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I worked at Tesco, a UK grocery chain, in my teens. I was involved with stock control, among other things, and was partially responsible for populating shelves

I worked at Tesco, a UK grocery chain, in my teens. I was involved with stock control, among other things, and was partially responsible for populating shelves at a new store. All products at Tesco have an 8-digit product number (SKU) in addition to the EAN/UPC. There's also a three digit case size number. Like this: 05123456-024 Each product has an estikmated weekly sale and a capacity (shelf plus warehouse) to aid efficient warehousing. Each product has a case size of less than 1,000. Well, all but one -- white sugar. That has a case size of 1,024. It's annotated on the shelf ticket as '024', dropping the leading '1'. I didn't know about this until ~43 tonnes of sugar arrived on 6 trucks the following day. For a new store. In a small town. It turns out that me misreading '024' as a case size and over-ordering sugar by a factor of 43x was enough to have the internal ordering software updated.

jacobush 10y ago
See, that is what's wrong with you quiche eating europeans. Fixing the error... What a twist ending! (Twisted even!) A heartfelt "you're fired!" and a lawsuit, now that's the American way.
- chewyfruitloop 10y ago
  ...isn't that the standard order size for a week in the states :p
  - jacobush 10y ago
    Nah, they prefer their sugar hidden in other products. Besides, there's just no bang for the buck in table sugar. High fructose corn syrup is the sweet spot.
masklinn 10y ago
I've got to say a bunch of trucks loaded with pallets of sugar arriving at a small-town Tesco is a hilarious image. Were you at the new store when the trucks arrived or did you get told afterwards? Were there negative consequences for you personally or was it considered a process/tooling error only?
- petecooper 10y ago
  I was there. The whole warehouse team was screaming with laughter, I was properly terrified. No obvious repercussions. This was peak Tesco profit era, so it was considered a blameless error (AFAIK).
confluence 10y ago
This is brilliant. My day just got so much better.
gumby 10y ago
> until ~43 tonnes of sugar arrived on 6 trucks the following day. I read about this happening to a novice commodities trader in London: several barges full of coal supposedly showed up at their building at Canary Wharf. (Oh drat, I looked it up and the only reference I could find was on DailyWTF so...maybe not so true: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery )
- brianpgordon 10y ago
  That's a classic apocryphal horror story in futures trading - though it's possible that it really happened to someone at some point

jacobush 10y ago

See, that is what's wrong with you quiche eating europeans. Fixing the error... What a twist ending! (Twisted even!) A heartfelt "you're fired!" and a lawsuit, now that's the American way.

chewyfruitloop 10y ago
...isn't that the standard order size for a week in the states :p
- jacobush 10y ago
  Nah, they prefer their sugar hidden in other products. Besides, there's just no bang for the buck in table sugar. High fructose corn syrup is the sweet spot.

masklinn 10y ago

I've got to say a bunch of trucks loaded with pallets of sugar arriving at a small-town Tesco is a hilarious image. Were you at the new store when the trucks arrived or did you get told afterwards? Were there negative consequences for you personally or was it considered a process/tooling error only?

petecooper 10y ago
I was there. The whole warehouse team was screaming with laughter, I was properly terrified. No obvious repercussions. This was peak Tesco profit era, so it was considered a blameless error (AFAIK).

confluence 10y ago

This is brilliant. My day just got so much better.

gumby 10y ago

> until ~43 tonnes of sugar arrived on 6 trucks the following day. I read about this happening to a novice commodities trader in London: several barges full of coal supposedly showed up at their building at Canary Wharf. (Oh drat, I looked it up and the only reference I could find was on DailyWTF so...maybe not so true: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery )

brianpgordon 10y ago
That's a classic apocryphal horror story in futures trading - though it's possible that it really happened to someone at some point