves.

And so today they announce they will be restricting purchases across hundreds of products.

Customers visiting Sainsbury's will be told three of any grocery items are their limit. Sainsbury's is also shutting its cafes and fresh food counters.

Morrisons is already limiting purchases across a number of lines and today Asda follows suit with limits now imposed on 1,250 lines.

The effect will be to ration purchases across a huge range of products, when previously it had only been a small range of items such as hand sanitiser.

If you are out shopping for a car boot full of toilet roll, think again. A cap of two is being imposed on most popular items, including the aforementioned tissue product, soap and UHT milk.

Mike Coupe, Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe spelt it out: "We have enough food coming into the system, but are limiting sales so that it stays on shelves for longer and can be bought by a larger numbers of customers."