TEWKSBURY, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- The standoff over Market Basket's leadership continued Tuesday. The stores are empty and more employees are losing their jobs.
So what's the future of market basket? Right now, it's looking like empty shelves and disappointed customers.
"Not to happy about it," customer Carmen Goulet of Wilmington said.
Market Basket store managers like Mark Spiller in Woburn are struggling to keep their shops running as the dispute over the company's leadership continues and stocks get low.
"I would say 3 or 4 more days and then it should be pretty depleted. If you look around the shelves are getting bare. We have no produce. The chicken's gone. No fish. Everything's just dwindling down to nothing," Spiller said.
In Burlington, managers say a lawmaker-backed boycott kept a lot of customers out of the store there. Assistant Manager Rob Harrington says they have about two weeks before they're completely depleted.
"We're all out of produce. We're all out of seafood. Very low on meat. We're out of chicken. Anything perishable really is winding down. Grocery aisles themselves, maybe a couple of more weeks," Harrington said.
Employee Doreen Pelletier says that accepting deliveries will "defeat the purpose of fighting for what we stand for."
Employees are demanding that former CEO Arthur-T Demoulas be reinstated and called for a protest outside Market Basket's 71-stores in Massachusetts, Maine and N.H. Tuesday.
Customers who made it past the protesters to shop found it a frustrating experience.
"I only live a half mile from here. So now it's, where do I go? Drive through traffic and everything else, so it is frustrating," customer Nicole Gamez of Burlington said.
By 12 p.m. Tuesday almost 17,000 had logged on to sign the petition to bring back Demoulas. Hundreds more were signed at locations across the Baystate say protest leaders.
Employees say the protests, boycott and petitioning will continue until there is a resolution and they hope that will come Friday when Market Basket's board of directors are scheduled to meet.